Michael Braun's Blog

So this evening I attended a screening of a documentary against Wal-Mart called Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices. I saw it with Brittany and her roommate Kelly. Now, I don’t see a lot of documentaries, but the ones I do see I usually like. For example, I really liked Super Size Me. I also am a big Michael Moore fan. I even saw Spellbound, which got rave reviews, but I didn’t think was so good. That being said, Spellbound was about 1000 times better than this anti-Wal-Mart film. I mean, it sucked.

Alright, I’ll give it the fact that it would educate anyone who has not done some research on the subject. It gives some nice statistics and does shed light on some of the darker sides of Wal-Mart, the sides we all believe to exist but may not have proof of. So for that, I applaud it. But the negative aspects of the film are so overwhelming, they completely undermine the good parts. I’ll elaborate.

A) Music: The music sucked. It was used to cause sympathy, but more in a sympathy for America kind of way. One of the recordings included a Bruce Springsteen performance of “America, the Beautiful.” True, Wal-Mart once prided itself on buying American, but they don’t do that anymore, and they don’t claim to. Whereas Michael Moore often uses music ironically or to draw out humor, this movie used it to attempt to manipulate how the viewer felt. Also, in scenes showing other countries (such as workers in China or Honduras) the music changed to a stereotypical ‘ethic’ tune, adding to the racist perspectives I will talk about later.

B) Storyline: What storyline? Even mediocre documentaries have a story to tell. Not so in this case. There was no story. There was no focus. The documentary took parts of what Wal-Mart’s CEO had said at various times and attempted to refute them. It dragged on and on and never felt clear where we were going. So every time they would show the CEO again, I would groan, knowing the movie was not yet finished. At it was under 2 hours long, so they were seriously doing something wrong.

C) Racism: Yep, racism. Along with the stereotyped music, the translations of the factory workers in Asia could have come right from a KKK instructional video on how Asian people are. The translators spoke very slowly, and translated in such a way as to reaffirm all stereoypes of Asian peoples. Additionally, they highlighted how the Asian factory worker liked to sign Karaoke. Rather than try to show that these workers are actual people, we just got another stereotyped view of Asian culture.

D) Voice: There wasn’t one. I had no idea who was telling the story. I hate to put Michael Moore up as the end all and be all of documentarians, mostly because he isn’t a documentarian, but there are two techniques he uses that I really think are effective. First, he tells a story, which this movie didn’t as I wrote before. Second, he puts himself into the documentary. This enables the viewer to always know who is speaking. When he narrates his film, the viewer hears that voice and sees him on screen and the whole thing makes more sense. In this way, it is possible for the viewer to take a seperate stance from the movie. The viewer can say, I don’t like how Michael Moore is presenting this information, but I am still against Bush. Without that personal voice, the viewer is forced to make a choice between Wal-Mart and the film. I didn’t like the film, which made me feel closer to Wal-Mart, which made me feel uncomfortable, which made me want to stop watching.

So my advice for anyone who might get a chance to see this movie, don’t bother. Instead read the great book, ‘How Wal-Mart is Destroying the United States’ by Bill Quinn. It’s biased for sure, but I know who the voice is, and we can all feel good united against Wal-Mart.

In other news, I had an exam today that went well. I had a critique of my story I wrote about earlier, which went well. I registered for classes for next semester. I have no class Monday or Friday, though Tuesdays and Thursdays are hell (930-1545 straight). And I only have two English classes. The others: two women’s studies, one African American studies. Though it is actually 4 lit. classes now that I think about it. That’s a lot. Anyway, should be great and should be awesome. I’ll say more later.