The Dark Side of Chocolate: A Documentary Review
Maybe you unwind with a few squares at the end of a long week, or maybe you sip on a hot cup after a day in the snow. However you enjoy it, chocolate is an important part of Western culture. We use it to show affection to our loved ones, celebrate special occasions and make everyday life a bit more indulgent. When it’s melting on our tongues, we don’t tend to consider how our chocolate got from cacao tree to candy bar, but the truth is less sweet than we’d like to imagine.
In their 2010 documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, Miki Mistrati and U. Roberto Romano take us behind the scenes of the chocolate industry. Armed with a hidden camera, the journalists investigate child labor in the Ivory Coast, the West African country which, along with Ghana, produces 60% of the world’s cocoa. Mistrati and Romano uncover a world of unjust labor practices as they explore some of the cacao farms supplying major global chocolate producers.
Despite international labor laws prohibiting the practice, the chocolate industry is rife with child labor. Through conversations with children formerly enslaved on cocoa plantations, Mistrati and Romano reveal that while some are outright kidnapped, many child workers (usually aged 10-15) go with traffickers to the Ivory Coast believing promises of paying jobs and hopeful opportunities. Once they realize they’ve been lied to, it’s too late. They’re trapped working long days with dangerous tools and no compensation, far from their families and surrounded by adults who beat them if they work too slowly or try to flee.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the documentary is the lack of concern from both corporations and African governments. The Dark Side of Chocolate reveals that despite the eight biggest companies’ 2001 agreement to fight child labor and slavery in cocoa production, the chocolate industry is still in denial of its whopping labor exploitation issue. Stopping slavery would be a messy, unprofitable undertaking, so nobody’s stepping up to try and work it out. Nine years after the film’s release, the industry’s not looking much better.
The Dark Side of Chocolate is an informative, bold and heartbreaking look at what lies behind the chocolate sweets we know and love. It also presents a personal challenge. Because when we buy chocolate from a company like Godiva, Nestlé or Hershey, we’re indirectly contributing to an exploitative system.
So what can we do?
The average person might not have hands in the workings of the chocolate industry, but we can still oppose child labor. We can buy from ethical chocolate companies that pay and treat their workers well instead of using child workers. That way, we’re refusing to put money towards brands that aren’t sufficiently protecting human rights. We can get involved in pressuring the chocolate industry to change by petitioning and raising awareness. But first, we can educate ourselves using helpful resources like the Global Slavery Index, the U.S. Department of Labor and this documentary. Because understanding the issue is key to effective advocacy.
The Dark Side of Chocolate explains the problem in a way that’s as accessible as it is devastating. But it doesn’t leave the viewer defeated. Amidst the bleakness of millions of stolen childhoods, Mistrati and Romano introduce a ray of hope: That there are people out there fighting to expose the truth, that consumers are starting to catch on and demand change, that we can make a difference by raising our voices and refusing to contribute to the injustice.
To learn more of the truth about chocolate, you can watch the film on YouTube. It might be hard to watch for chocolate lovers, but it’s important.
About the Author
Shannon Gage is a lover of board games, traveling and all things Enneagram. When she's not studying for her senior-year strategic communication classes at Liberty University, you can find her brushing up on her Spanish or writing moody poetry that no one will ever see. She dreams of someday using her skills full-time in the nonprofit world and publishing her fantasy/sci-fi novel.