achOO

Jan. 14th, 2007 10:47 pm
sabotabby: raccoon anarchy symbol (Default)
[personal profile] sabotabby
Sick, sick, sick.

I'll survive, but the timing of this cold is inconvenient to say the least.


By the way, don't see Fired! unless you really want to throw up. I could go on at great length about why it's incredibly reactionary and stupid, but it probably isn't worth the bandwith. It's basically a device to make bosses feel better about firing their workers.


It starts with whiny, neurotic self-pity—and at the risk of sounding anti-Semitic, it's a particularly New York Jewish sort of neurotic self-pity, the sort that made Woody Allen's career. Unfortunately, Allen was right about one thing—Gurwitch is crap at it. So she gets fired, and talks to everyone she knows about their getting-fired experiences.

Problem is that she only seems to know people exactly like herself—neurotic unfunny comedians. So she manages to hit on the self-esteem aspects of getting fired (it's like getting dumped) but utterly misses why getting fired is so dreadful for working class people, which is that a hell of a lot of folks are one paycheque away from homelessness.

Then, there's a bit where she tries to get all Michael Moore and goes to Lansing, MI, and hears about downsizing. She interviews a few experts, from fuzzily defined consultants to economists, and the point is brought up that, while people have always gotten fired, it’s much more frequent these days, and the next jobs they get aren’t as good as the ones they lost. But we don’t dwell on that sort of negativity for long. It's back to navel-gazing with her friends, until she realizes that getting fired is "God's way of telling you that you should be working somewhere else" and reminds us that every failure is a new opportunity. I'm sure the woman in the movie who got fired because she smoked and her boss wanted to save on insurance payments will be comforted to know that.

It ends, and I kid you not, with Gurwitch thanking Woody Allen for firing her. Because, while hundreds of thousands of workers get fired every year, she was able to turn her job loss into a lucrative employment opportunity. Don't think that you'll be so lucky.

Date: 2007-01-15 07:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jhfurnish.livejournal.com
You can't convince me that this is anything but Boss-generated propaganda. However, the multitude of American Morons will absolutely embrace it as feel-good cinema.

No, I won't bother seeing it. Did you fill your vomit bag? It sounds like you must've. I want to barf just reading your post. Blegh.

Date: 2007-01-15 07:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] andreazenith.livejournal.com
"She... utterly misses why getting fired is so dreadful for working class people, which is that a hell of a lot of folks are one paycheque away from homelessness."

*wrinkles nose* Isn't that the truth. =-.-= Bleah.

*hugs*
Anj

Date: 2007-01-15 10:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] andreazenith.livejournal.com
Oh good grief.

Like we needed any more propaganda putting down the poor. Or the working class. (Those two are interchangeable). *wry look*

*hugs*
Anj

Date: 2007-01-15 08:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sadie-sabot.livejournal.com
sounds like a shit movie.

sorry you're sick.

Date: 2007-01-15 06:42 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
being at work sick is the worst, almost as bad as beig sick on your vacation.

Date: 2007-01-16 04:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] retinal-strain.livejournal.com
I was sick at work today too. I popped a couple of cold relief pills in the morning, but took the night-time ones by mistake and spent most of the day all tired and dopey despite considerable coffee intake.

Date: 2007-01-15 03:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lopukhov.livejournal.com
OMG Lansing. That's my hometown. Just last summer my heart sank when I passed by the General Motors plant right by my house, and I saw it had been gutted out.

For the longest time, there was a barricade, so nobody could see what was going on behind the walls.


What made it worse for me was that in 2001, the engineering scholarship program I was in (starts in high school) took a field trip to that very GM plant, and we talked with the workers about auto-production. That was the first time I heard "ergonomics". A guy who had been on the production line was telling us about how he has been a welder for 25 years, and they just got these new welding tools that were more ergonomical, so that his back doesn't hurt anymore from having welded 8 hours a day.

Date: 2007-01-15 07:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lopukhov.livejournal.com
It's the same kind of feeling you get when you watch that scene in the new H2G2, where a million Vogon spacecrafts surround the Earth and blew it up. With the sound effects, and all.

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