Film Writing

Print Essay: Anti-Capitalism and the Anti-American Dream

             I explored three different texts attacking the exploitations of capitalism as well as the mundane journey of the American Dream. I examined underlying messages and themes of Daniel Orozco’s short story Orientation, Fight club by chuck Palahniuk, and No Logo by Naomi Klein. In Daniel Orozco’s Orientation, he expresses his view that the societal influence in relation to careers causes one to be confined in an invisible, corporate prison. The cycle produced by a 9-5 job creates an existence that is stagnant and pointless. Orozco’s viewpoints reflect the ideas presented in the movie Fight Clubby Chuck Palahniuk. Fight Club does an amazing job of putting these thoughts into a visual arena, which enhances the viewpoints to an even greater extent. Both works make the argument that the career oriented lifestyle that is preached to the masses in modern society results in a mundane and robotic existence. No Logo goes on to find the source of this mundane existence and places the blame on corporations. Naomi Klein breaks her book into four main parts: No space, No Choice, No Jobs, and No Logo. No Space explains how large corporations market and how this marketing affects society. No choice explains how large corporations exploit their power into limiting alternatives and allowing competitors into the market place. Klein then goes on to explain these large corporations outsource factory jobs to exploit the lack of labor laws in other countries only leaving service jobs that require no creativity and lack chances for advancement. In her final section she discusses current and past movements against some of these huge corporations.

      Orientation approaches the subject from a Big Brother perspective. A worker who is lower level management who is training a new employee vocalizes the words that are written. This diction that Orozco uses gives the Big Brother feel to the story. The direct denial of any privileges is the first sign of an overly controlled environment thus attacking the ideals of an anything’s possible American dream also lacking its basic premise of freedom. From the beginning, Orozco presents an environment with numerous regulations with this rule from the trainer: “Never answer your phone. Let the Voicemail System answer it.” (Orozco 38) After the trainer mutters various orders such as this, he states that if this rule is broken, “you may be let go.” This statement alone displays how the corporate world views employees. In a politically correct sense, this is how you tell someone they might be fired. The undertones presented in that phrase convey how replaceable and trivial the position that employee fills truly is. If the majority of positions require no dexterity, then individualism is not a contributing factor of the work force. This displays a culture that is one unit, working for one purpose. The big brother aspect is present in that regard as well as with the statements made about the Unit Manager. “This is Matthew Payne’s office. He is our Unit Manager, and his door is always closed. We have never seen him, and you will never see him. But he is here. You can be sure of that. He is all around us.” (Orozco 37) This description stands out more than any other in the story. The trainer’s rhetoric throughout the story could certainly be deemed abnormal, but this quote surpasses that level of oddity a great deal. “He is all around us.” The author writes this to hint at the idea that the “corporate” branch of a company, controls everything in an employee’s life.

            Fight Club takes this same argument and presents a viewpoint that is even more raw and gritty. The movie chronicles a man’s “rise” from corporate slavery to anarchic individualism. The main characters start a Fight Club where other men looking for a release come to fight in a controlled environment. It reveals to the viewers the concept that all of us are looking for something to distract us from the monotonous burrows we’ve dug ourselves into. Fight Club, unlikeOrientation, attempts to find a solution for this problem. The narrator’s alter ego explains his philosophy in a bar scene, “Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.” (Fight Club) As the movie progresses, the main character no longer has any need for conformity or social acceptance. He revels in the disgust his black eyes and bruises from fighting provoke from strangers. Fight Club shows that a common aspiration is to land that dream job and make that six figure salary and then happiness is inevitable. In one of the first scenes of the movie, the narrator’s apartment is shown with all of the furniture that he has bought from magazines. That scene and dialogue throughout the movie connect the idea of consumerism and happiness. The narrator summarizes this mentality well when he states that “I had it all. I had a stereo that was very decent, a wardrobe that was getting very respectable. I was close to being complete.” However, after that job is landed and the repetition begins to set in, individuals realize that this is it. There is nothing more. This realization does not promote happiness as expected, and everyone that works that 9-5 doesn’t know how to disrupt the vicious cycle.

            These realizations link directly into the main premises of No Logo. No Logo attacks the problems with big corporations branding and marketing so that it permeates through society. Companies link themselves with the youth by connecting to them using ideal images and branding with sport stars.  By pervading society with these messages people begin to place value into external images and nothing else. This gives these large corporations power to exploit consumers and workers. Their power makes it so there is less competition and choices for people. Then many companies outsource factory jobs and the few jobs that are available still or mostly service jobs that offer little room for advancement and no use of creativity. Finally, she addresses current movements that are working to fight against and bring attention to the faults of major corporations and their control over our lives. No Logo seeks the questions raised by Orientation and Fight club and puts a cause to why the American Dream does not satisfy the needs of man.

            The statements made by the trainer in Orientation reek of lifelessness. “This is our kitchenette. And this, this is our Mr. Coffee. We have a coffee pool, into which we pay two dollars a week for coffee, filters, sugar, and CoffeeMate. If you prefer Cremora or half-and-half to CoffeeMate, there is a special pool for three dollars a week.” (36) Although this seems so normal, which is the author’s intention, it hints at an underlying purpose. Being that it is a “pool” implies that everyoneneeds this specific item. It is a necessity to have in this office atmosphere. It ties in with the idea that people go to work, then go home, watch TV, sleep, then go to work. Rinse and repeat. These workers need something to get them legitimately energized so they can complete their work every single day. Something that makes it so waking up that morning to go work another shift for eight hours is almost okay. In consequence of having such a strict routine, there is hardly enough time in the day for one to explore creative goals. They are limited to the fatigue they endure from their job and continually push other desired goals aside for another time when they are “free”.

            There is a scene in Fight Club where the main character’s other personality, Tyler Durden, takes a convenience store clerk to an empty parking lot behind the store. He proceeds to put a gun to his head, ask him what he wanted to do with his life, and then proceeds to tell him that he will check back with him in six weeks and if he is not on track to completing his goal, he will kill him. This action by Tyler is very radical and reckless. The quote that follows shows the surprising inherent nobility his actions possess. “Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life.His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.” (Fight Club) Fight Club displays through this scene that a wakeup call is necessary to solve this hidden problem.

            These wakeup call could be the only way to free people from a job that they feel like they are stuck in. As described in Orientation and also stories of people interviewed in No Logo who realizes that their situation is bad but feel trapped in their current position.  Klein interviewed Nagrampa the zone administrator about employees. He states "But in the case of those from the provinces, from the lower areas, they are not exposed to the big-city lifestyle. They feel more comfortable just working in the factory line, for, after all, this is a marked improvement from the farm work that they've been accustomed to, where they were exposed to the sun. To them, for the lowly province rural worker, working inside an enclosed factory is better off than being outside." Klein then asked dozens of zone workers about what Raymondo Nagrampa had said. "It's not human!" exclaimed Rosalie, a teenager whose job is installing the "backlights" in IBM computer screens. "Our rights are being trampled and Mr. Nagrampa says that because he has not experienced working in a factory and the conditions inside." Salvador, was beside himself: "Mr. Nagrampa earns a lot of money and he has an airconditioned room and his own car, so of course he would say that we prefer this work —it is beneficial to him, but not to us.... Working on the farm is difficult, yes, but there we have our family and friends and instead of always eating dried fish, we have fresh food to eat" (No Logo). It is easy to see that these people come for these jobs and get stuck working them with no real chance to improve. These large corporations continually exploit people in a cycle using profits to market and create demand then their profits to eliminate competition. With a lack of choices people end up also having limited jobs available and being stuck in a mundane position. 

These works present the same ideas yet elaborate on them in very different ways. Orientation is much more understated when approaching the topic of blind conformity. Fight Club directly juxtaposes the opposing viewpoints and expresses this conflict as an internal conflict with the main character. He develops an alternate personality who carries out all of the actions he wishes he could do. This is the human element of him untouched by society, while his real self struggles to break away from the societal machine. Orientation shows how numbing a corporate lifestyle can be and that although we all might seem normal on the outside, everyone has their quirks and idiosyncrasies. No Logo however, seems to find the cause to the problems that both Orientationand Fight Club are attacking.  It is interesting to see how the American dream somewhat created the drive for capitalism yet, as we examine further the problems with this ideal creates the actual issue. By attacking capitalism and questioning what the American dream leads to is the central issue amongst these three texts.

Klein, Naomi. No Logo. Knopf Canada: Picador, 2000. Print.

Orozco, Daniel. “Orientation.” Making Literature Matter. John Schilb, John Clifford. New York. 2009. 34-38.

Fight Club.  Fox Pictures. David Fincher.  Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Carter. Dvd. 1999.