RIFLE RANGE BOY

Severance (Miniseries, S1, E1-9, 2022) Director: Ben Stiller, Aoife McArdle Apple TV First, we were told that our vocation determines us; staying true to fulfilling the goals of our job is equivalent to being close to Divinity. But just see what it let us to - a social classification system that essentially pigeon-holes one's future by birth. Karl Marx then asserted that life is more than mere monetising one's labour. Man has to find balance in maximising time spent on Earth by indulging in things that excite him, maybe hunting, art, music, etcetera. And that led to Lenin extrapolating it to stir the working class to rise against their enslavers. Now we are told that we should find a life-work balance. We should not bring home the stresses of our workplace home and vice-versa. We cannot let our personal dilemmas affect our work performances as well. So what better way to severe these two intertwinings?  This is the premise of this miniseries. Workers of an unspecified company d...

Just to drive home the point of how media sells ideas and influences our way of thinking, look at Elizabeth Holmes's case. At 19, she dropped out of Stanford in 2003 with a one-tracked mind to prove to the world that her painless blood-testing device was going to revolutionise laboratory blood testing. Equipped with only computer knowledge without a medical background, she proceeded with her plan despite the detractors' scepticism. From the get-go, she was faced with opposition from the senior partners and staff employed in her company, Theranos. Through the benefit of her charm and goodwill, Holmes' company managed to secure close to $6 million in funds through crowdsourcing. The trouble was that the machine that Holmes was selling was not working. It gave wrong results most of the time, and the company ended up using other devices to do the tests instead. Workers who complained of its unreliability were sacked and were required to sign non-disclosure agreements to safegua...

American Factory (Documentary, 2019) Netflix The Industrial Revolution transformed countries from the Western World by leaps and bounds. That, together with colonisation, it improved their living conditions radically. In the USA, industries flourished. Immigrants trickled in from the world over to work to their last drop of sweat. Being employed was a cool thing to be. The first and second generations were hardworking. All the way things happened. The subsequent generations became complacent. They did not have to work to survive. Work became optional. After all, the country took care of everybody.  All these while, the countries in the East missed the Industrial Revolution bus. Not only were they thrown under the bus, they also had to be contended staying subservient supplying the raw material to fuel the big wheels of the machinery of their masters. Times change. The slaves, looking up at their masters all these while, have caught up. They have learnt the trade and ...