One thing i find interesting is how rarely labour struggles are depicted in mainstream tv/movies.
We have every type of revolutionary tv shows, including some fairly rediculous ones (e.g. divergent) but almost never strikes. The only exception i can really think of is that one episode of battlestar galactica (maybe give star trek ds9 half a point because they treated it in such a silly fashion).
Cynical me suspects that the large corporations who get to decide which TV show or feature films get to be made are opposed to depicting workers organising and acting on behalf of their collective interest. This seems to be particularly true in America more so than Europe, e.g, Brassed Off, a British film from the mid-nineties realistically displays working class culture associated with labour unions at a time when the unions were struggling against the closure of the coal pits. Interestingly, according to its Wikipedia article¹, “In the United States, the film was promoted simply as a romantic comedy involving McGregor and Fitzgerald's characters.”
On the other hand, Season 4 of For All Mankind depicted a strike of private sector workers in such an unrealistic, ham-fisted way that it couldn’t be taken seriously – much like many of the other half-assed story-lines that were crammed into the show for Seasons 3 and 4.
Progressive socially =/= labor friendly/left wing political views. The executives running things are always going to be in favor of increasing their profits over anything else. Strong labor protections/rights usually get in the way of that. This also applies to a large portion of wealthy people in general, and there are many of them in Hollywood.
Kudos for mentioning the second season of The Wire. At first, when watching the season, the theme felt misplaced, but it ended up being a very well done sociological exploration on deindustrialization. Given the current geopolitical issues it seems relevant even in contemporary times.
I already knew before watching the show that each season focused on a different aspect of Baltimore; though I didn't know any spoilers or major plot points. So I wasn't as thrown as most first-time viewers always seem to be. I quite liked it my first time.
Literal Oscar-winners, critic favorites, and even a mass-market sitcom (just added it because I thought of it after writing the comment) on that list. Maybe you're not into pop culture?
One of the movies you're talking about is from 1954. No need for the snark. If you are going back 70 years, i don't think you can call it modern pop culture anymore. If instead you said, people into movie history, then sure.
Some of them are more recent, but even the most recent movie (the Chavez one) is over a decade ago, got panned by critics and looks to be a relatively low budget film. The sort of thing people into pop culture are likely to not know about.
I think the fact you can't find anything this decade is pretty telling
I wasn't being snarky. The Wire is the embodiment of prestige television drama. There's nothing wrong with not being into TV.
I also admitted the topic hasn't been popular of late. Your comment didn't say anything about recency. It's likely that the dwindling percentage of Americans in unions has something to do with fewer recent depictions of labor struggles in TV and movies.
I'm in the age group that would be familiar - it was certainly influential, but i'm not exactly sure i would call it mainstream. It was on HBO in an era where that significantly limited its audience. It was never a household name the way something like lost, game of thrones or breaking bad was. I think its mostly remembered for being the start of the wave of "prestige" televidion.
It's a very very messy process and most of the time doesn't end well because of the power imbalance. Larger the worker group more the disagreements amongst them too. My Dad was a factory manager and I grew up running around the factory, playing with workers, they would help me on my school projects etc. The same guys beat my Dad up during one particular strike. Many of them got arrested and we had a cop outside our house for months.
>One thing i find interesting is how rarely labour struggles are depicted in mainstream tv/movies.
Same reason all sorts of other stuff has gone nearly extinct.
Mainstream entertainment media is subject to the same eyeball-hour based economics as everything else and that content doesn't resonate with enough people.
You can't make a hollywood movie or expensive TV series or other top tier content about something that can't be repackaged and resold to foreign audiences.
Such films might be too “communist” for Americans but they would definitely be too “communist” for the current Chinese Communist Party. They might call themselves communists or socialists but the last thing they want is for Chinese workers to get ideas about organising autonomously and collectively. The last time this happened in 1989, they were ruthlessly crushed by the dominant, conservative wing of the CCP.
The resolution to that BSG episode was, also, on-the-nose consistent to its resolution for most of its political crises - everyone needs to sit down and shut up and get in line, because despite the veneer of representative government, they are living in a military dictatorship, where decisions are solely at the whims of Adama.
Who, despite all his flaws, (unlike the president, generally speaking) is not a bad person. But is very much a dictator (which was his job as the commander of a military vessel).
The wonderful movie Billy Elliot takes place against the backdrop of the 1984-85 UK miners’ strike, probably the most significant labour struggle in modern British history.
Although it might not be the type of movie you’re looking for, because the miners lost.
And because the miners were causing power blackouts in the UK, and they were far, far less efficient than overseas sources, or alternatives to coal-fired power stations.
I'd say it was The Full Monty and Brassed Off. I'd say it was almost a mini-genre at the start of the Blair years.
There's also Made in Dagenham. There's probably lots of french language films with workers struggle. The one that springs to mind is the hilarious satire Louise-Michel
Severance quietly covers the topic. The conversations in season 1 on the Macrodata refinement uprisings and that big painting of the event come to mind.
I'm not sure I agree DS9 treated it in all that silly fashion, beyond involving the Ferengi's. It's part of what makes Rom's arc one that shows the greatest character development in Trek.
It's also one of few depictions of strikes in US TV that treated the strikers with substantially more sympathy than their counterpart. Incidentally, this is another parallel to Babylon 5, which also had a strike, and were the negotiator that was brought in was a really unsympathetic caricature.
DS9 even managed to paraphrase the Communist Manifesto, and still painted the strikers in a good light.
I agree its important to rom's arc, and in general is a good episode. However it definitely gave me the vibe of "oh look how cute, he wants rights". There was something a bit condescending about it.
You're right though, its definitely better than the babylon 5 episode.
I think in isolation it does have that vibe, and had it been left effectively as a bottle episode, it would have, but given we see Rom increasingly stand up for himself and make a mark as a reformer, it gets redeemed by the rest of the arc.
I also kinda like the Babylon 5 episode, but it has an entirely different feel to it, and the way it is resolved does make it weaker overall - it's the captain rather than the strikers that seal the win. The main strength of the Babylon 5 episode is that caricature of the negotiator and the visual presentation of the conflict, that feels like it is referencing an old-fashioned way of presenting conflict in US media that is made toothless by focusing on the anger while giving little play to the issues. Only in the Babylon 5 case, the extreme caricature of the negotitator gives him the more negative portrayal often given to strikers.
The premise of Star Trek kind of is 'what if we reached communism and hence could science up actual space travel?', which DS9 somewhat digresses from by having these episodes about social struggle like the bar strike and the battle of the sanctuary district as well as the genocide arcs.
It speaks to the foundational values of the franchise being widely accepted that the strike episode is what is remembered as the labour thing, as if a lot of people would like the results of an egalitarian society but have been taught that the means to achieve it are somehow controversial.
If you're still inventing and discovering things, you probably don't have communism, because not all inventions are distributed equally (straight away) and not all places can be shared by all people.
Communism does not require equal distribution. In fact Marx argued communism explicitly requires unequal distribution.
In Critique of the Gotha Program he outright ridiculed what is now the German SDP for demanding that "the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society".
He went on to write: "Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal."
Later in the same text he then reiterated the traditional socialist slogan, that explicitly also rejects equal distribution: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"
Communism is a society without class stratification, capital and money. I'm not sure how you come from this to that conclusion about "inventions".
For one the slogan of communist movements tend to be 'from each according to ability, to each according to need', and secondly it is more likely that a communist society would use scientific academies or committees rather than rely on inventors to accomplish technological or other achievements.
We have every type of revolutionary tv shows, including some fairly rediculous ones (e.g. divergent) but almost never strikes. The only exception i can really think of is that one episode of battlestar galactica (maybe give star trek ds9 half a point because they treated it in such a silly fashion).