Progressive Wednesday

The TGIF Movie Review: Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

Editor’s Note: To read even more about Wal-Mart and what you can do about this giant monster unregulated capitalism has created, check out our recent Wednesday on ways to downsize Wal-Mart. Just click this sentence to read a five-part to-do list you can act on right from your computer.

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Wal-Mart destroys. That’s the message at the heart of the documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. It’s rather simple. Wal-Mart destroys. That’s what it’s designed to do, and boy, it does it well. Wal-Mart is our Golem. Wal-Mart is the Godzilla of our market-driven creation, eating Tokyo after Tokyo after Tokyo. Only Wal-Mart ain’t no myth, and it ain’t no movie.

But this flick about Wal-Mart makes a new and well-defended argument against the behemoth. What is this larger claim? Wal-Mart is a form of what could be described as, in the film’s words, contemporary “plantation capitalism.” How so? Wal-Mart is all about profit at the expense of all parts of every kind of individual—shoppers, employees, widget-makers alike. Profit at the expense of small, long-lasting, family businesses. Profit at the expense of safety from crime (trust me: it’s in the movie, and it’s peel-your-eyelids-back messed up). Profit at the expense of the environment. Profit at the expense of drinking water. Profit at the expense of public education. For crying out loud, profit at the expense of fire departments. Profit at the expense of health and healthcare. Profit at the expense of various cultures. Profit at the expense of workers’ rights. Profit at the expense of the world economy. Profit at the expense of public funds.

Using data, shocking firsthand accounts by current and former employees, news reports, and absolutely heartbreaking interviews with private business owners, this film deftly argues that everything is expendable to Wal-Mart except for the exchange of money from your wallet to their registers, and it will do just about anything to make that exchange keep happening. Everything else, in the minds of everyone from the lower management (who are taught to spy on and scare potential union leaders, and who are taught to fudge hours so that people who’ve earned overtime don’t receive overtime) to the board members, everything else can, almost literally, go to hell.

At this point the movie takes a turn, and it shows how the people of Inglewood, California, when told by Wal-Mart that they could go to hell said, “Wait. No. You go to hell.” And then a list of city after city scrolls over the screen, each one a place that told Wal-Mart to do the same and won.

This is a movie about activism. This is a movie with a ray of hope. Since many local governments kowtow to Wal-Mart, we can’t trust elected officials to fight for us. We have to do it ourselves. We have almost no other choice. But that choice? It is simple and it is ours: we can choose to shop at Wal-Mart or we can choose not to shop at Wal-Mart. If we can start hacking away at the only thing that Wal-Mart cares about, then we can win. Only then. But then.

We can choose to put a scary parable to rest. We can choose to click off the monster picture before it ends badly for all the characters. Please take a look and choose for yourself:

We’re back. (Really?) Really.

We’re back.

For real, yo. We ain’t, and I repeat, ain’t playin’. Tell your friends, your families, your friends’ families, your enemies’ friends, the friends of your friends who might have enemies within their own families, your hairdresser, your newspaper deliverer, your imaginary pal “Yodel” the dancing penguin, and your future funeral director (is that too morid? ah, screw it, this is the new Progressive Wednesday, and we’ve got a bit more attitude).

So, we’re going to have a slightly different tone, focus, format, photos, group of staffers, and lots of et cetera. Trust us. So to show you we really mean it (we’re talkin’ really, really, really mean it), here’s a taste of our new tune.

Enjoy…

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Music? Why not? It is Monday.

Since it’s just a plain ole Monday Labor Day, which, of course, falls on a Monday, it seems like a little music is in order. I’ve got a forum, so I might as well use it to share some of the best out there to the brightest reading this (yes, yes, I’m a sycophant).

First up, the Foo Fighters performing “This is a Call,” the most bizarrely optimistic and encouraging all-out, break-your-sticks and smash-your-guitars rock song I’ve ever heard. Plus this live versions ends with a pretty sweet mini-solo by Taylor Hawkins–he’s the one holding court behind the kit.

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So here we’ve got the Stereophonics kicking the hell out of “Dakota,” a punk/emo number that lifts my spirits like church lifts others. (I have no idea why it’s called “Dakota” since this band is from Wales, but I don’t really care.)

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And I don’t know why, but for me, rock comes in threes, so here’s the final one in this three-chord triptych: Anathallo’s “A Great Wind More Ash.” This band is like The New Pornographers meets a marching band. The recording could be better, so if you’d like to hear the studio version, just go to their MySpace page by clicking here.

The TGIF Movie Review: Factory Girl

I can’t get enough of Andy Warhol. I’ve seen every fictional film portraying him–I Shot Andy Warhol, Basquiat, The Doors, and 54. I’ve been to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. A documentary of his life is tops on my Blockbuster Total Access queue.

So why am I so obsessed? I’m not sure really, and I’d rather not waste my time at the therapist trying to figure it out fully. Let’s just say I love his art’s humor and horror, it’s ability to critique and praise our cookie-cutter culture at the same time. He broke rules. He reinvented. He inspired. He destroyed. He road coattails. He devoted himself to Christianity. He couldn’t care less.

So my fascination with Warhol, and not Edie Sedgwick, is what drew me to Factory Girl, a fictionalization of Sedgwick’s life during the 60s and the boom and bust of her relationship with Warhol. It’s incredibly important when watching Factory Girl — despite the film’s effort to do otherwise — to remember that this ain’t a documentary. The film includes blatant factual falsehoods, it conglomerates real people into single characters, it plays with time, and it distorts the truth (whatever “truth” means). But this is a fine film if you keep in mind that all of the characters are imaginary.

Factory Girl shows us the life of an heiress, Edie Sedgwick, played with brutal honesty and bravery by Siena Miller, falling in love with fame and flamboyance, giving up on a dream of being an artist for the flimsy accomplishment of celebrity for the sake of celebrity. And we also see the life of Andy Warhol, played by a well-disguised Guy Pearce, a self-obsessed artist who manipulates people and the media for his own importance. And we see their relationship burgeoning out of an admiration of the other’s power over people.

The character of Sedgwick suffered abuse from her father, grew up in an institution, and dropped out of college to pursue art. She ends up drugged and dead at 28. This film takes us on a roller-coaster journey of her “life,” that is if we were made to take ecstasy and morphine before getting on the ride. The cinematography continually befits and benefits the narrative, and the music is like the iTunes playlist I wish I owned. For art lovers, for film lovers, for acting lovers, this is a must-see movie.

Enjoy for yourself:

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(To learn more about the real Edie Sedgwick, just click here.)

Music ’cause I’m 31.

For some reason today feels like an art day, so below you’ll find trois videos/tunes that I can’t get, thankfully, out of my damned skull (a skull, I might add, that turns 31 today).

This first one I’m sending out to my sis, ’cause I know she digs on it and has a killer memory that’s directly tied to it. Below you’ll find The Killers and their song “All These Things That I’ve Done.” And I love it because most any rock tune that features a gospel choir is a hit in my book (see also “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” on U2′s Rattle and Hum).

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When you live in Ohio for 9 years, you have to work at it not to fall, maybe not into love, but at least into “like” with the Dayton, Ohio band, Guided By Voices. The song? It’s called “Glad Girls.” But please, do yourself a favor and don’t watch the video — it’s horrendous. (Of course, I realize that since I said not to watch it that you’ll probably watch it.) If you can manage it, just listen, baby, just listen.

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And finally, what’s a list of tunes I dig without a little touch of Wilco. And so here they are kicking one of the best pure rock tunes of the last dozen years: “I Got You (at the End of the Century).”

This Wednesday: Feminists, We’re Calling You

Problem:

I'm a fan of women. I gestated in a pretty damned nice one. I've got a kick-butt-and-take-names one for a sibling. I'm attracted to some of them. Some of them are attracted, understandably of course, to me.

But none of that’s a problem. Here's the problem: women are still treated as lesser citizens in our country. Need proof? Then, as always, it’s some simple proof you get. We think three facts should do the trick.

1. According to statistics compiled by RAINN, “one in six American women are victims of sexual assault.”
2. Of the 535 members in the 109th Congress, only 82 of them are women. What makes this all the worse? As of November 1, 2006, there are 152 million women in American; there are 148 million men.
   
3. This one comes to us courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau: in 2004, “the ratio of female-to-male earnings for full-time, year-round workers was 77 cents on the dollar.”

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Make Progress:

If it’s not crystal clear, we can’t tackle this issue on just one Wednesday. What you’ll find below, well, let’s call it “a good start,” let’s call it “the least we can do,” let’s call it “what’s just, and right, and fair, damn it.”

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The TGIF Movie Review: The Queen

The Queen loosely tells the story of the death of Princess Diana, the reaction of Queen Elizabeth and the royal family, and the ways in which newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair at first uses the media to help his popularity, and then to help the crown. There you go. That’s the Cliffs Notes version of the plot. And like Cliffs Notes, the plot here is secondary to the ways this film functions as a piece of art.

First, I can’t write a review of this movie without mentioning the complete shape-shifting done by Helen Mirren as the Queen. While her role might not be flashy and splashy like previous Oscar winners, but she was spot-on in terms of tone, and she never, as they say, “broke character.” She pulled off stoicism, quiet bitterness, and brief moments of heartache with a subtly rarely seen. In an odd way, she reminded me of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. I’m not sure how else to describe her masterful turn other than to say it was delicately human, as close to nonfiction as a fiction can be. If nothing else, I’d recommend this movie just to see what she manages to pull off in 90 minutes. It’s reminds me of the realism paintings from the 18th century.

But for me, this movie was really about the absolute ridiculousness of royalty, the bizarrely ominous power of the Queen, and the way her family has a vice-grip on her country. The film begs the question: why on earth should one person bow to another? There is no answer other than one should never bow to another person. While it might seem like a necessary bit of courtesy and protocol, it’s actually an exercise in dehumanizing absurdity. We’re left thinking — because it’s probably true — that the royal family of England lives in a fantasy land of pomp, rules, and a self-imposed sequestering.

And for me, this movie was really about the rise and fall of Tony Blair. When the film opens, he’s just been elected as a maverick, a modernist and reformer, ready to turn England into a more progressive country. After Diana’s death, he becomes even more popular. All this seems to link to his current fall (which is absent from the film). These days, as his tenure comes to a close, he is leaving his post in disgrace, having embroiled his country in a war of choice, in a war of the kind of imperialism his initial election seemed to reject.

If you’re a fan of pitch-perfect acting, of smart editing done for the sake of delicate tension, of politics and cultural criticism, then this is a must see.

See for yourself…