Pink Ribbons, Inc
Léa Pool

Friday, February 10, 2012 | 7:00pm
Council Chambers, Richmond City Hall 
6911 No. 3 Road, Richmond

DOXA Documentary Film Festival’s Motion Pictures Film Series with support from the City of Richmond is exceptionally pleased and proud to present Léa Pool’s stunning new film Pink Ribbons, Inc. Based on the incendiary book from Samantha King, Pool’s film clearly delineates the corporate co-option of breast cancer with precision and fury.

In examining the idea of breast cancer as a marketing tool, the most essential question is Cui bono? Who benefits? It is not hard to see that the multi-billion dollar business of breast cancer has reaped untold financial rewards for corporations ranging from the NFL to Yoplait Yogurt. The pink ribbon campaign has been used to sell everything from Kentucky Fried Chicken (the egregious pink bucket) to pink power tools. A less obvious use of the fight against breast cancer is as a PR tool. Whether it’s the use of growth hormones in Yoplait Yogurt, carcinogens in Estee Lauder makeup, or even domestic violence, in the case of the NFL, a veritable deluge of pink propaganda has proven an effective means of deflecting criticism from the companies whose products have arguably contributed to what has become an epidemic.

Since 1940, the increase in breast cancer diagnoses has risen from one-in-twenty-two to one-in-eight. This stunning increase is still little understood, but environmental factors are thought to play a significant role. Despite massive fundraising events such turning Niagara Falls or the Skyline of New York pink, little has been done little to stem the mounting death toll.

“Indignant and subversive, Pink Ribbons, Inc. resoundingly pops the shiny pink balloon of the breast cancer movement/industry, debunking the "comfortable lies" and corporate double-talk that permeate the massive and thus-far-ineffectual campaign against a disease that claims nearly 60,000 lives each year in North America alone.” –Variety 

“Shit-disturbing at its best.” – Now Magazine

DOXA’s presentation of the film will be followed by a panel discussion with experts in the field to address the issues examined in the film.

Guest Panelists

Dr. Mary Bryson is Professor, Faculty of Education (Department of Language and Literacy Education) at the University of British Columbia and the author of multiplepublications concerning the role of networked social media and health literacies in shaping access to knowledge and its mobilization for marginalized groups. Dr. Bryson is the recipient of multiple awards for her interdisciplinary scholarship, including most recently, a Senior Fellowship at Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and in 2000, the Canadian Women in the Spotlight, Wired Women “Pioneer in New Media” award. Mary Bryson's current research "Cancer's Margins and the Choreography of Knowledge" is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and focuses on how queer, lesbian or bisexual women and transgendered people diagnosed and treated for breast or gynecologic cancer, as well as members of their support networks, and their healthcare professionals, locate, access, evaluate, share and utilize cancer health knowledge that is culturally appropriate.

Judy Z. Segal is Professor of English at the University of British Columbia—and author of Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005).  She has written several articles on cancer narratives, including these two: “Breast Cancer Narratives as Public Rhetoric: Genre Itself and the Maintenance of Ignorance” (Linguistics and the Human Sciences 2007) and “The Sexualization of the Medical” (Journal of Sex Research, forthcoming 2012). Her op-ed essay, “Cancer isn’t the best thing that ever happened to me” appeared in the Vancouver Sun in April, 2010, and no one seemed to hate it. Judy served for four years on the President's Advisory Committee of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.