wal-mart

I went to see the opening of the Robert Greenwald’s WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price last night. I knew the situation was bad, but I honestly didn’t realize just how bad. It made me feel physically ill to see footage of how the workers in China are treated. It is chilling how corporations like Wal-Mart become entities with no element of human compassion to inform their decision making. It reminded me of the film The Corporation where corporation’s institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a psychopath accordinging to the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists.

Toward the end of the film the vision grows more positive portraying how mainstream Americans are working together to successfully stop Wal-Mart’s influence in several communities. Sometimes it can feel as if we live in a country with so much “freedom” but still we are powerless against such large and institutions policies and their propaganda. This film shows the power of using video to create dialogue, raise awareness and the possibilites of banding people together to speak for truth and the belief that the American Dreams is about making decisions from the heart and not just from the pocketbook.