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I watched American Factory last week and was pleasantly surprised with how unopinionated it was.



It didn't have a narrator, which pleasantly surprised me, but was it unopinionated?

IMO I don't know.

Almost all docos are at face value garbage, David Attenborough for instance never turns the camera around to the human rubbish or half a town behind them and never shows the true brutality of animals. When you get to docos on humans things really fall apart.

American Factory pushes the divide between Chinese and Americans, but humour and brashness gets lost translation, not sure it existed as much as it implied.

What was interesting was American Unions which was eye opening how illegal behaviour in most of the West was so normalised.

But to be honest the biggest morsel was the 3 broken microwaves in the break room. WTF. One, understandable, but to get to three means a systematic break down in the supply chain looking after your workers.


There is certainly opinion whenever you choose to point a camera at something instead of something else, but I think in this instance the choice of no narration left the viewer with a bit more space to make their own interpretation than many documentaries do, which was refreshing.


I vouched for your comment. It doesn't seem to be excessively strident or controversial.

3 broken microwaves to me indicates either a strict cost control approach, or potentially sabotage. Worker sabotage is sometimes mentioned, but rarely pursued.




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