Director: Sean Alexander Carney
Running time: 9mins
Focused on raising awareness for a heavily disputed medical condition, Sean Alexander Carney’s animated film gets itself into a number of difficulties. The one I will focus on, as a film review platform, is that it professes to be a documentary. On a number of fronts, it falls short of that assessment.
Superficially, it is unclear what exactly Nearfield is, or why we are being invited to remember it, and that immediately suggests this is made to preach to the converted, rather than convince people from beyond a certain bubble. At the same time, some viewers would likely take issue with the idea an entirely animated film – in which we do not really meet the main subject, or witness her daily struggles – is a problem for the contentious issues the film contends with. Generally, I would argue that art can be used in documentary form – the drawings of Joe Sacco should be considered a high-watermark of modern war correspondence – but in this case, I feel they may have a point.
There is a real barrier between us and the person professing to be telling us about their life – that gets in the way of us taking anything they have to say as genuine. The occasionally jarring sound-effects (a sudden ambulance siren sounding two, disconnected bleeps, before silence resumes; the oddly timed buzzing of a bee that turns up during the credits for no discernible reason) continue to bring us out of whatever world is being created – even when the wooden animation (which has plainly been automated, to lip-sync badly to the subject’s testimony, but is often misaligned, and while the model’s head swivels wildly about the frame) doesn’t. And the deadpan delivery of a script, where the subject retreads lines where a second take was needed remind us that this is not an off-the-cuff set of views, but a tightly curated narrative.
The condition in question is electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). Individuals claiming to suffer from this disorder say they have particular sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, and attribute a number of adverse symptoms to that matter – sometimes including claims that the increasing pervasion of mobile internet into modern life is inflaming their condition unbearably. The issue is that, despite studies running since the early 2000s, attempts to find conclusive evidence of the condition have yielded no scientific basis for a recognised medical diagnosis to be formed.
The World Health Organisation has weighed in on this some 20 years ago. Examining research into the symptoms, the WHO found concluded as early as 2005 that “the majority of studies indicate that EHS individuals cannot detect EMF exposure any more accurately than non-EHS individuals. Well controlled and conducted double-blind studies have shown that symptoms were not correlated with EMF exposure.”
It added, “It has been suggested that symptoms experienced by some EHS individuals might arise from environmental factors unrelated to EMF. Examples may include “flicker” from fluorescent lights, glare and other visual problems with VDUs, and poor ergonomic design of computer workstations. Other factors that may play a role include poor indoor air quality or stress in the workplace or living environment.
There are also some indications that these symptoms may be due to pre-existing psychiatric conditions as well as stress reactions as a result of worrying about EMF health effects, rather than the EMF exposure itself.”
And therein lies the rub.
We do live in a world where people are marginalised when they have health conditions that are either difficult and expensive to diagnose, or inconvenience business and the state in some way. The collective abandonment of those suffering from long-Covid is one illustration of this, but sufferers of ME and MS knew this all too well before the pandemic.
At the same time, even if there is no physical issue for a patient, there are a great many reasons why there might be a mental root to their condition. None of these make a person ‘crazy’, or should be used as a means to dismiss their symptoms. In an age of hyper-capitalism, earning a living and keeping a roof over your head are no longer considered rights, while the safety nets previous generations took for granted have been dismantled wholesale. War criminals sit at every level of state apparatus while insisting the nightmarish, murderous world you witnessed them create simply does not exist.
Something is wrong. But fixating on debunked theories like EHS undermine these issues. And while I do not mean that the filmmakers are themselves conspiracists, their film does fall into the same trap as a lot of conspiratorial thinking. Often pushed by individuals with cynical, material interests, rather than a genuine hope of change that improves society as a whole, this sees associated theories focus on matters that either have nothing to do with a particular problem, or circumvent the base factors involved to deliver a series of ‘solutions’ which provide certain symptoms with a treatment (at best, or a placebo at worst) – without having to change an overall system that a theory’s purveyors ultimately benefit from.
The source narrating this short film claims she experienced an improvement in her condition once she installed ‘shielding technology’ for her entire house. While I cannot state this with certainty, I would find it highly probable this material was not supplied free of charge to her, and certainly would not have been supplied free of charge to others. And while no company is explicitly recommended to supply these services, EHS theories tend to fare poorly when such recommendations are made – with government agencies having previously enforced false advertising claims against companies selling devices to shield against EM radiation.
For example, in 2014, the UK’s Advertising Standards Association upheld a complaint against an organisation that was advertising technology to measure EM radiation, noting a lack of conclusive evidence that non-ionising radiation that humans were exposed to on a daily basis was harmful to them meant its claims were “misleading” – and that the ad could “discourage an individual from seeking treatment for conditions for which medical supervision should be sought.”
This is not to say that governments or their agencies are free from bias – and of course, it is not to say that people who believe they are suffering from EHS should have their pain discounted. But it is to say, that a film professing to be a ‘documentary’ looking to champion those vulnerable people, owes it to them to be more rigorous in exploring what other causes for their condition exists – especially in a society where there are plentiful possible causes for their symptoms that do not involve helping a predatory capitalists hawk them useless placebo ‘technology’.
To give Remembering Nearfield its dues, it does not itself recommend this technology in the home space as part of its solutions segment. Instead, it argues that “more white zones, areas without any cell service, are needed as well as more low-EMF work places”. And it suggests guidelines “tackling BOTH biological AND thermal impacts of EMFs”. That might not be predating on one or two vulnerable people – but there are still questions to ask. ‘Who will the government be paying to create these ‘White Zones’?’ for example, seems to be the most important – alongside ‘Would those same firms happen to have an interest in legally mandating employers to buy their alleged technology?’
Those are questions which, even if they go unanswered, beg to at least be asked in any film calling itself a documentary.
There would be some readers and critics who would argue that I should hold this film to the same standard as pseudo-science films we have covered previously. That is, to give it an ‘Unrated’. There might be merits to that argument – but I am not sure it would help to treat this filmmaker as malicious, rather than misguided. As noted, there are things wrong in society at a systemic level – capitalism is finding new and horrific ways to grind more from us every day, while human life is treated as an increasingly expendable part of that quest for profits. In that state, large numbers of people are being physically and mentally battered from all sides – and that is something that we need to address, and consider the ways to change it for the better. Remembering Nearfield finds itself perilously close to touching on that, before tumbling down an absolutely unnecessary rabbit hole – but I believe there is still potential here for the filmmakers to learn from this, and do better in future.
