The delicious ‘Mrs Sting’ aka Trudie Styler, is way ahead of other celebrities in the do-gooder stakes. Long before Angelina was with UNICEF and Madonna built orphanages, Ms Styler was trying to protect Amazon communities threatened by deforestation. She and Sting set up the Rainforest Foundation over twenty years ago, and she is now back in the spotlight helping to promote the long legal battle between Chevron Oil and those who live in the Ecuadorean Amazon, a fight depicted in the documentary film Crude.
The Joe Berlinger directed film tells the story of the battle, which sees the Ecuadorean residents claim that Chevron dumped toxic waste on the rainforest, leaving them without clean water. It also documents, without hesitation, the high rate of cancer deaths and miscarriages connected to the contamination and the trauma caused as a result to a community. The film debuted at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, to critical acclaim.
Styler’s involvement in the film however, is not a case of attention seeking as is the case with so many stars-involved-in-serious-stories, but a deep desire to help the affected Amazonian community to rebuild their lives and win justice. US attorney Steve Danzieger, who was working with the Ecuadoreans, contacted Trudie through the Rainforest Foundation and she immediately got involved: she got UNICEF to get water filtration systems for the villagers and flew to down to the Quito oil fields to offer further assistance. Styler herself is featured in the film whilst on her fact-finding mission in Ecuador and even her famous husband makes a cameo appearance performing with Police at part of the Live Earth concert.
Styler sees the fundamental problem clearly, “mothers were nurturing their children with murky brown, petrol-smelling horrible water…they are in dire need of help.” However, she also acknowledges the bigger issue that the film tries to unearth for the audience: “People always say ‘we have to save the planet’. I think the planet will be fine, it’s us [people] we have to worry about.”
The added celebrity appeal was sure to help get the film and therefore the plight of the Amazonian communities into the spotlight and therefore the media. Trudie and Sting hosted a party to promote Crude, with a dinner and after-party attended by famous faces such as Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Bacon and Denise Richards. One of the film’s Ecuadorean heros, Pablo Fajardo, a young man who instead of working in the Quito oil fields went to college and law school, then sued Texaco — now Chevron — for allegedly polluting the water, was even featured in Vanity Fair, a move that if not directly encouraged by Styler, certainly helped fuel the mass consumption of such a devastating environmental story, at a time when the general public are generally receptive to such issues, after Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth caused a stir on the big screen back in 2006. Whilst many critics can be cynical about a celebrity’s involvement with such under-the-radar cases, perhaps we shouldn’t forget that these people can use their fame for genuine good and not just self-promotion. As the New York Times noted, “this movie makes clear that while it is easy to laugh at celebrity do-gooders, they have access to real power unavailable to the mere mortal.”
Watch the trailer here http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/07/20/movies/1247463506944/trailer-crude.html
Carli Humphries.
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