>>REVIEW
MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA
DIRECTED BY David Redmon
Opens Friday November 11
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Sometimes the line that separates western and eastern cultures isn’t a thin one – it’s a mammoth wall of brick and stone. And even though it’s assumed that everyone is aware of these differences, filmmaker David Redmon wants to make sure. With Mardi Gras: Made In China he explores the border between the lives and attitudes of those who make Mardi Gras beads and those who party with them.
Embedded at the Tia Keun Bead Factory, Redmon reveals the daily routines of the workers who run the factory, and provides a glimpse into their personal lives and feelings about their jobs. Candid interviews with the factory owner and his American buyer provide an example of the new wave of the free market in China. For the flip side, Redmon turns his camera on New Orleans, following a lifelong Mardi Gras enthusiast, and questioning party-goers on their knowledge of the origins of the beads they so desperately crave.
The point is that the partiers are oblivious to the conditions in which the beads are made, and the factory workers don’t understand the fascination with the thousands of strings they churn out everyday. It’s an interesting idea in a film that, unfortunately, doesn’t have much bite.
Yes, the workers at the factory work hideously long hours for meagre pay, but they appear to be satisfied with just being able to work and make some money – one girl has even given up medical school to work at the factory. But Redmon never really presses hard enough to get into the deeper emotions of their situation, so the audience only sees that they’re caught in blissful ignorance to how others are benefiting from their hard work. Redmon wastes his opportunities to strongly question the owner about the factory’s working conditions when the issue of a strike is raised.
In America, when party-goers in New Orleans are confronted with knowledge of the working conditions of those who made the Mardi Gras beads they respond with an overwhelming "nothing-I-can-do-about-it, nothing’s- going-to-change" attitude. Undoubtedly, even those with stronger on-camera reactions immediately returned to their festivities once filmmaker stopped rolling.
So, blame the fact that society is desensitized to the plight of the slave-like labourer. While Made In China is factual and detailed, the film lacks the emotional pull needed to effect a change in how closely we look into our own avenues of decadence. |
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