American Dream (1990)

One of the most devastating and shameful developments of postwar American society was the war waged on organized labor by corporations, in collusion with the Reagan Administration, from 1980-88. To assign an end date is deceptive, of course, since we continue to feel the waves to this day. The era began appropriately enough, with Reagan acting as a "mediator" in the air traffic controllers' strike, where he "permanently replaced" 1,400 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controller's Organization. This sent a clear and unmistakable message to companies from coast to coast: "Clean house, we've got your back." They took it to heart too: Phelps Dodge in Arizona in 1983; Chicago Tribune in 1987; Caterpillar in 1989; and perhaps the most famous of all, Hormel in 1985, the subject of Baraba Kopple's Academy-Award winning documentary American Dream.

After the stagnation of the 1970s economy, the horrible recession that hit in 1982 provided corporations with the perfect pretext to crush labor, an opportunity that had not presented itself since the 1930s. This was the beginning of what would later be codified as globalization, and economists Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison outline the situation quite clearly in their 1982 book The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry. In the quest to remain "globally competitive," companies were willing to do whatever it took, even destroying the very social fabric of communities that had devoted their entire working lives to the success of their firms.

It started in what is called the "Frostbelt" of the northeast, first with the steel mills, then spreading to other areas of manufacturing. Reagan's public relations team were brilliant propagandists, pushing patriotism and national pride, the myth of the "home team" and language designed to foster illusions of equality, community and collective struggle (see Barbara Ehrenreich's 1989 book Fear of Falling for a good discussion of this). Suddenly "union" became a dirty word.  Unions were un-American, greedy, out for themselves. That this view was even embraced by large portions of an increasingly-conservative working class that unions had supported for decades is a testament to the efficacy of the smear campaign. Concurrently, the management consultant industry boomed as corporations looked for ways to increase their profit margins by slashing wages, benefits, and pensions. Factories moved in droves to the south, the "Sunbelt," where labor was cheap and migrants plenty.

The packinghouse P-9 strike at Hormel in Austin, Minnesota showed how far manufacturing management was willing to go in this new era: they closed the old factory, built a new "hi-tech" one that resembled a prison (where worker injuries reached epidemic proportions), and demanded deep wage cuts. And this was during a string of double-digit record profits for Hormel, which was outstripping its competitors by huge margins. Several years earlier, at the behest of the United Food and Commercial Worker's (UFCW), P-9 had already reluctantly agreed to a set of concessions that dramatically increased management's power. So when a clause in this earlier agreement was invoked, demanding a unilateral 23% pay cut across the board, P-9 geared up for a fight. Tired of the UFCW selling them down the river, they brought in Ray Rogers of Corporate Campaign Inc., a consultant firm which specialized in high-profile media assaults on corporations, typically with boycotts and pressure strategies on banks and stakeholders. It galvanizes worker spirit but the impact on Hormel is minimal. As the months wear on, the International and UFCW withdraw all support and striker benefits, even encouraging P-9 members to be scabs and cross their own picket lines. Some choose to do so, burning bridges with their neighbors, their friends, their family members. Others block streets, get hit with teargas and arrested, refuse to give in. The destruction of the social fabric, as predicted.     

On the bright side, American Dream highlights a new energy in labor, one that shows how out of touch the national labor leaders had become, with their exorbitant salaries and willingness to negotiate with unfair corporate demands. This new spirit is summed up well by one striker late in the film, when he realizes that the P-9 membership, even after months of pickets and civil disobedience, will ultimately have to pick between unfair concessions or unemployment: "Fuck 'em, we'll find something else," he says defiantly, walking away from the union hall mic.

Jim Bunnelle
Acquisitions & Collection Development Librarian
Lewis & Clark College

Hearts and Minds (1974)

"For twelve centuries we fought against China. For 100 years we fought the French. Then came the American invasion--500,000 of them--and it became a war of genocide." -- Father Chan Tin

"The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient." -- General William Westmoreland

Throughout the late 70s-80s, Vietnam became the focal point for a broad range of films, some dealing with combat (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Casualties of War), some with aftermath (Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Born On the Fourth of July), others using it as a setting for adaptations (Apocalypse Now as Conrad's Heart of Darkness). Then there was the deluge of POW films from 1983-86, with even Gene Hackman getting on the solider-of-fortune vigilante bandwagon (the thankfully-forgotten Uncommon Valor). Within Reagan's creepy and bankrupt culture of nationalism, the Vietnam "Prisoner of War" movement went into high gear, fueled by a fervent anti-Communism that permeated the mass media of 1984, the year of Reagan's re-election. Newt Heisley's flag image, created in the early 1970s, was suddenly everywhere: flags, bumper stickers, coasters. In the midst of this, and perhaps as a reaction against it, new documentary forms were taking shape. These new filmmakers had no qualms about social activism and balked at the notion of a so-called "balance" which they were constantly being accused of lacking. The first was Rafferty-Loader's Atomic Cafe in 1982, an examination of Cold War hysteria told through an incredible collage of newsreels, educational films, and other "duck and cover" pop culture. The second was Michael Moore's Roger & Me in 1989, his swan song to Ford and Flint. But both owe much to an earlier, lesser-known 1974 film that Moore has called "not only the best documentary I have ever seen, but maybe the best movie ever." That film is Peter Davis's Hearts & Minds.

In some ways, I don't think I fully understood the Vietnam War until I saw Hearts & Minds for the first time many years ago. I knew the impact of the war itself on U.S. foreign policy: it (hopefully forever) made conscription unsustainable, drafted soldiers being too much of a liability both on the battlefield and once returned home; Reagan's administration realized indigenous mercenaries like the Contras could be financed, armed, and trained to terrorize their own pro-democratic activists without working-class American boys getting their hands dirty; and until the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, things went totally underground for the better part of a decade, public reaction to Vietnam being a prime reason for this shift in approach. But until coming across Hearts & Minds, I had never seen everyday Vietnamese villagers speaking passionately about what this war wasn't (a fight against Communism) and was (the apex of an ongoing Western colonial war of genocide against a people fighting for independence and national unification.) Nor had I heard the view articulated so well by former-Sgt. William Marshall, who lost an arm and a leg and was furious for what his country had drafted him to do in the name of nothing. In many ways, it reminds me of Studs Terkel's book "The Good War": An Oral History of World War II, which serves as a compendium of human experiences across the board, the quotations around "good war" quite intentionally ironic. In the same vein, Hearts & Minds could be nested in the same, this being the warm-and-cuddly Lyndon Johnson phrase used to discuss what needed to be done for victory: to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people (which "people" is subject to debate).

The film, shot just as the war was winding down, is a fast-paced compilation of interviews without narration. This was a very rare approach for a documentary on war. Newsreel style was still the norm; think the BBC's World at War series and Laurence Olivier's refined narration. By contrast, Hearts & Minds was honest and matter-of-fact, attempting to soften the conflict for no one. It reminds the viewer that war is about human remembrances and raw emotional experience, not large tactical arrows outlining which division went where and why. The participants run the gamut to policy makers to people on the street, both in America and Vietnam. Infamous "hawks" like Kennedy-aide Walt Rostow openly belittle and insult Davis when he asks for an honest accounting of the conflict's origins, saying that rehashing that is "pretty goddamn pedestrian stuff at this stage of the game." He is but one of several who openly assume that their version of the war is the only one in existence, the only one that matters, the only one scholars need concern themselves with for the historical record. Luckily, there are interviews with Daniel Ellsberg (leaker of the Pentagon Papers), Barton Osborn (CIA agent who quit and blew the whistle on covert operations), and a host of others who tossed their bureaucratic careers aside to speak out against the injustice they'd helped to sustain in some way. Alongside these are the stories of two U.S. servicemen: Randy Floyd, an air force pilot who flew 98 bombing missions; and Lt. George Coker, a returning POW who had just spent the majority of the war in captivity. Through great editing, their own perspectives unfold gradually, scene by scene, as do those of dozens of others, like Detroit-born William Marshall in the clip above, and the budding peace activist Bobby Muller, who would go on to found the Vietnam Veterans of America.

Most intense, of course, are the scenes with the Vietnamese themselves, all of whom spoke up passionately despite grave dangers for doing so (the war was still going on during early filming.) There are the victims: the coffin maker, who looks over his shoulder while speaking; the two sisters, whose prolonged silence and sadness at the end of the scene pushes an intensity onto the viewer which is almost unbearable; the Catholic and the Buddhist, both aligned in their views on the Vietnamese struggle for independence; the angry, grieving father who demands an explanation of what he had ever done to Nixon for him to come there and murder his family; the man who says to a friend, after looking at the camera, "Look, they're focusing on us now. First they bomb as much as they please, then they film." Then, there is the lavish country club banquet of the South Vietnamese industrialists, the recipients of the billions in American foreign aid pouring in, one of which makes the incredible admission that "We saw that peace was coming, whether we liked it or not." The comment is astounding, delivered without a second thought, and really says it all. U.S. corporations can be seen encroaching throughout Saigon: Sprite trucks, Coca-Cola plants, toothpaste billboards with smiling Western women, even the ridiculously out of place Bank of America. CBS logos, intended to be a ubiquitous eye that is watching all, are ordered left on the bodies of corpses by soldiers in the field as an ominous calling card. 

In the end, what is so relevant and sad about Hearts & Minds today is the fact that how little has changed. The fabrications for foreign invasion by American policy makers continues. Consecutive administrations still lie to keep up some modicum of popular support. The jingoistic hysteria following 9/11 was nothing new, nor was the xenophobic nationalism that accompanied it. Even General Westmoreland's racist quote has now been uttered in a thousand variations over the past ten years, just replace "Oriental" with "Muslim." But perhaps most telling are the prescient closing words of ex-bomber pilot and activist Randy Floyd when asked what was learned from it all: "Nothing. The military doesn't realize that people fighting for their freedom are not going to be stopped by changing your tactics, by adding more sophisticated knowledge. Americans have worked extremely hard not to see the criminality that their officials and their power makers have exhibited."

Jim Bunnelle
Acquisitions & Collection Development Librarian
Lewis & Clark College

Dont Look Back (1967)

   

"If we were someplace else I'd punch you in your goddamn nose."

 -- Bob Dylan's manager Albert Grossman to hotel manager

Although documentaries on music and musicians are numerous, most come across as promotional vehicles or linear overviews of careers that seem like 90-minute music videos.  The influence of the latter medium forever altered the documentary landscape for music: quick cuts; banal, pithy comments; endless samples; and of course, zero analysis of anything beyond the superficial, and virtually nothing showing the artist in a controversial or negative light.  It's unfortunate, because things began quite differently.  In fact, the 1960s saw some of the best music documentaries of all time, including Gimme Shelter, Monterey Pop, and D. A. Pennebaker's venerated classic covering Bob Dylan's 1965 U.K. tour, Dont Look Back (sic).

The intro sequence alone, with "Subterranean Homesick Blues" playing and Bob Dylan dropping cue cards one at a time, has been copied and parodied so many times in popular culture that people have often seen the references before the referenced.  It was originally conceived by Dylan as a sort of Scopitone movie, a French invention that was essentially a jukebox that played a 16mm film, the forerunner of the music video.  Although by 1967, this song could almost be seen as Dylan nostalgia--so fast was his trajectory into, and through the other side, of the rock scene--at the time of shooting it was likely a sly dig at the folkies, flaunting his new noisy aesthetic that would come to define much of his middle career.  The then-recently-released "Subterranean Homesick Blues" hangs heavy in the air throughout the entire film, a harbinger of what was to come.  Teenage girls complain to him and Dylan shoots back with "Oh, you're that type, I get it," before gently reframing with "But I like to play with my friends…You don't mind if my friends play on my record, do you?"  Today, it is impossible for us to comprehend what an alien sounding and surreally structured song this was for the fans accustomed to "Blowin' in the Wind" or "The Times They Are a-Changin'."  Although these were recorded just a couple of years prior and can be heard on car radios throughout the film, promoting his concert appearances, Dylan is so clearly bored with these tunes while performing live that he flies through them at tempos nearly doubled.  They are necessary obligations en route to the new introspection of "It's All Right, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," "Gates of Eden," and "Mr. Tambourine Man."  

Dylan is so canonized within American popular culture today, it is important to remember his place in music in 1965, when he continued the process of stepping away from a folk scene that he had outgrown creatively but which still clung to him as their conduit into the semi-mainstream.  The first small step can be seen in 1964's Another Side of Bob Dylan, where he abandoned politics for poetics while keeping the acoustic aesthetic completely intact.  At the time of this tour Bringing It All Back Home had just been released, which saw Dylan split literally in half: Side 1, electric; Side 2, acoustic.  The next album, Highway 61 Revisited, would see him take the full electric plunge.  It was a huge artistic gamble, tossing away an entire folk fanbase that loved and supported him for a rock scene that knew nothing of his music, only that he was some Woody Guthrie wannabe in a train conductor's hat.  It's worth bearing in mind that Dylan could have very easily fallen on his face and ended up a mockery, rejected by both audiences.  He endured the "Judas!" accusations at concerts and death threats from angry folkies (have to love that dichotomy) and kept to his vision. 

Pennebaker's grainy, unpolished film captured a musician at work like no one had ever seen before: goading on reporters; playing Hank Williams in his hotel room; looking utterly exhausted.  Some of the confrontation scenes themselves are now classics of rock pop culture, referred to in such shorthand as "The Science Student," "The High Sheriff's Lady," and "Who Threw the Glass in the Street?"  It is incredible to think that by the time Dont Look Back saw its 1967 theatrical release, Dylan was done.  He had conquered electric, inspired countless imitators, cut two more albums--one of them a double, Blonde on Blonde--and toured endlessly against hostile crowds with the Hawks (The Band) in tow.  Pennebaker was there to film this too, through Europe in 1966.  The final product, never officially released but known as Eat the Document by generations of bootleggers, was dark, depressing, and utterly unwatchable.  In it, drastically underweight and strung-out, one sees very clearly the end that was fast approaching; and it's probably sheer luck that Bob Dylan didn't end up on the roster along with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Brian Jones.  The eventual crash was both chemical and literal: amphetamines; heroin; vitamin-B12 injections; and the infamous (and still debated) July '66 motorcycle wreck that almost broke his neck.  Dylan, barely 27 years old, went into hiding and started fresh, back to acoustics for the subdued John Wesley Harding LP, not touring again for nearly eight years. 

Jim Bunnelle
Acquisitions & Collection Development Librarian
Lewis & Clark College