RMovies reviewed here... Roger & MeReviewed By J. Mark Wherele, Central Missouri State University Roger & Me is a 60 Minutes format film which documents the devastation of Flint, Michigan resulting from plant closings and massive layoffs at General Motors during the 1980's. The film hilariously captures the unrelenting three year effort of Michael Moore, (writer, producer, director, and narrator) to persuade GM Chairman, Roger Smith, to spend one day meeting laid off auto workers in Flint, the birthplace of General Motors. Moore was angry that GM, the richest company in the world, had closed 11 North American plants and had released 30,000 employees. Moore contends that Smith's plan was basically to "reopen the plants in Mexico where the rate of pay is 70 cents per hour, use the profits generated to take over other companies, tell the union you're broke, get concessions, then open more new foreign plants. In the film we see the personal toll that unemployment takes--a women selling rabbits for pets or meat, a young man selling blood, and families being evicted from their homes. We see Flint develop the highest rate of violent crime in the nation and become the unemployment capital of the country, where 50 percent of its citizens receive federal assistance. Money magazine picks Flint as the worst place in America, and the local health department estimates that rats outnumber humans by 50,000. Almost inconceivably, tourism is touted as a panacea for Flint's economic problems. Blindly optimistic civic leaders ultimately spent millions of dollars to build a luxury hotel, a four square block marketplace, and Auto World, a GM sponsored indoor theme park in which a puppet auto worker sang "Me and My Buddy" to the robot that was replacing him. The hotel went bankrupt, the Walter Street Pavilion shops closed, and Auto World failed. "People don't want to witness human tragedy while they're on vacation," Moore muses. The major strengths of the film are Moore's dry wit as narrator and the effective use of film irony. For example, as we listen to Roger Smith's Christmas Eve message to GM employees, in which he speaks of the dignity and worth of the individual and of Christmas as a giving and charitable time, we watch the eviction of a women, her children, and their Christmas tree from her home. The film, Moore argues, is not a documentary, but rather a "dark comedy, social satire, 'mockumentary'" (Corliss 1990,p. 58). Its purpose was to entertain and to explain blue-collar unemployment. It was met with both critical acclaim and with moral outrage. Insdorf(1989, p.14) found it "all-too-revealing of corporate heartlessness," while Budd (1990,p. A11) described it as just another "sophistic blitzkrieg on the integrity of business." Roger & Me is highly recommended for use in both introductory level sociology courses and upper division courses such as Social Inequality, Industrial Sociology, or Sociology of Organizations. The movie parodies the "blame the victim mentality" that often goes hand in hand with simplistic solutions to complex problems. It raises the issue of corporate ethics and illiterates the concepts of structural poverty, alienated labor, the role of ideology and propaganda, social inequality, and stratification. It also demonstrates how deindustrialization has dramatically changed the nature of American enterprise as manufacturing jobs have shifted to smaller more efficient scales of operation. The movie is guaranteed to spark controversy and discussion although it won't be shown in Flint. All the movie houses are closed. Teaching Sociology, vol. 19, #Z, April 1991 REFERENCES Back to top. Rush HourReviewed By Jennifer Garten, Pepperdine University When choosing a film to analyze for this paper, my first instinct was to choose one of the intense dramas we watched like The Insider or All The Pretty Horses. For whatever reasons, these types of films seem to be more intellectual to me and therefore worthy of analysis, but this is not always the case. It is true that a drama might have more depth and layers to it, fitting for an analysis, but practically any film, even a comedy can lend to a social science perspective. Every film has a message. Therefore, I decided on Rush Hour. This popular comedy does not on the surface seem to hold much intellectual quality, but it offers many options for a social science analysis.Rush Hour is a perfect example of a "buddy" film; two very different law enforcers team up to foil the bad guys through a series of elaborate fight sequences and in the end the two unlikely friends are planning for their next adventure together. The male dominated leads add fuel to the flame that "buddy" films are anti-feminist. From one viewpoint, I understand why some people feel this way, after all, it is two men that solve the crime and win the day, but this is only a superficial appearance. Rush Hour is not a film that can fit in the anti-feminist fight. One reason for this is due to the portrayal of the women in the film. While the two men are the main leads and are deemed the heroes of the movie, there is a strong supporting cast of women. One such character is the little girl whose kidnapping is the plot of the movie. We do not get to see this little girl very often, but in each of her scenes, she shows off her fighting skills. I cannot count the number of movies I have seen where some ditzy girl, wearing high heels and being chased by the villain, falls and refuses to defend herself. This is not the case in Rush Hour. The school age girl fights her kidnappers courageously and manages to get in a few good hits before being subdued. The second strong woman in Rush Hour is the bomb squad cop. At the beginning of the film, we see her struggle a bit with her job, but this is really due to the disturbance that her fellow male cop causes. In the end, it is her intelligence and expertise that help to save the day. Another way to extinguish the anti-feminist fervor is through the analysis our textbook takes. Micheline Klagsburn Frank says that the relationship between "buddies" is a "profoundly feminist statement." The men need each other, depend on each other, even get emotional with each other and according to Frank, "the notion that we are all 'brothers,' that our cultural glorification of individualism and independence may not always be desirable, is fundamentally a revalorization of the feminine mode." This point is clearly seen in Rush Hour. The two men do not want to initially work together. They are both very "macho" and feel that they can solve the case on their own without any help from anybody. Yet, it is only through their collaboration that the bad guys are stopped and the kidnapped girl is released. This teamwork is the "feminine mode" that Frank is referring to. Rush Hour can be examined further than its "buddy" film status and its portrayal of women. Another question to ask when analyzing a film's social science perspective is, "will the film tend to influence me to be politically apathetic?" For Rush Hour, the answer to this question is "maybe." The girl is kidnapped and the father calls the FBI. These government officials are supposed to be one of the best law enforcement agencies in the world, but because of their arrogance and refusal to accept help from outside sources, they continually underestimate the kidnappers and ultimately prove ineffectual in rescuing the girl. The movie seems to tell the viewer not to trust the government and that only vigilantly action will solve the problem. A flaw in this analysis is that the two heroes of the movie are still part of the law enforcement community and are therefore part of the "government." It is interesting, though, that the film tries to portray the heroes as rebels against the system yet they are the ones who solve the case. Another interesting analysis of Rush Hour is the question of stereotyping, bias, prejudice, and racism. While I did not feel the film was racist, it was filled with major stereotyping. I found the extent of stereotyping to be somewhat disturbing. The character portrayed by Chris Tucker is the black man who is the underdog in his squadron. He wears flashy clothes, drives fast cars, listens to hip hop type music, and has family members who are in the drug business. The character portrayed by Jackie Chan is the Asian kung fu fighter, expected not to know English, and uses kicking and karate chops instead of a gun. The movie stresses the differences between the two characters. They are not supposed to get along let alone become friends. The characterization adds to the comedic element of the film, but what does it say about society that in order to make a film humorous, blatant stereotyping is needed. We are not laughing at jokes being made, but about a race and its customs. By perpetuating these types of stereotyping, filmmakers are encouraging racist habits and ethnocentrism. Rush Hour is an entertaining movie that made me laugh, but it also is a reflective view of society from its portrayal of strong female characters to its use of stereotyping. Despite its lighter subject matter and comedic efforts, the film provided many areas for analysis. The three touched upon in this paper, buddy films and portrayal of women, political apathy, and stereotyping, are only a few sections. More questions to ask of this film would be about the on screen violence and the influence of the heroes on the moviegoer. Whatever questions you ask about the movie only go to adding another layer to the way the movie can be seen.
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