Mardi Gras – Made in Cinema

2005

Carnivalesque Films

R1 DVD

There is a “tradition” in Bourbon Street in New Orleans of throwing strings of beads to young women who flash their breasts at the drunken crowd of revellers. This “tradition” only started in 1978 and seems to have little to do with Mardi Gras itself – it’s just another excuse for holidaymakers to get drunk and behave in ways they wouldn’t do at home. “It makes me horny” explains one vacuous girl. The “tradition” is being spread to other venues and carnivals as well. Producer David Redmon asks some of the revellers if they know where the beads come from. “Don’t know, don’t care” is one drunk’s summing up. “Hey, it’s boobs for beads, man” is another.

The film then crosses to a factory in Fuzhou in the Peoples Republic of China where the beads are made. They are cheap, tawdry polystyrene or polyethylene products but there is a high labour content in each string of beads. There are also health risks. The factory is hot and dusty (up to 37 degrees Celsius), it’s not airconditioned, and the fumes from the heated styrene are carcinogenic. The factory’s owner, Roger Wong, makes about one and a half million U.S. dollars a year from his beads and other cheap rubbish. He sells the beads and trinkets to U.S. stores like WalMart who on sell them for about a dollar a string.

Roger is either the world’s greatest expert at self-deception or its most brazen liar. He claims to treat his workers like friends and family but the conditions his “friends” live under are horrendous. His factory is held up as a model of modern Chinese industry but it is a sweatshop - literally. Shifts are twelve hours long, day and night, but often extend to sixteen or more hours. Time off for meals is added to the working hours so a standard day is at least fourteen hours. If the girls fall behind in their quota they must often work longer hours to make up the shortfall and avoid being fined. These hours allow Roger to crowd the dormitories with one bed for two people. As one worker arrives off shift, another is leaving for the next shift. The amenities are basic. Shifts can be extended at Roger’s whim if there is a contract to be filled and unpaid overtime is common. Even the Sunday off can be cancelled if necessary to meet a contract. The workers can’t leave the factory grounds without permission so they must pay for their food at the company cafeteria. Ninety percent of the workers are girls because, says Roger, “females are easier to control”.

Roger also treats his “family” harshly when it comes to money. He talks of “punishment” as if his workers are little children. With the youngest around fourteen he may be right. Their pay is minimal – around six dollars a week – but will be cut if they fail to meet quota (5% cut), if they are caught talking during a shift or in the cafeteria (a week’s pay) or if they are caught in the boys’ dormitory rooms (a month’s pay cut). No wonder the factory is surrounded by barbed wire (Roger explains that it’s to keep people out, not keep the workers in, but it’s noticeable that the wire is built to slant inwards).

The series of fines seems to be more of a cost-saving measure than through any moral design. Roger claims to be a moral man but some of the factory goods are blatantly sexual. Although he says he pays the basic wage, the fines and unpaid overtime mean the girls wage is much less than that. One girl calculated that she earned about one cent for each twelve strings of beads she produced.

Roger also claims that he has had no problems with his workers but some time ago they went on strike over wages. They simply wanted no more unpaid overtime, no pay punishment, and Sundays off as a right, not at the management’s whim. Some of the leaders were arrested. A new deal was negotiated that promised to redress the workers’ complaints but in the end it meant even more hours for less money.

Why do the girls put up with it? One girl explained the reality. Most country families are desperately poor and can only afford to educate one member of the family. Even to achieve that takes great sacrifice. The other members must support the one receiving the education. Many young girls have no prospects in the rural villages so they seek jobs in factories and tolerate their harsh existence to send money home. The bead factory is at the bottom of the industrial hierarchy but other factories such as the clothing sweatshops are run on similar lines and are only marginally better. The factories are the only practical source of income for a young unmarried girl in rural China. Similarly, without the pool of sweatshop labour the factories could not exist. It is the exploiter class of people in the middle, like Roger Wong, who make and keep the real money.

The film doesn’t draw conclusions about this. It lets the workers and Roger speak for themselves. I have to wonder if conditions in the early U.S. car assembly lines were that much different. I would even bet that the Chinese conditions closely parallel the factory conditions in early industrial Europe. China still has a long way to go before it can afford the same conditions as U.S. workers receive. The increasingly restive workforce may be able to force changes in the system but it will take time.

The final scenes are the saddest. The street cleaners have moved into Bourbon Street and are cleaning up the rubbish from the night before. As well as the bottles, vomit and beer cans, the sweeper truck has its brushes clogged with strings of discarded beads. The products of so much hard work and sweat are just rubbish in the gutter.

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