Industrializing Rural America (Media for Poor White)

Here are some activities for this week's unit.

1. Below are descriptions of what constitutes the aspects of the "farm novel." Can you isolate moments in Poor White that are congruent with this genre?

a. It deals with farm life -- the plot is farm related, characters are farmers, the setting is a farm;
b. It displays an accurate handling of the physical details of farm life;
c. It uses the vernacular of farm life relevant to culture, region, and landscape of the people;
d. It reflects attitudes, beliefs, or habits of mind often associated with farm people, such as individualism, suspicion of intellectualism, hostility to industrialization, an emphasis on hard work and the dialectic of man/nature, an assumption of the tension between the intrinsically wholesome aspects of farm life in contrast to the corruption of the city
(on this genre see Roy Meyer, The Middle Western Farm Novel in the Twentieth Century.)

2. Watch the short clip on industrialization and view the images by artist Edward Burtynsky below. How does the photographer create a "narrative" of the social, cultural, and political effects of industrialization and its relationship to capitalism in a given or across geographical locations? How do his images of oil, technology, manufacture plants, and the landscape represent the contradictions of technology as an industrial dystopia? How might we view his work and our book Poor White within the recent atrocity of the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast?


Edward Burtynsky: Oil from Corcoran Gallery of Art on Vimeo.

Oil on the Landscape:

 

Industrialization and the Landscape:

 

Industrialization and the Worker:

3. The song "Red Rain" by Peter Gabriel seems to relate to several aspects of our course material for the past two weeks, as its three pronged meaning referenes a utopian leader in a small town, wherein the townspeople become corrupt by impending industrialization. Red rain is also a loose metaphor for the technologies of acid rain and nuclear fallout. In sum, it references the relationship between people and the consquences of the more destructive chemical forces of the industrial world. Read the lyrics and listen to the song. How might each stanza compare to the narrative meanings in Poor White? In particular, find the moments in the book where Anderson uses the metaphor of a storm for industrialization and compare it to the lyrics below. Why does the metaphor of an impending storm work well to conote industrialization? How does the visual of the video depict the issues raised in our last lecture?

"Red Rain" (by Peter Gabriel)

red rain is coming down
red rain
red rain is pouring down
pouring down all over me

I am standing up at the water's edge in my dream
I cannot make a single sound as you scream
it can't be that cold, the ground is still warm to touch
this place is so quiet, sensing that storm

red rain is coming down
red rain
red rain is pouring down
pouring down all over me

well I've seen them buried in a sheltered place in this town
they tell you that this rain can sting, and look down
there is no blood around see no sign of pain
hay ay ay no pain
seeing no red at all, see no rain

red rain is coming down
red rain
red rain is pouring down
pouring down all over me

red rain-
putting the pressure on much harder now
to return again and again
just let the red rain splash you
let the rain fall on your skin
I come to you defences down
with the trust of a child

red rain is coming down
red rain
red rain is pouring down
pouring down all over me
and I can't watch any more
no more denial
it's so hard to lay down in all of this
red rain is coming down
red rain is pouring down
red rain is coming down all over me
I see it
red rain is coming down
red rain is pouring down
red rain is coming down all over me
I'm bathing in it
red rain coming down
red rain is coming down
red rain is coming down all over me
I'm begging you
red rain coming down
red rain coming down
red rain coming down
red rain coming down
over me in the red red sea
over me
over me
red rain


RED RAIN Peter Gabriel
Uploaded by avajra. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

4. The film Modern Times contains one of the most famous filmic critiques of industrialization. Watch the film and discuss how it provides a trenchant critique of the types of issues raised in Poor White and in lecture.

Part 1


Part 2:






Questions for documentary Manufactured Landscapes:

1. How do the opening images reveal the isolation of the worker from their work and others?
2. Burtynsky notes that if we destroy the landscape we destroy ourselves; this is a fundamental philosophical position. Yet, at the same time, he argues that the film shows what industrialization is --not to glorify or damn it -- but allow the viewer to comprehend the scale of industry, and that industry in itself is a landscape. After watching the excerpt, do you think Burtynsky is taking sides on the cost of industrialization? What evidence can you provide from the film?
3. Burtynsky says that the landscape of our time is the landscape that we should change – the one we disrupt in pursuit of progress. What can “we” do about the situation he images? What do you think he would like us to do in concrete, tangible terms?
4. Burtynsky argues that the industrial landscape is a way of defining who we are as a people and as part of the economy, politics, how we elect our governments, and that it is a part of everything we do. What moments in Poor White and in real life affirm this statement?
5. Why do you think Burtynsky chooses to shoot the close-up of the one worker asleep at his station? What does it say about how industry affects the human body?
6. When the line manager talks to the workers, what aspects of his conversation reveal the workers as being though to as mere machines?
7. What does the slow panning at the lines and lines of workers do, especially the long shot of the plant and the marching workers? What does the live group that becomes the photo on the museum wall say about the scale of industrialization and globalization?
8. Burtynsky argues that his photos show the extraction of industries, that we are disconnected from that process, but that his images reconnect us. Do you agree? What does it mean to “house” such images that show the effects of the US interest in China’s machine industry in a museum? Does it intensify or diminish their meaning by turning the photographs into “art?”
9. How does the Burtynsky connect the spectators in the museum to what is going on across the globe in China? Why do you think he chooses to connect the two through montage?
10. How does the fine tool work by the female worker intensify Burtynsky’s points about the human and person side of the machine/worker dialectic? Why do you think he spends so much time focusing on close-ups of hands “creating” and shaping metal particles? How does he “put a face” on industrialization?
11. Burtynsky  argues that China is a place where materials merge; factories are places where products get sent back to the US and other places around the world. Given that our recycled computers in the US end up in China for recycling and it is destroying their landscape, is the US culpable in the deterioration of their landscape?
12. What do the filmmakers want us to do/see about industrialization in China? What is the relationship between recycling and acid rain and purification of natural resources such as water? Why do you think he inserts the magnanimous images of waste after scenes of workers in plants or workers rummaging through metal and recycled metals?
13. Every few years computer models become obsolete. What does this reveal about the link between capital, markets, industrialization, and the landscape?
14. This documentary and the images mean to show the “truth” of globalizations collide with industustrialization. What does it conceal?
15. One young woman being interviewed said industrialization is making things “richer” in China; this, she says, while standing in front of industrial decay. How does the image behind her contradict her words?
16. Why do you think the documentary filmmaker makes mention to the viewer that at some point he had filled his car with gas that the ships in China carried oil upon?
17. How does oil production affect its workers? How does it depopulate China? Why does he pause after he notes no one over 30 works at the plant?
18. Oil that makes us free imprisons others across the world; what does it mean that we cannot get enough oil? In other words, what does it say about how industry has changed us? How is China an energy footprint? Why should their ability to “sustain” concern the rest of the world?
19. What was Burtynsky’s oil epiphany and what did it mean for him? How is oil a key building block of the last century?

Week Two and Three: Points of Entry/Points of Departure; Beyond Ellis Island: Narratives of Citizenship

Week Two: The Terminal (2004)


The Terminal is about a man (Viktor Navorski) who, upon arriving at JFK International Airport, is not allowed to leave the airport. While flying to the United States (NY), unknown to Victor, a revolution starts in his home nation of Krakozhia. As a result of the ensuing war in his homeland, the United States no longer recognizes Krakozhia as a sovereign nation and denies Viktor's entrance to the United States since he technically is not a citizen of any country. After viewing the clip, what do you think the filmmaker is trying to say about access to citizenship and the role of airports as gatekeepers of citizenship? Are airports modern versions of Ellis Island or Angel Island? How does historical moment and new technologies shape the narratives that emerge from the two different sites?




Week Three: Narratives of Citzenship

In class or section you might discuss the following:


1.) The tactile experience of reading Angel Island poetry -- how this poetry combines material culture and words to create a new sensory experience. Does the location of the poetry change its meaning for the writer and reader/spectator? See pages 259-261 in American Mosaic and: http://www.kqed.org/w/pacificlink/history/angelisland/poetry/


2.) What are the differences and similarities between poetry written about Ellis Island (draw from research, the book American Mosaic, and the documentary Remembering Ellis Island) and poetry written about Angel Island?


Viewing Guide Questions: Remembering Ellis Island

1. What do the visuals at the beginning of the documentary illustrate about Ellis Island and what images in the first few minutes did you find most captivating?
2. How well do you think the voice over of testimonies enhanced or detracted from understanding what Ellis Island was like for immigrants? Which was more powerful: the narration or interviews? 
3. What narrative about Ellis Island does the documentary tell that our book does not? Is the documentary critical or a romanticization of Ellis Island as a site of citizenship and gate keeping and as a monument?
4. Why should we remember Ellis Island and what is most important to remember about it?
5. How did the artifacts left behind at or brought to Ellis Island or the etchings on the walls tell a story that the photographs and spoken narratives could not?
6. What distinction do the curators make between the Ellis Island monument, museum, and exhibitions in general?
7. How does mise en scene inform the documentary's narrative (music, camera movement, spatial relations of images, voice of narration, close-ups, etc?)
8. What story does the documentary leave out? Should it have focused more so on particular ethnicities rather than a sweeping narrative? What is enabled or limiting about this approach? Is this documentary an example of multiculturalism or uncritical pluralism? 
9. What did the medical categorization of immigrants reveal about the social construction of illness and identity?
10. How were experiences different for children and adult immigrants? Families?
11. What would cause a person to be subject to deportation?
12. What was significant about 1921 and 1924 insofar as immigration was concerned?
13. What role did money play in citizenship and the “assimilation” of immigrants who went through Ellis Island?
14. Is this documentary potentially “dangerous?”  What aspects are uncritical and what aspects could be potentially subversive?  If you were to construct a documentary about Ellis Island, what would you do differently? What would you include and how would you present the narratives of immigration?
 

How does the following documentary, Angel of No Mercy, compare to the excerpt from Remembering Ellis Island shown in class? 

 

Angel of No Mercy - Saving the Angel Island Immigration Station circa 1976 from Mooncloud on Vimeo.