Response to “Race and Labor Unplugged”

This is an article written in 2011 by Dale Hudson of NYU Abu Dhabi and posted on the website Flowtv.org, a television and movie journalism website.  The intended audience for this piece is people that have seen the movie “Sleep Dealer” and wish to further their understanding of the racial comments that are being made by the producers of the film.  This article also delves into the works “Why Braceros?”, a domestically made propaganda video from 1959 by the California Growers and “Why Cybraceros?”, a satirical critique of “Why Braceros?” by Alex Rivera in 1997.

The main idea that this text is expressing relates to the portraying the struggles of Mexican migrant workers illegally crossing the border into the US through comparison to the “nodes” that allow migrant workers to continue with their labor.  Hudson goes through various aspects of the movie and compares them to the modern day relations with the US border control and the problems that modern braceros experience.  Specifically the “sleep dealers” themselves, which are factories where digital labor is outsourced to the US, are being compared to modern migrant workers that cross the border to find employment in manual labor.  Having nodes implanted becomes the equivalent of traveling to the US in this comparison.  By associations the coyotes which usually transport people across the border are replaced by “coyoteks” that are tech savvy smugglers which actually perform the operation of implanting nodes into the workers illegally.  Once the workers have the nodes implanted they are able to begin working at the sleep dealers and make money for their family.

The goal that Hudson had in writing this article was to inform the reader of the cultural and racial statements that Rivera was making in “Sleep Dealer”.  I believe that  it was also Hudson’s intention to make sure that the persuasive intention of Rivera in convincing viewers of his views on immigration and migrant workers would be passed on to the readers of this article.

I appreciated how Hudson was very thorough in his analysis of the movie and how he also drew in other examples of Rivera’s work in order to provide context for his ideas and comments developed in the movie.  I appreciated the explanation of symbols with context that I otherwise did not pick up on and wouldn’t have understood.  I can connect this to my own experience because I watched the movie and made many of the same conclusions that Hudson did.  A question that I am left with after reading this article is: how does race affect the opportunities that individuals experience in seeking employment and growth in the real world?

One thought on “Response to “Race and Labor Unplugged””

  1. All the key points are covered really well here – one thing I’d add is that Flow is an academically oriented site that tries to reach both scholars and a general audience, so an additional perspective the author’s aiming for will be people who study issues of race and labor who may be interested to see how they have been addressed in an independent science fiction film.

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