Ken Roach is undoubtedly one of the greatest narrators in contemporary cinema. As a director, he and his comrades have been telling the life and emotions of the working class through the screen for decades, and deeply portraying the language and flesh of the TAs. In his recent work "Sorry, We Missed You", he again focused on the "rising" gig economy nowadays, using an ordinary family of four in Newcastle in the north of the United Kingdom as an entry point to show the workers under the influence of emerging forms of work Complex changes in the subject. It’s just that this work once again continues Ken Rock’s past pessimism. After extinguishing the last remaining hope of the protagonist’s family—family, we seem to be inevitably caught in the nightmare of the heroine Abbie: falling into the mud. Sand, sinking into the bottomless abyss.
1. Flexible authoritarianism: the situation of laborers in the era of "gig work"
The protagonist’s family was originally a quasi-middle-class family in the United Kingdom. The husband Ricky is a construction worker. The family is harmonious and bought his own real estate. However, the quasi-middle-class family was hit hard by the economic depression that began in 2007. The TAs soon lost their original home, and Ricky also lost his job. They can only rely on his wife Abbie to take care of the family to support the family. Under the introduction of a friend, Ricky entered a courier company for delivery work, which seemed to have seen a turning point for a family that was already in the quagmire of poverty. The film begins with a dialogue between Ricky and the manager. During the communication between the two parties, the supervisor clearly told Ricky: "You are not an employee, you are self-employed." Self-employment means that the worker has not obtained an employment contract. Work, on the other hand, does not get any corresponding protection, and is in an ambiguous relationship with the actual employer. However, we can later discover in the film that although Ricky and other colleagues are nominally "partners", the TA's labor is strictly controlled by the platform: laborers cannot decide their own transportation routes, let alone decide themselves. During his working hours, even Ricky took his daughter to deliver the goods with him and was criticized by his supervisor. At the same time, arbitrary and severe warnings and fines have become important means of disciplining workers, and supervisors can also expel TAs at will...
With the development of platform capitalism and on-demand economy, the traditional working day is no longer understood as a standard, stable 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. Instead, flexible, on-demand, and round-the-clock working hours. The length of Ricky's working hours in the film depends on when he can deliver the goods, while Abbie's work schedule is more flexible. She needs to change her schedule at any time according to the needs of the clients. When the conflicted Abbie family reached a rare reconciliation and happily ate and chatted, a call from the client forced Abbie to return to work immediately. It is worth noting that this "reconciliation" segment is the cruel reality shown in the film The only "oasis" inside, but was quickly overwhelmed by the desert of flexible work schedules.
Sociologist Jennifer Chun named this kind of work system flexible despotism. Under the seemingly flexible work schedule, workers have paid a great price for it. TAs cannot balance the relationship between life and work. And because of it, great anxiety and anxiety arose. Marx pointed out in "Das Kapital": "Extending the working day" is the instinct and means for capital to "suck" surplus labor and capitalists to exploit the working class. However, the movie's description of the current working day is consistent with the history of the 19th century observed by Marx. Big difference. Employers no longer use simple coercive methods to drive workers to extend linear working hours, but use work schedules that workers cannot control themselves. As Ricky's colleague complained to the supervisor: "I did it for 14 days, but you didn't even give me two hours." The reason for him "losing" these two hours was actually the rearview mirror of the truck. Being crashed, in this form of work, there is almost no room for workers to "make mistakes". Similarly, whether it’s Abbie’s call at the bus stop to discuss work schedules with an intermediary but return without success, or Ricky begging the supervisor to give him time to deal with his son’s troubles, "time" here has become a kind of hope for workers. The unattainable "gift".
2. Reproduction
In an interview, Ken Roach mentioned: “(Abbie’s) employer is an intermediary company. The care work is outsourced by the city council to an intermediary or a private medical company.” It is clear from this that the reproduction activity should have been undertaken by society. In today’s Britain, however, the responsibility has been transferred from intermediaries or outsourcing agencies to lower-level female workers. When Mollie, Abbie's client, called her for help, Ricky wanted her to contact the old man's family, but received a reply that he could not find them. At this time, Mollie's children may be working or entertaining. In any case, they obviously don't have to worry about caring work because of Abbie. But what about Abbie herself? When she was desperately talking on the phone with her children and husband on the way to work, we realized how the status quo of inequality has been seen through the movie: it is difficult for workers to support their families with few working hours, but TA Once they work, they lose the time to take care of their families. The upper-middle class can rely on hiring domestic workers/care workers like Abbie to solve reproduction problems, but the workers themselves cannot do both work and care at all.
Within Abbie's family, reproduction is also entangled with the gender division of labor under the influence of traditional patriarchy. When Ricky enthusiastically proposed a car purchase idea with Abbie and asked her to sell the scooter to make up the down payment, Abbie expressed disagreement. Ricky immediately said: "Your heart is too soft. Go to prepare lunch in the morning and take care of the children in the afternoon. I will take care of the rest." This is an obvious patriarchal symptom, that is, the depreciation of women's labor and reproduction. And this symptom has its long-term survival soil, Paul Willis wrote in the book "Learning to Work":
The reason why men’s salary pockets have always played a dominant role is not simply determined by the amount of money contained in them, but because the salary pockets signify that men win in a masculine way in the process of confronting the "real world." , And for women, this real world is too cruel." Therefore, the role of men in the family has always been the hard-working author and breadwinner, while the wife just takes on some "extra" work. Of course, the material significance of women's wages may usually be far greater than the meaning of "extra"; there is no doubt that the housework performed by women is also an indispensable part of the entire family economy. As a symbol of masculinity, the salary bag not only dominates the culture and economy of the family, but also constitutes oppression for men and women.
The phrase "I will do the rest" is enough to reflect Ricky's "salary bag" self-identity. He deprived his wife of property with his "unbelievable" masculinity and put her on a more difficult work schedule. He sees himself as the only "hard worker" in the family, the only hope for the family to get out of poverty, and then ignores Abbie's contribution to the whole family-whether it is her salary or the care of her children. Silvia Federici believes that the capitalism that governs this society is a systematic and structural depreciation of the value logic of social reproduction work. At the same time, the employer class has long historically benefited from unpaid or low-paid reproduction activities. profit. And the male laborers in the family undoubtedly reached a tacit understanding of complicity with the employers on this point.
The reproduction dilemma of laborers happens to be the help of power and hierarchy to complete reproduction. Brother Seb is the rebel in the whole film. He recognized the scams of education and diplomas early on, played truant, and used art to resist. During the dispute with his parents, he said: "University, like his brother Shapan, who owes 57,000 pounds, works in a call center, and stops drinking and sorrow at the weekend." However, although Seb himself has awakened, he undoubtedly does. Pointed out a social reality. Even if the children of ordinary working class get a diploma through the screening of the education system, they will not get a good job in the end, and will owe a debt. In addition, they can only engage in There is no real choice for low-end work. At the same time, the children of upper-middle class families can rely on the family's economic conditions and cultural capital to overcome their own reproduction barriers.
3. From the failure of politics to the failure of the family
As the Chiapas Dongfeng radio station keenly pointed out in the film review, the old people in Abbie's care showed us some kind of hope. Whether it’s the past years of the strike and workers’ connection with the old man’s photos, or the left-wing pro-labor work "Goodnight, Irene" hummed by an old man while combing Abbie’s hair, these seem to be calling for some resistance for today’s laborers. Ghost. However, no matter how exciting the past of the strike and how exciting the history of the connection is, nowadays, these old people have become veritable "lonely old people", the only thing they can rely on and talk about is isolation. Abbie helpless.
The previous generation of British workers did achieve impressive results in strikes. However, as the trade union movement suffered consecutive defeats in the 1980s, worker leaders frequently sold out the interests of workers, and the promulgation of anti-union laws allowed Thatcher to achieve a complete victory during this period. The workers did not realize the political connection in the movement, and in the end they could only retreat to the family and bury the glory of the past in their own memory. And the workers of the generation of Abbie and Ricky are at the end of this connection. They have no way to connect with society outside of the family. But when the family is unable to complete this mission, tragedy will inevitably happen. When his sister Lisa tried to stop him from working by taking Ricky's car key, the whole family was on the verge of disintegration. After Ricky felt the warmth of his wife and children, he still couldn't get rid of the shackles of work and risked his life. Risk and family block, return to the system that can't let him escape at all. Similarly, Seb's connection failed. He is more energetic and eager to break free from the shackles through the gathering and resistance of young people, but when his female partner ran away from home due to family reasons, he also lost his last hope of resistance.
Undoubtedly, the background of this film is pessimistic. Neither historical workers’ politics nor today’s workers’ families have missed the fate of “failure”. However, when we set our sights on reality, the glimmer of hope still flickered around us. Uber employees in the U.K. united and achieved a phased victory in the struggle over the identity of workers; and the Chinese riders also organized themselves together. , Launched a heroic battle with platforms and systems that exploited TAs. This time, TAs can no longer ask for help from their families, there is no historical fetters, and there is no need to bow their heads and pray to power. Next time, we may not miss the "victory" that belongs to all workers.
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