Made in LA tells the powerful story of three female garment workers who organize and fight three years to receive living wages and workers' rights from their factory in Los Angeles. The three women epitomize courage and dignity in an industrial setting that strips these qualities away at every turn: constant adverse treatment from bosses, husbands, as well as, at times, other co-workers. The film takes us through their work day, their personal lives, the rise of the boycott, its seeming decline, and finally its ultimate success. The film is an inspiration to anyone concerned with immigration, workers' rights, political activism, feminism, and old-fashioned perseverance. We are not told the details of the new working contract, but we trust from their celebration at the end of the film that it was a remarkable success.
Nothing should distract from the enormous personal perspective and honor that this film provides for its three protagonists. Yet, during the film's happy ending one cannot help feeling a bit betrayed. The filmmakers have followed Lupe to NY where she will speak the voice of the boycott and garner more support for the movement. While there she visits Ellis Island and finds photos of Jews, Poles,and Italians that worked in the garment district in Manhattan and also protested for better working conditions. Nothing has changed, she says. A relationship has been rightfully sought with workers who lived and died a century ago. But what of those at work today under similar conditions as Lupe? The child in Indonesia sewing Nike or Old Navy? Or the countless dry cleaners in every city, the migrant farm worker, the auto mechanic all working under toxic chemical conditions for 12 hours a day for countless shoe-stringed years? Is it a stretch of the imagination to draw a connection from garment workers' lives to these workers' lives today? Or are we truly stretching the imagination when a film about workers' rights issues itself a happy ending? But I know, I know, "one day at a time." Right jefe?
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1 comment:
I do think that a film like that needs to have its catharsis tempered by a reference to ongoing problems and oppressions.
It's not too far a leap.
Yesterday I discussed Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit with a small group of people. One person was not sure there was a connection between the song (which is about lynching of black men in the South) and the problems of today. Yet even at the time of the song's performance, Billie Holiday saw the connection between lynching and the segregated hospitals that had killed her own father through malign neglect, not to mention the segregation that was putting so much strain on her own life and career.
It's the same step to see the legalized lynching of the death penalty, or the racist neglect of drug abuse and unemployment.
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