The American Worker on Film: A Critical History, 1909-1999 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The American Worker on Film: A Critical History, 1909-1999 Jerald Podair Doyle Greene . The American Worker on Film: A Critical History, 1909-1999. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010. 238 pp. $55. Why make films? Why watch them? Why "read" them? Critics, journalists, and historians have argued these questions, often viciously, for as long as the medium has existed. Politics lie at the center of these arguments. Is there such a thing as a purely aesthetic reading of a film? Or is every filmmaker by definition an ideologue? There is no mistaking where Doyle Greene stands. Peppering The American Worker on Film with quotations from Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and other theorists, he demands "to 'read films politically,' to actively engage in cinema, and all cultural discourses, as forms and forums of political debate and ideological struggle, regardless of any claims that art is 'neutral' and exists independently of social experience" (203). Greene offers deeply politicized interpretations of some of the most important "labor" films of the past century, including Modern Times, The Grapes of Wrath, On the Waterfront, Norma Rae, and Matewan. His judgments are almost devoid of aesthetic considerations. For Greene, even comedies -- he also takes on Gung Ho and Office Space -- are serious business. Greene is a stern taskmaster. None of these films, some with critical status approaching the canonical, meet his standards (or, more accurately, his standard, since Greene's interpretive framework flirts with ahistoricism). [End Page 120] Assuming the only "real" historical narrative of American workers depicts them locked in uncompromising and unceasing battle with an employer class bent on domination and exploitation, he takes to task the likes of Charlie Chaplin, John Ford, Elia Kazan, and John Sayles for not measuring up. Modern Times, despite a promising beginning featuring Chaplin's tragicomic encounters with the gears and levers of the industrial behemoth, veers toward "liberal humanist ideology" (49), a term Greene does not intend as a compliment. He complains that the film "is not a story of 'class struggle,' but 'individual enterprise' and the individual enduring the hardships offered by capitalism to reap its possible rewards" (38). Similarly, The Grapes of Wrath misses an opportunity to privilege Tom Joad's "working-class anger," instead giving Ma Joad and her "American ideals of liberal democracy and community" (which Greene views as "imaginary") the film's concluding words (59). Another classic labor film, On the Waterfront, also disappoints Greene in its valorization of "liberal-democratic individualism" and its weak-kneed critique of capitalism "framed around morality and ethics, rather than (the) overtly political or ideological" (98, 91). Even Matewan, which contains one of the most starkly drawn portrayals of class oppression in American film history, is described as "necessarily favor(ing) reformist political action over revolutionary direct action" (179). It seems nothing can satisfy Greene, who appears to have his own idea of the perfect "labor" film. There is, of course, a reason why such a film has not been made. No one would pay to see it. It would contain no memorable characters, the better to avoid the snares of "humanism." It would emphasize the working class as a class, in struggle against its corporate enemies for control of the American economic system. The film could be set in any time period after the advent of industrial capitalism, since the narrative would always be the same. The result would be dull and predictable propaganda, with an audience limited to the truest of true believers. Great films are human films. Terry Malloy, Ma Joad, Chaplin's factory worker: none behave as Greene believes they should. They fail to live up to their class responsibilities. They show disquieting signs of individualism. But this is why we watch them – at least those of us who are unwilling to indulge our political sympathies at the expense of the intricacies of the human condition. Are Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar correct when they assert, "there is no such thing as an innocent reading" (203)? Perhaps. But casting off humanism for the impersonal determinism of class struggle does more than strangle history. It denies us the view of our souls [End Page 121] that we seek from film...