Right around the start of the Writers Strike earlier this year, I watched Harlan County USA, which was about a coal miners going on strike. It was directed by Barbara Kopple, who also made 1990's American Dream, which is about a meatpacker's strike. I'm watching this on a day where the news about the writers strike being over is still relatively fresh. It feels fitting in that way - bookending and all.
The documentary filmmaking is okay. It's not great. It could have been put together with more purpose. And people on every side of this are very ineloquent and hard to understand - not so much because of their accents, but because they stumble through their thoughts and don't give context. Either have a narrator clarifying things, or ask your interviewees better questions. Get them to give full, comprehensible answers, with context. Things like this feel sloppy, from a documentary filmmaking perspective.
But being about documentary highlighting the struggles of workers, it's obviously, at bare minimum, good. These things were bad in the 1980s, and they're bad now. I'm just jealous these people have unions, because the gig economy has been an insidious way to have fewer unions. Also, one worker here complains about wanting to be left alone in her lowly $32,000 house. Imagine a $32,000 house today, even adjusted for inflation.
Unchecked wealth will be the end of us all. I'm not saying communism or even socialism would solve everything. Even if it did (and I'm not ruling out the chance it could), it would be hasty to jump to an extreme, or even something people perceive as extreme. Limits on obscene wealth and hoarding would be a start. My blood boils at the idea of a company taking an amazing profit (as seen in this documentary) and then not only not giving the worker anything, but giving them a pay cut.
Conservatives, if you conserve things for enough people, you will win elections. But if you get greedy (and powerful people have been greedy), the status quo is going to suck for most. Few people will want to conserve a status quo that's bad for them.
Working people (myself included) don't always want to be millionaires. Most of us just want to feel a lack of monetary pressure and stress every waking minute of the day, even though we know we work hard and we work often. We're often told we work hard and we work often by people who don't match those compliments with money. They might give you a pizza party instead.
You cannot have a certain amount of wealth without also being a bad person. Give enough away, and you may well be good again in my eyes.
The documentary filmmaking is okay. It's not great. It could have been put together with more purpose. And people on every side of this are very ineloquent and hard to understand - not so much because of their accents, but because they stumble through their thoughts and don't give context. Either have a narrator clarifying things, or ask your interviewees better questions. Get them to give full, comprehensible answers, with context. Things like this feel sloppy, from a documentary filmmaking perspective.
But being about documentary highlighting the struggles of workers, it's obviously, at bare minimum, good. These things were bad in the 1980s, and they're bad now. I'm just jealous these people have unions, because the gig economy has been an insidious way to have fewer unions. Also, one worker here complains about wanting to be left alone in her lowly $32,000 house. Imagine a $32,000 house today, even adjusted for inflation.
Unchecked wealth will be the end of us all. I'm not saying communism or even socialism would solve everything. Even if it did (and I'm not ruling out the chance it could), it would be hasty to jump to an extreme, or even something people perceive as extreme. Limits on obscene wealth and hoarding would be a start. My blood boils at the idea of a company taking an amazing profit (as seen in this documentary) and then not only not giving the worker anything, but giving them a pay cut.
Conservatives, if you conserve things for enough people, you will win elections. But if you get greedy (and powerful people have been greedy), the status quo is going to suck for most. Few people will want to conserve a status quo that's bad for them.
Working people (myself included) don't always want to be millionaires. Most of us just want to feel a lack of monetary pressure and stress every waking minute of the day, even though we know we work hard and we work often. We're often told we work hard and we work often by people who don't match those compliments with money. They might give you a pizza party instead.
You cannot have a certain amount of wealth without also being a bad person. Give enough away, and you may well be good again in my eyes.