Movies have never really been simply escapist entertainment, and in this election year summer of electoral discontent, no less an authority than New York Times chief critic A.O. Scott recently identified "the problems of management and morale in the modern office" as the "grand, overarching themes" of this year’s blockbuster movies.
In "Even Superheroes Punch the Clock," Scott writes that "This summer, your local multiplex is home to an extended business seminar. There are sessions on crisis-management and how to deal with office romances in 'Star Trek Beyond'; on office rivalries and mission-statement drafting in 'Captain America: Civil War'; on start-ups in 'Ghostbusters' and I.T. disasters in 'Jason Bourne'. Every action movie," says Scott, "is a workplace sitcom in disguise." While Scott is obviously having some fun, his analysis is serious and well-grounded. For example, he argues persuasively that "'Jason Bourne'...is one of the few recent blockbusters that examines the underside of modern working life, since it adopts the point of view of the disaffected worker trapped in a nightmarish bureaucratic maze. All of Bourne’s enemies, as well as his potential allies, are colleagues of one kind or another, and his very existence is a horrifying reductio ad absurdum of life on the corporate treadmill." Cool, I think we just got a head start on next year’s DC Labor Film Festival. For the latest local labor calendar listings, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1909, the first edition of IWW Little Red Song Book was published. And in 1983, Phelps-Dodge copper miners in Morenci and Clifton, Arizona were confronted by tanks, helicopters, state troopers and National Guardsmen brought in to walk strikebreakers through picket lines in what was to become a failed 3-year fight by the Steelworkers and other unions. Today’s labor quote is by Joe Hill, from "Workers of the World, Awaken!" a song in the IWW's Little Red Song Book: Workers of the world, awaken! Rise in all your splendid might; Take the wealth that you are making, It belongs to you by right. No one will for bread be crying, We'll have freedom, love and health. When the grand red flag is flying In the Workers' Commonwealth.
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