I just finished watching Silkwood, a Mike Nichols film from 1973 about whistle blower Karen Silkwood, played by Meryl Streep. The movie is about three roommates in Oklahoma who all work at a plant that produces uranium rods to be used in power plants. When anyone at the plant comes into contact with the uranium alarms go off and the contaminated or “cooked” person is taken to the showers, stripped down and scrubbed by a team of workers in hazmat suits.
Karen becomes involved in the union and eventually starts digging into company malfeasance that starts making her some enemies around the plant. The bosses don’t like it because it makes the company look like the heartless cancer machine that it is, and her coworkers don’t like it because this heartless cancer machine, as heartless and cancer producing as it is, puts food on the table.
It’s at this point that the champions of the cold, unforgiving laws of free market enterprise would come in and say:
“So, they don’t like cancer, get another job. There are plenty of people out there who would love to have great job security and die at 45 while clutching your hairy, two headed child.”
But it appears that this was pretty much the only game in town. The company moves out or shuts down and you have an entire town that is now impoverished and unemployed (think Roger and Me).
Kind of a false choice between those two options.
Not to mention that moving costs money, and you’re not really guaranteed a great job if you do move somewhere else. The only thing that you have any kind of training in gives you cancer, so you kind of want to get out of that field.
Eventually we’ll live in a world where the remaining multi-multi-super-ultra nationals need to choose between two parts of the world.
In the first part of the world there will be laws protecting workers safety (no more cancer cover-ups), assuring some kind of livable wage (so that people don’t work full time and live in poverty), and a reasonable tax system (so that people have things like education and health care). Of course, higher wages, extra security regulations, and (gasp) taxes on the people who make money in this system will raise operating costs, pushing companies to. . . .
The second part of the world.
In this part of the world wages will be determined by, and only by, the market. As it turns out, the market wage for a man or woman who’s dying of hunger is pennies per hour (dying slowly is preferable than dying that day right? The survival instinct in pretty strong in humans). Safety regulations will also be relaxed, as everyone knows that higher operating costs spell trouble for the bottom line. Every day people will die in mining accidents or from faulty machinery. (Crafty economists will argue that this is a plus. Every time someone dies, a job is opened up for another worker, thereby reducing unemployment). After all, they knew the risks when they took the job, now they’re going to complain that they’re dying and getting cancer? Get real.
In the first part of the world, unemployment will begin to soar (it already is in places like France). Businesses will flee and the free-marketeers will say “your unemployment is so high. Why do you have so much red tape and regulations and taxes?”
Good people that are understandably scared about losing their jobs and not being able to feed their families will heed this warning (go Sarkozy!) and vote in someone who, if they are lucky, will finally get rid of that pesky health care they’ve all had for so long so taxes can go down and those corporations will finally (fingers crossed) come back. All the workers have got to do to convince them to come back is one thing. . .prove they can work for less than pennies a day.
Sounds like a challenge to me.
Ok. So I kind of got off topic. Or at least the title of my post. But I think it kind of proves my point about Silkwood vs. Junebug. In Silkwood, the viewer is presented with a very thought provoking illustration of the stark choices often facing the American workforce. It’s full of real characters who spend time being both a product of their environment (banjo playing, huge confederate flag behind the bed, swearing, pot smoking) and being thoughtful, intelligent, and warm-hearted human beings. This is in direction opposition to. . .
Junebug--
In Junebug, a country boy who has reinvented himself in the city returns to his small Southern hometown with his urbane and sophisticated wife to meet his family. The family turns out to be a bunch of stupid and hostile morons who are incapable of understanding the world from which the two city dwellers come. They express this misunderstanding by being openly hostile to their guests, Southern hospitality being the only Southern stereotype that isn't strictly adhered to.
The beautiful wife has a capacity for forgiveness and understanding that is almost Christ-like. Or perhaps she’s more like Mary Poppins with a group of maladjusted children. She explains “city” concepts like art and beauty to them and the daughter (pregnant and in her twenties. . .those rural Southern folk haven’t even heard of family planning yet) begins aping her every word to try to impress her. She can’t believe that such an interesting and beautiful woman had arrived, seemingly by magic, to shed just a little bit of sunshine on her dull and unbearable life. Ooohhs and aaahhhss ensue as the self-effacing sister tries diligently to ingratiate herself into the good graces of her cultured guest.
Grant Wood would be rolling in his fucking grave if he saw this film. Whereas while watching Silkwood I was asking all sorts of great questions about the future of rural industrial America and thought like I was getting an honest portrait of a working class town, in Junebug I just kept asking myself “Is this how writer Angus MacLachlan views the people of North Carolina?” It was probably one of the more reductive and condescending films I’ve seen in a long time.
The one bright spot was Amy Adams, who played the awestruck and childlike sister and was rightly nominated for an Oscar for her performance. I can’t wait to see her in the future, providing of course that it’s not the same kind of stereotype heavy fare she carried this time.
Until then, there’s still a bunch of Mike Nichols that I haven’t seen yet. . .
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