Our Banana Republic
In 2002, I taught the Argentine film La hora de los hornos (it was a media and narrative class–I wasn’t just proselytizing radical leftist ideology). The second most famous scene from the movie starts at 3:14, but it is very disturbing.
I thought the film would get students to think about the degree to which our visual culture prevented us from seeing the reality of everyday life.
But many of the students simply dismissed the film as irrelevant. Notably, they dismissed the many stats about inequality in Latin America and Argentina as unimaginable–impossible. In the US, the film didn’t have the same power. One student–who I think fancied herself quite worldly due to her family trip to Patagonia once (perhaps not incidentally, she was gunning for a Fox News internship at the time)–said something like, “if I lived in a country where 5% of the country had 40% of the wealth, maybe I’d be that angry, too. But I don’t.”
Of course, she does.
Or close to it anyway: in 2002, the top 10% of earners took 40-some % of earnings, and that number has neared 50% in 2006. Read more →