"Do you know where these beads come from?" filmmaker David Redmon asks drunken Bourbon Street revellers. Somehow, they're all too wasted to give him the obvious answer: they're made in China, by young women who get paid pennies for the colorful trinkets. Is there really anybody who couldn't have guessed that?
Mardi Gras: Made in China, which feels like a watered-down version of Hubert Sauper's Oscar-nominated Darwin's Nightmare, is fascinated by this particular paradox of globalization: sweatshop labor on one hand, over-the-top partying on the other. The inflated value assumed by the beads on the streets of New Orleans adds another spin: for a few days every year, the cheap plastic beads are important enough for women to bare their breasts and men to drop their pants over--and come Ash Wednesday, it's all trash again. For 72 minutes, Redmon points out the systemic unfairness over and over again. The strongest scene in Mardi Gras: Made in China shows the teenage girls in the Chinese bead factory giggling in disbelief over Girls Gone Wild-style photos. The film opens today at New York's Cinema Village. [posted by Jurgen]
Mardi Gras: Made in China, which feels like a watered-down version of Hubert Sauper's Oscar-nominated Darwin's Nightmare, is fascinated by this particular paradox of globalization: sweatshop labor on one hand, over-the-top partying on the other. The inflated value assumed by the beads on the streets of New Orleans adds another spin: for a few days every year, the cheap plastic beads are important enough for women to bare their breasts and men to drop their pants over--and come Ash Wednesday, it's all trash again. For 72 minutes, Redmon points out the systemic unfairness over and over again. The strongest scene in Mardi Gras: Made in China shows the teenage girls in the Chinese bead factory giggling in disbelief over Girls Gone Wild-style photos. The film opens today at New York's Cinema Village. [posted by Jurgen]
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