Bread and Roses (2000)
Director: Ken Loach
Staying true to what Nietzsche was saying about masters, slaves and master morality, the economic migrants put their lives at stake to get to be like their masters. They (the migrants) yearn to be like the masters; speaking their language, dressing like them and abandoning their age-old traditions. Whatever the masters did was good and their own self-depreciating. They achieve what they want, but they are still not happy. They have a kind of self-realisation. They realise that their back-breaking endeavours are only to make the masters' life comfortable at the expense of their (slave's) health and life. They rebel, demanding appropriate recognition and remunerations. That is when the boat starts to rock.
The masters do not like all these melodramas. After all, there are many other newcomers ever-ready to fit into the workers' shoes. The master's continuity of comfort and high-brow lifestyle is of supreme importance. Hence starts the mutiny.
This Ken Loach's flick on the social struggle of the little people brings to light the difficulties endured by the immigrant population. They persevere through struggles of illicitly entering the country, leaving their lives at the hands of ruthless smugglers, human traffickers, middlemen, corrupt border men, local agents and the system that is keen to shoo and step them over when the situation warrants.
The people they left behind in their countries look at them as a beacon of hope. Quickly, even before the immigrant gets their footing in their new place of sojourn, the requests for money keep on rolling. Feeling responsible or not to disappoint the people back home, they comply. They engage in many activities, what come may, legal or otherwise, morally right or not, all for the little comfort for themselves and their loved ones back home.
The migrants are in the spring of their youth. There is also a need for them of to fulfil their own obligations, to desire to satisfy their carnal needs and continuity of their progeny.
'Bread and Roses' is a leftist movie that tends to look at the workers' plight, especially the immigrant type. They are the one that the modern city is totally dependable on for its functionality but remain invisible to its inhabitants. They are the discards of society as was described by Goebbel's propaganda films, the vermin of the city. In this offering, immigrants of different ethnicities come together to rebel against their unscrupulous employers for unfair wages and their inhumane treatment in handling of their day to day needs. The janitors of a company stage a protest named 'Justice for Janitors' and their catchphrase is 'We want bread but we want roses too!'. This phrase is a verse from a 1911 poem which was used in a workers' strike by immigrant women back in 1912.
Sure, the employers took them out from the pit of hopelessness in the basket-case countries which the immigrants failed to develop. They gave them dignity, improvement of living standards to them and their loved ones. They gave them a new lease of life to their otherwise web of hopelessness. They would be rotting in hell if not by the so-called 'unscrupulous' employers. Now that they are big and strong and know the dealings of the world, they bite the hands that feed them, so say the employers.
But that is, after all, what human character is all about. It is human nature to always feel discontented. We always strive to attain another notch higher; scale a higher mountain, sail further to a deeper ocean and reach a more challenging frontier. That must be the innate survival skill that we must have acquired from generations before us which helped us to weather all challenges that lay ahead in life.
"Bread and Roses" is a political slogan as well as the name of an associated poem and song. It originated from a speech given by Rose Schneiderman; a line in that speech ("The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too." inspired the title of the poem Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim. The poem was first published in The American Magazine in December 1911, with the attribution line "'Bread for all, and Roses, too'—a slogan of the women in the West."The poem has been translated into other languages and has been set to music by at least three composers. Wikipedia.
Director: Ken Loach
Staying true to what Nietzsche was saying about masters, slaves and master morality, the economic migrants put their lives at stake to get to be like their masters. They (the migrants) yearn to be like the masters; speaking their language, dressing like them and abandoning their age-old traditions. Whatever the masters did was good and their own self-depreciating. They achieve what they want, but they are still not happy. They have a kind of self-realisation. They realise that their back-breaking endeavours are only to make the masters' life comfortable at the expense of their (slave's) health and life. They rebel, demanding appropriate recognition and remunerations. That is when the boat starts to rock.The masters do not like all these melodramas. After all, there are many other newcomers ever-ready to fit into the workers' shoes. The master's continuity of comfort and high-brow lifestyle is of supreme importance. Hence starts the mutiny.
This Ken Loach's flick on the social struggle of the little people brings to light the difficulties endured by the immigrant population. They persevere through struggles of illicitly entering the country, leaving their lives at the hands of ruthless smugglers, human traffickers, middlemen, corrupt border men, local agents and the system that is keen to shoo and step them over when the situation warrants.
The people they left behind in their countries look at them as a beacon of hope. Quickly, even before the immigrant gets their footing in their new place of sojourn, the requests for money keep on rolling. Feeling responsible or not to disappoint the people back home, they comply. They engage in many activities, what come may, legal or otherwise, morally right or not, all for the little comfort for themselves and their loved ones back home.
The migrants are in the spring of their youth. There is also a need for them of to fulfil their own obligations, to desire to satisfy their carnal needs and continuity of their progeny.
'Bread and Roses' is a leftist movie that tends to look at the workers' plight, especially the immigrant type. They are the one that the modern city is totally dependable on for its functionality but remain invisible to its inhabitants. They are the discards of society as was described by Goebbel's propaganda films, the vermin of the city. In this offering, immigrants of different ethnicities come together to rebel against their unscrupulous employers for unfair wages and their inhumane treatment in handling of their day to day needs. The janitors of a company stage a protest named 'Justice for Janitors' and their catchphrase is 'We want bread but we want roses too!'. This phrase is a verse from a 1911 poem which was used in a workers' strike by immigrant women back in 1912.
Sure, the employers took them out from the pit of hopelessness in the basket-case countries which the immigrants failed to develop. They gave them dignity, improvement of living standards to them and their loved ones. They gave them a new lease of life to their otherwise web of hopelessness. They would be rotting in hell if not by the so-called 'unscrupulous' employers. Now that they are big and strong and know the dealings of the world, they bite the hands that feed them, so say the employers.
But that is, after all, what human character is all about. It is human nature to always feel discontented. We always strive to attain another notch higher; scale a higher mountain, sail further to a deeper ocean and reach a more challenging frontier. That must be the innate survival skill that we must have acquired from generations before us which helped us to weather all challenges that lay ahead in life.
"Bread and Roses" is a political slogan as well as the name of an associated poem and song. It originated from a speech given by Rose Schneiderman; a line in that speech ("The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too." inspired the title of the poem Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim. The poem was first published in The American Magazine in December 1911, with the attribution line "'Bread for all, and Roses, too'—a slogan of the women in the West."The poem has been translated into other languages and has been set to music by at least three composers. Wikipedia.
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