What an interesting but disturbing look at how China attempts to resurrect a closed GM plant in Ohio by turning it into a glass factory. The clash between the two cultures is inevitable, and in some instances, downright scary. The workers attempt to form a union, fail, and realize it may not make a difference anyway.

What do the Chinese really think of their American counterparts? Watch and see.

This was produced by the Obamas....the chances of me watching it are hovering just under Zero.

quote:

Originally posted by ChicagoSigMan:
This was produced by the Obamas....the chances of me watching it are hovering just under Zero.

See what you did there, I do.

quote:

Originally posted by ChicagoSigMan:
This was produced by the Obamas....the chances of me watching it are hovering just under Zero.

I didn't know the Obamas were involved, so I did a little looking around about the documentary. National Review has a piece on it. Link below. I'm still interested in seeing it and what spin there is on the story. I didn't know Netflix was so involved with the Obamas.

Netflix Debuts Its Obama Manifesto

This week’s widespread media blitz heralding Netflix’s broadcast of its first Obama-endorsed presentation, American Factory, was more than synchronicity. It felt as though U.S. publicists and journalists collectively exhaled their relief at finally regaining the bully pulpit.

Reviews of American Factory, a doc by indie veterans Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, failed to accurately convey the film’s shortcomings. Its lack of focus following a Chinese manufacturer’s takeover of a former General Motors plant in Ohio — a move that fails to relieve working-class anxieties but, instead, predicts job-market doom — didn’t faze flacks and reviewers. The media class saw Reichert and Bognar’s facile, generalized survey as a chance to take on President Trump’s trade policy; many jettisoned film critique to try their hand at economic and moral analysis instead.

Those in power have usurped the old bromide “speaking truth to power.” They now speak rhetoric to the masses.

This deliberate misinterpretation of American Factory was, in fact, amplification of the political design that, no doubt, was always part of Netflix’s game plan when it signed Barack and Michelle Obama jointly to an impresario contract. (The monetary figure remains undisclosed, but the timing of Netflix’s offer corresponded with the Obamas’ well-publicized $65 million publishing agreements, proof of the media industry’s enthusiastic support of the former White House occupants in their role as cultural influencers.)

The Netflix-Obama nexus is stranger and more significant than American Factory itself. Calling their curator unit “Higher Ground,” Netflix and the Obamas remind us of Michelle’s fraudulent 2016 campaign boast “When they go lower, we go higher.” What could be lower than an ex-president and his mate perpetuating a counter-offensive to the successive administration? Could Juan and Evita Perón, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu have matched the divisiveness — or such wealth and potency — implicit in that lofty moniker? The Clintons were never considered tasteful like the Obamas, whose supposed classiness and erudition reflect the flip side of racial condescension.

Articles about American Factory breathlessly quoted bombast from a Higher Ground PR video featuring the Obamas and the filmmakers. Michelle says, “You let people tell their own story. American Factory doesn’t come in with a perspective; it’s not an editorial.” This is actually the opposite of how the film works, so her comment is either disingenuous, or ignorance disguised as praise.

Obama’s own orotundity was smoother: "Let’s see if we can all elevate a little bit outside of our immediate self-interest and our immediate fears and our immediate anxieties and kind of take a look around and say huh, we’re part of this larger thing. And if we can do that through some storytelling, then it helps all of us feel some sort of solidarity with each other."

Cunningly pairing the words “self” and “solidarity” is union-leader talk. That’s the usual Obama imposture: articulacy mistaken for honesty.

This rhetorical styling is a perfect example of the elite prevarication that the media spent eight years praising as “presidential.” Now it’s back as part of Netflix’s hard sell, transforming film culture into television-streaming culture — flattering its 175 million subscribers’ sense of advancement — all the while hewing to liberal-progressive sentiment.

“The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative,” a famous historical figure once explained. And the Obama imprimatur — like those reading lists and favorite streaming-music lists that the press likes to cite as celebrity news — works similarly. Upcoming films (dubious “storytelling”) from Higher Ground amount to a cultural manifesto. Hollywood partisanship is peddled as what used to be called social consciousness.

But it is not film consciousness. American Factory confirms that the doc genre has long been a leftist fortress, or commune, even before Michael Moore trashed the genre’s journalistic integrity and objectivity with Roger and Me (1987) and Fahrenheit 911 (2004).

Film reviewers forget that the subject of workers’ rights vs. the means of production was handled with wit, depth, and relevance in Ron Howard’s best film Gung Ho (1986), which gave genuine insight into American working-class customs. American Factory, by contrast, evaluates Yankee fecklessness from a globalist perspective. Reviewers also neglect pointing out that Reichert and Bognar’s social-justice pretenses never rise to the level of imaginative expression found in Alexander Dovzhenko’s Soviet masterpieces Arsenal (1929) and Earth (1930).

American Factory reveals another angle of the mainstream media’s political slant since 2016. Most networks have become shameless platforms for liberal ideology. The media have been anxiously awaiting a message from the Mount Kalorama compound, the Obamas’ exclusive and wealthy enclave. None dare call it what it is, but Netflix’s Higher Ground mindhive looks like the new Ministry of Propaganda.

No way I'm watching this shit, but I did see this. TL : DR...the scumbags tried to trademark an already existing business name, got rightfully denied, and are now petitioning to have the existing TM cancelled.

Wasn't this a Michael Keaton movie in the 80s?

I'm watching it. I find the juxtaposition of the two cultures interesting, not to mention seeing them learn about each other.

When the US reps go to China, that is hilarious. The whiny American going about about duct taping US workers' mouths...the Chinese dude says "You can do that there???" They then cut to the US dudes watching guys out sorting through huge mounds of broken glass in non-existant or sub-par safety gear.

Another neat tidbit....the company Chairman is adamant about no union in the US plant, but his brother-in-law is the Chairman of the Chinese plant's workers union (and Communist Party)>

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
Wasn't this a Michael Keaton movie in the 80s?

You're probably thinking of Gung Ho, which I was reminded of also. But that movie was about a Japanese company.