This unique business model came with good intentions on both sides. We hear much these days about globalization, and by the end of the film, you'll likely be re-defining the word. This time out, they have impressive access to a remarkable situation: a successful Chinese company opening a factory in the United States, and attempting to merge two distinctly different cultures. In doing so, the factory hired approximately 1000 locals, many of whom had not had consistent work since the GM plant closed years prior.Ĭo-directors Steven Bognar and Julie Reichert share an Oscar nomination (she has 3 total) for their 2009 documentary short, THE LAST TRUCK: CLOSING OF A GM PLANT. operation for his company - a company he claims owns 70% of the auto glass market. Six years later, Chairman Cao Dewang, the founder of Fuyao Glass, invested millions to turn the shell of the plant into a retro-fitted factory and the first U.S. In December 2008, General Motors shut down their truck plant in Dayton, Ohio, putting approximately 2000 employees out of work. 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).Reviewed by ferguson-6 7 /10 two sides of failure American Factory, by contrast, evaluates Yankee fecklessness from a globalist perspective. 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 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).įilm reviewers forget that the subject of workers’ rights vs. Hollywood partisanship is peddled as what used to be called social consciousness.īut it is not film consciousness. Upcoming films (dubious “storytelling”) from Higher Ground amount to a cultural manifesto. And the Obama imprimatur - like those reading lists and favorite streaming-music lists that the press likes to cite as celebrity news - works similarly. “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. 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. And if we can do that through some storytelling, then it helps all of us feel some sort of solidarity with each other.Ĭunningly pairing the words “self” and “solidarity” is union-leader talk. That’s the usual Obama imposture: articulacy mistaken for honesty. 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. 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. Michelle says, “You let people tell their own story. 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.Īrticles about American Factory breathlessly quoted bombast from a Higher Ground PR video featuring the Obamas and the filmmakers. The Netflix-Obama nexus is stranger and more significant than American Factory itself. (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.) 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. Those in power have usurped the old bromide “speaking truth to power.” They now speak rhetoric to the masses.