One of the biggest surprises for me in emerging from lockdown, during which I have spent much loved time in nature, has been re-acquainting myself with the sight of a bit more litter downtown than I had remembered.

Given that I am an environmentalist, and especially after teaching a class recently focused on ocean plastics, it is hard for me to see litter on the ground without considering where it will go; beyond this, the spectacle of waste is stunning. I believe there is a parallel in news as so much information seems to be packaged to be consumed and discarded so long as ratings are optimized, but not toward problem-solving.

One mode many artists have pursued to address the problem of litter has been the almost-ubiquitous now trash sculpture – a well-intentioned, but arguably unhelpful and sometimes even crass display, rather than solution, of, an acknowledged, serious and pervasive problem.

There are certainly a multitude of options for reducing and transformationally recycling plastics. But what about news?

On Utility

It being Women’s History Month, I noticed this past week that PBS re-featured Alexandra Dean’s 2017 documentary “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story,” and I was delighted to watch it again. Although I have not watched very many recently, I have made it a goal to watch more films and movies that educate and inspire recently. (Has anyone else been watching The Last Jedi at least monthly?) Bombshell, the documentary, was one I ended up re-watching.

On Fuel

In beginning to recover from an experience of abuse while working for a highly profitable and decades-old department at CNN described already, I had previously been encouraged by heroes whose stories of survival, while in more dire conditions than those I had experienced, inspired me greatly. But during the years over which I reached out to so many news organizations in order to speak about what I had learned in television, I found surprising nourishment in oases of stories of those who had acknowledged adversities, absolutely, but who also found a way to express their gifts and perspectives anyway.

While a cautionary tale without doubt, the story of Hedwig Kiesler’s inventiveness – in addition to her determination to solve real-world problems that resonated with her personally – is, in many ways, both eye-opening and heartening. A model and actress, but also a designer, Kiesler, from what I understand, determined not to let adversity serve as a constraint on her potential. While hers was a complex story, it was intriguing to learn about a woman whose gifts were allowed to come to at least partial fruition, because she insisted on it. I believe Hedwig Kiesler’s work as an inventor helped move many others forward in meaningful ways.

As her documentary illustrated, actually solving, not just mesmerizing people with problems, is to re-focus away from the surface-level minutae of an outwardly observable story and onto ideas – what was learned. It is to make progress. I believe any mechanisms in our current informational infrastructure not dedicated to the latter need to be retrofitted, not to mention powered sustainably moving forward.

On the Golden Rule

A Google search performed for the title of this work recently yielded more than fifty results describing a 2019 Hollywood film (before I simply stopped scrolling) without even one mention of the Alexandra Dean Hedwig Kiesler documentary. This is an abomination.

Although we are all working to free ourselves of a need for validation from outside ourselves, I believe it still would have been fair and right to say the least for Kiesler to receive recognition and praise for her design. (And this is not even to mention the value its inspiration, and the story of its derivation, presents to inventors today.) For Dean’s clearly labor-of-love attempt to provide this posthumously to be thwarted, to me, seems wrong.

A Needful Update (On Being Active Listeners)

Hedwig Kiesler, to whom we all arguably owe a debt of gratitude, was encouraged to change her name when embarking on her career in Hollywood in order to be heard. Given convincing evidence that the 2017 documentary, Bombshell, gives voice where one was wanted, would it not be worth considering ceding its name back?

In his Federalist Paper 20, Madison notably asserts “experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.” Hedwig Kiesler’s story is a first-hand account not just of tragedy but of some degree of triumph, and it is a rarity.

I have not seen the 2019 film. (After a more recent television series claiming to give viewers and insider look at the news business, I did and do not want to experience another disappointment.)

But I do not believe such a step is needed in order to feel confident in my objection to its name. Beyond employing an arguably much more clever double entendre than its successor, the documentary Bombshell – focused more on solutions than scalps, both inspires – and warns, women. I believe that in the future, the world will increasingly need everyone’s contributions. To tackle the collective problems we face, we will need to fire on all cylinders and actually move. Bombshell the documentary, and, more, the story it tells, arguably helps us to do so.