Where Jason Momoa Goes Wrong

A certain segment of the internet went insane April 18, 2019, when manly-man actor Jason Momoa shaved off the beard he’s sported since 2012 to garner attention for the damage to the environment caused by single-use plastic bottles.

The video, posted on his Instagram and at his YouTube channel, shows Momoa and a bearded male friend hiking across rocky desert terrain heavily littered with plastic bottles. It’s sad and dispiriting for the viewer to see firsthand how the people who enjoy being in such a natural place value it so little they despoil it.

Using electric shavers—not the most environmentally friendly choice—Momoa and Friend start in on their facial hair, Momoa talking all the while about the need for change, the environmental damage done by plastics, and the fast recyclability of aluminum. There’s no need for bottled water to come in plastic which gets thrown away or becomes litter, he says. Instead, water could be sold in aluminum containers, which recycle endlessly.

Lo and behold, as Momoa continues to bare more and more of the lower face only the longtime fans recognize, he bares the real reason for this video. He is developing a line of canned waters with Ball Corporation of Colorado. While his motive for the enterprise surely includes what’s good for Mother Earth, it’s about what’s good for Jason Momoa. Ugh. Does a symbolic deed still count if it’s  monetized?

Here’s what the video doesn’t do.

• It doesn’t encourage Momoa’s many fans to deal with their own plastic waste responsibly.
• It doesn’t propose legislation such as New York’s, with plastic bottles, including water, subject to a refundable five-cent deposit—the end result being that people pick up discarded bottles everywhere they’re found. (As a veteran hiker of New York’s parks, trails, and canals, I’ve never seen plastic litter like Momoa’s video shows.)
• It doesn’t suggest that fans of Momoa or his stance on plastic waste clean up plastic and other litter on sight, or that they coordinate to remove plastic waste from public sites.
• It doesn’t imply that Momoa and Friend intend to do anything to clear the site where they recorded this video of the unsightly plastic debris which made it the right place for their purpose.

That’s how I would have liked this video to end, with Momoa and Friend filling up the pink climber’s bag Momoa carries (promoted on his previous Instagram post), and another, and another, maybe with families, kids, and other friends of the planet joining in, until there’s a lot of people, long row of bagged plastics ready to carry out, and a clean landscape the way Nature made it. Pan the scene, cut.

Addendum: And the truth behind the self-serving comes out. Yes, it was indeed time for change, not only to introduce Momoa’s canned waters. Momoa’s next Instagram post shows him with a fellow cast member of the Dune remake which began production that day—a role for which Momoa has to be clean-shaven.