Let's Hear It For The (Robot) Girl!

If I don't keep up the posting pace, I'll lose the drive to keep up the blog. And neither of us want that - how else will I dazzle you with my witty dialogue? How else will I land a lucrative writer/showrunner spot on a remake of Small Wonder? (V.I.C.I. was hot.)

You know, it's not a bad idea. I think it could balance the Sarah Connor Chronicles with something more pure, more wholesome, FAR less expensive and more likely to be picked up by all sorts of networks, spun out into movie, game and merchandise tie-ins, and continue on into syndication for generations to come!

Sorry - got a little excited there. But anyway - call me. My people and your people can do lunch, as long as my people get to take home the leftovers.

Peace.

This one I wrote after watching a documentary film that Vue Weekly wanted reviewed for the Anarchist Book Fair. I enjoyed the documentary and connected with the director. He called me up to say that he loved the story - it's still on the movie's website and I've seen it discussed on a couple of discussion boards. I rock.

Beads of sweatshops
By CHRISTOPHER THRALL

A matronly woman dressed like a Vegas showgirl leers suggestively into the camera. Years of celebration are deeply etched into the painted features beneath her dyed red hair. “You’ll sell your soul at Mardi Gras for a strand of beads,” she laughs, fingering the plastic finery draped around her neck. This is the final scene of David Redmon’s documentary Mardi Gras: Made in China, screening at the Anarchist Book Fair this Friday (March 25), and its impact is staggering.

This exquisite final line is the culmination of an exposé of the migrant Chinese labourers who assemble the trinkets for sale at New Orleans’ annual bacchanal. Mostly women under 20 who earn up to $1.20 (U.S.) a day, the workers’ stories contrast sharply with those of the factory owner who makes $2 million per year, the importer who makes up to $25 million per year and the young Americans who couldn’t care less where their celebration’s accessories come from. Mardi Gras: Made in China forces viewers to reconsider a renegade capitalist system that seeks the lowest price regardless of human cost.

The result of five years’ work for David Redmon, the documentary, which was an official selection at this year’s Sundance Festival, evolved from subjects he explored in his Masters and Ph.D. dissertations. Redmon bought his first video camera four weeks before his first visit to the Tai Kuen Bead Factory in Fuzhou, China; he had no idea what to expect when he arrived. Through his interviews, Redmon realized that he had touched upon a story that needed telling, so he returned a few months after being kicked out of the country for filming without a license. His second visit expanded on the personal stories of the factory workers and included a labourer’s visit home for the Chinese New Year celebration, as well as frank discussions with the factory owner, Roger Wong.

“That Roger was quite a character,” says Redmon, his youthful voice echoing with laughter over the phone. “I think he assumed I was there to make a promotional video about his factory that I would show to American businesses.” The preconception is a relief: otherwise, Wong’s gleeful focus on strict discipline, drastic punishment and fines for the slightest infraction paint him as an absurd ogre. Wong is proud of his working conditions and high production targets, even boasting that he uses 95 per cent female labour because they are easier to control. In fact, Wong is so positive and affable that the viewer ends up wondering if the factory could possibly be as bad as the workers claim. And they have a lot to claim.

Running 24 hours a day, many of the machines lack even the simplest safety features. Shifts are a minimum of 12 hours (and usually average 15 or 16). The factory produces nearly 8,000 pounds of beads every day, and if a worker doesn’t meet her quota, her pay is cut. She is fined for talking during work hours and docked a month’s pay for having a male visitor in the 20-by-24-foot dorm room she shares with nine other women. Workers can only leave the barbed-wire-enclosed compound on Sundays, and only if they are not required to work.

Redmon says that it took a while to get the workers to open up to him. “I could only interview people on their days off,” he reveals, “and we would have to go to an isolated area of the compound.” Slowly, after days of talking through interpreters, the women started to reveal the real conditions at the factory. Each one extracted a promise from Redmon, however: “They were terrified. They said that Roger [Wong] had warned them I was coming and not to say anything bad. Each one begged me not to show the footage to Roger, not to show anyone until after they had left the factory.”

During the interviews, Redmon talks to a dispirited 18-year-old woman with no plans for her future besides helping her younger brother go to school; a 14-year-old girl who never meets her quota is paid less than $1 a day to paint ceramic Mardi Gras masks that sell for up to $20 each on the streets of New Orleans. Somewhat unexpectedly, the documentary shows the workers coping. Dancing together, playing cards and learning English in the few hours they have to themselves, the workers demonstrate a stunning ability to adjust to conditions that were eliminated from Western society so long ago. While yearning for their families, the girls remember home life as boring and oppressive. At the factory, they are able to relieve their parents of a financial burden and even send money home while gaining experiences and freedom they never would have enjoyed otherwise.

The film highlights a jagged contrast between the Chinese factory workers and the partiers at Mardi Gras. The products of their bone-wearying labour are bought 12 strands for a dollar or caught from one of the passing floats, then bartered for flashes of tit-flesh or deep kisses from inebriated women. The tradition started in 1978, and on the streets of New Orleans, there are an estimated 1,000 exposures every three minutes. “It makes me horny,” claims one reveler. Her friend agrees: “Yeah—all that attention is on you!”

The funniest part of the documentary, though the comedy remains black, comes when the factory workers are shown pictures of street scenes from Mardi Gras. “You mean people expose themselves for the beads we make?” one girl asks, almost collapsing with laughter. “They must love them very much.” Another factory worker is more pensive. “On us these beads are very ugly,” she whispers, “but on these Americans, they look very beautiful.” The difference is seen as cultural: Chinese girls would be ashamed to show their bodies in such a way, especially in exchange for such cheap plastic beads.

Back on the streets of New Orleans, the last thing anybody wants to hear about is the medieval conditions of the beads’ origins. During the carnival, Redmon attracted attention by projecting interviews with the workers onto the walls of the French Quarter. “Don’t bring my conscience into this!” pleaded a partier from New York as he walked away to barter his beads. “Ten cents an hour, for them, is a lot of money,” said one MBA grad from the University of Florida, alleviating his guilt. (The mean income in Fuzhou actually falls around 60 cents an hour for an eight-hour day.) The brief twinges of conscience Redmon presents fade quickly, however, and not a single interviewee gave up their beads.

According to Redmon, the original intent for the film was to convey globalization from the perspective of the invisible workers. “At the time I began the project, documentaries on globalization only showed talking heads who said how good it was,” Redmon explains. “I wanted to show and tell the other story.” He feels that he has met this goal, but the results have far surpassed anything he had ever dreamed.

“About two years ago,” Redmon remembers, “I was working, paying for everything, showing rough cuts of the film to anybody who would watch. Anything I made went into translating more of the interviews. I sold a copy for $20 to a couple who couldn’t make it to that night’s screening. They watched it, came to the screening anyway, and three days later sent me $5,000 to finish the project!” Redmon sent his tape to the Sundance Festival two months later, never expecting his would be one of the 16 documentaries selected from the United States. Since then, he has been working on putting together a theatrical release of the film while responding to the unprecedented attention his directorial debut is receiving.

Redmon is enthusiastic about his unexpected success and is eager to discuss his next project. “I’m looking at the globalized concept of intimacy as it’s portrayed in the Victoria’s Secret marketing machine,” he explains. “Behind that, I’m exploring intimacy from the perspective of the Mexican labourers who actually sew the lingerie.” Redmon’s camera will continue to seek those who sell their souls for a strand of beads or a scrap of silk, the global capitalists who collect the fees and the invisible workers who pay the price.