I wrote this as an intro to one of my papers but then had to cut it out because of lack of space. This has been something that's been on my heart for years, so I was excited to rant a little in a paper but oh well, I said it in a shorter version. Here it is.

Hollywood spends over one hundred million dollars on the average movie. This is just one movie out of the hundreds that are produced in a year. This stat can be contrasted with the millions of people that die every year from starvation. One person living in North America could survive on food at a cost of under a hundred and fifty dollars a month easily, if need be. The average cost of food for one person, therefore, would be approximately eighteen hundred dollars a year. If you divide the cost of producing one film by this average cost of food for one person in North America, this amount of money would feed over fifty thousand people for a year. This is the cost of food in North America, however. Food costs are higher and lower all over the world. For instance, the charity website for the Foundation For Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa tells the viewer that it costs an average of sixteen dollars a week to feed a family. With fifty two weeks in a year, the yearly cost is just over eight hundred dollars. According to this website, over one hundred and twenty thousand families could be fed in Sub-Saharan Africa from the cost of producing one movie.

Don't get me wrong, we all love movies, but it's so stupid, ridiculous, and actually horrific the way money is thrown away to mundane things to satisfy the middle and upper class while people starve and die. This is the world we live in.