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Turning a Charity Symbol Into a Corporate Logo
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
In “Pink Ribbons, Inc.” the director Léa Pool takes aim at the breast cancer movement and the corporations that benefit from its ubiquitous rosy symbol of awareness and action. Yet for all the stellar intentions; revelatory evidence; and thoughtful, wall-to-wall interviewees, this frustratingly overstuffed documentary indulges more in spraying buckshot than stalking a target.
This is a pity, because the film highlights legitimate concerns that others, notably the medical sociologist Gayle Sulik, have been digging into for years, including the questionable commingling of marketing and philanthropy and the prioritization of pharmaceutical solutions over prevention. Casting a pink veil of positivity over a dark and dreadful disease, we are told, encourages the myth of progress and distracts from treatment options that remain limited to what Dr. Susan Love calls “slash, burn and poison” and mortality rates that have barely altered in six decades.
Depressing statistics, however, don’t sell products. Arguing forcefully that corporate sponsorship of this so-called pink culture is more likely to fatten bottom lines — or rehabilitate a damaged image — than result in a cure, Ms. Pool wonders who is being served by a fuchsia Niagara Falls or a blushing bucket of KFC. But though poking indignantly at the close ties between nonprofit giants like Susan G. Komen for the Cure and, for example, large chemical companies whose goals are unlikely to include investing in explorations of suspected links between cancer and pollution, the film fails to offer substantive financial analyses. Where, exactly, do all these millions in charitable donations go? There may well be too many players to track, but Komen’s detailed financial statements, freely available on its Web site, might be a good place to begin.
Bristling with valuable information but with no clear path to a point, “Pink Ribbons” (based on the 2008 book by Samantha King) is a head-reeling, hot-button mess. Only in one segment does the fog fully clear, as we meet a dignified group of women weathering metastatic disease. Through these faces of pain, fear and anger, and with the lucid guidance of Barbara Ehrenreich (drawing on her brilliant 2001 essay “Welcome to Cancerland”), we understand how the movement’s Mardi Gras atmosphere and “tyranny of cheerfulness” — walk, run, smile, be a warrior! — serve marketers more than the terminally ill.
Though leaving us with many more questions than answers, this well-intentioned blur of accusations, advertising clips and pink-washed events nevertheless deserves to be seen. At the very least, the movement’s apparent drive to make breast cancer, in the words of Ms. Ehrenreich, “pretty and feminine and normal” should raise our hackles. “It’s not,” she insists. “It’s horrible. It must be stopped.” And maybe festooning ourselves in little-girl pastels is not the best way to achieve that goal.
Pink Ribbons, Inc.
Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.
Directed by Léa Pool; written by Ms. Pool, Nancy Guerin and Patricia Kearns, inspired by the book “Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy” by Dr. Samantha King; produced by Ravida Din; released by First Run Features. In Manhattan at the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. This film is not rated.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/06/01...tml?ref=movies
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