Seasons In The Valley

I went to see Seasons In the Valley to be a good new local to the Hudson valley. All I knew was that it was about migrant workers on Hudson valley farms. An organic farmers cooperative was showing it as a fundraiser. I thought: 'hell yeah! way to be political!'

I assumed, like a colleg-y liberal, that any film about migrant workers would be critical, a film about globalized labor and human rights. It turns out a distinct half of the audience agreed with me.

I chuckled to myself as I picked a seat: 'oh, look at this age segregation. young folks in the back...those cool kids...and old folks in the front.' I sat with the old. The movie started late, to a disappointingly sparse crowd. The premise was this: It's just so great that Hudson valley apple farmers can hire men from Jamaica to do work that no local will do! what a beautiful symbiotic relationship! The enemy: the globalization of the food system, which makes Hudson valley farming an economic impossibility, collapsing this way of life that is noble for both the farmers and their workers. The film, it seemed, saw itself as capturing this beautiful slice of life just before it died.

I saw the Jamaican men's homes and children, built and educated with apple farm money. The farmers talked about how hardworking and reliable the Jamaicans are, and their wives waxed poetic about their apple picking skills (it's like watching ballet!) and the character of all Jamaicans (Jamaicans are just the salt of the earth!). It took me close to half the movie to realize that this jubilant tone was not a set-up for a deep, dark expose. The white American farmer's peachy, superficial praises felt condescending to me, and I craved for the film to name them as such. Instead, there was a critical-ish segment about overt racism that the migrants experience: cashiers who won't touch their hand when they give change, an old man who hit a migrant worker with his car and was let off with a low fee. The white farmers shook their heads and the Jamaican workers said basically whatever. white idiots...it's their problem. no reason for me to get bothered. I'm just doing what I have to do to support my family The racists were this anonymous other. not interviewed in the film, peripheral to the story.

I am unsettled. What biases made me assume that there was no positive story to tell about migrant workers? Why is it that I can't take these farmers praises of their hired help at face value? Why do I find these Jamaican men's attitude frustrating? I find myself wishing for them the privileges in life that would give them the option to get more pissed. I leave wanting to assert that globalization of food production is just one peice of the big problem, that globalized labor is a parallel, interconnected problem. But then, I don't have the facts to back myself up. I know that this movie is inaccurate. I know that there are great violations of workers rights that occur in the Hudson valley- hey, I had friends who did work about that in college! but I don't know enough to know what in this movie is actually wrong, besides a gut sense that no one is speaking entirely honestly for the camera...

When the lights come up, I realize that the audience segregation marks more than age. The film-maker, taking questions, points to a farmer featured in the film in the row in front of me. Two professors in the back row are PISSED and spew criticism about the responsibilities of representation, the need to acknowledge historical trends of oppression, the unacknowledged skewing of the interviewees comments by perspective and skin tone of the American film crew, and the root cause of compensation: if this extremely hard work was compensated fairly, Americans would do it. instead we exploit the hardships of the depressed Jamaican economy, without looking at how America makes that so, to get this 7-days-a-week backbreaking labor done.


oh be quiet! I find myself thinking at the academs, after a while. Let these sweet farmers have their rural lives. Their affection for their workers is offensively diminutive, yes, but to them this is radical, and you must admit it's progress. Let them send their grandchildren to college and be labor rights advocates.. These changes take time. And yet my attitude towards these farmers makes me feel condescending. Isn't respect believing that all people are capable of grasping the full truth of their reality? Isn't it my work, as a young person, as an artist, a person with access to great education, as a person at all, to try to make what I believe to be the larger contextual truth clear to any person in terms we can both understand ? Or what if the farmers are downright lying, and these are the very farms that are overworking, underpaying, exploiting, endangering their workers? I have no way to know.

One man asks why none of the Jamaican workers are here to see themselves on the screen. A woman asked why they didn't film at the Jamaican bar. There is a an all-white generational/cultural/class deadlock here, and I am sitting on the wrong side. I yearn to be some intermediary, but what I say comes out all rosy...in response one of the professors tells me there's a petition I can sign for fair farm labor laws, if I want something I can do to help.

That's not enough. There are a lot of idealistic rich young white signatures on that petition that don't really know what the situation is, because we only read about it. It's not our life.

I ask the filmmaker: isn't there a way you can present this film in such a way that it helps the community it's about make positive change? There is so much that is charged about this film, in what it includes and what it leaves out. How can you use that as an opportunity to inspire growth, change, awareness?

He says to me isn't that what we're doing now? I can't hide my dissatisfaction. This is a conflict, otherness-es in this rural college town are just being affirmed. no one is moving towards common ground.

But I like this film, I have no regrets about it. I set out to make the film I want to make and I made it. Now it's grown up, it's like a child that's gone to college. I'm not responsible for it any more.
Only now do I get mad. No. this can't be the way. Don't evoke your role as an artist, and say you're not responsible for the affects of what you do. Responsibility is your role. You got these two demographics in a room together to watch your film, which is a great and beautiful feat. Now its your job to do something with that, to do your little bit to make more peace.

But who am I? Hell, I sign the petition, but to me this is one in a litany of problems that I have only obscure or common-citizen connections to, that I can write about, read about online, but release as, ultimately, not my piece of work.

gulp

Hana said this winter: oh, you've already made the decision to be an artist. That is what you're doing, Rachel. you don't have a choice' Okay, okay, I guess you're right. Hana. Mom. Dan. Laura. Alison. people I respect deeply in every part of my life, and who I desperately want to be right.

But what does that even mean? With what time and space? With whose permission, and towards what goals? I know I don't have the answers, but I've just begun the first step of allowing myself to want.

I struggle with any cinematic narrative of what happens to me, much as, like anyone, I relish in sharing them. Stories about stumbling in to love and heart wrenching break-ups, about going far away to realize how much I love my home.

This is the one I am struggling with right now: that I have no choice but to call myself an artist. gulp. I did it. everything is better, everything, when at the end of the day I say 'lets go to the studio' and all my crap is there, even if all I do is make beautiful little drawings. Or if I do nothing. And despite the fact that it's still hard to get myself to work.

I guess I failed to channel my sense of self away from the things I make, I haven't had any authentic desire to try really be a teacher or a farmer or a student or a citizen in the same way as I, self consciously say, I am (gulp) an artist. I can do lots of other things but I am committing to wrestle with this label first.

And right before I left for the farm that turned out so awfully, my parents said I should use this room off the garage as a studio. I had actually forgot it existed, until they cleared it out this year and kerry commented on how beautiful it was. And it is -so- perfect and beautiful. you spoiled brat...of course a better thing than you would have thought to dream of was waiting there in your back yard.

My own contract for this position. Moore flow charts. Beautiful drawings. Hats to sell. Recycled notebook pamphlets. Birthday, graduation, anniversary presents. Curriculums for summer. Jobs for the fall. New Big Dreams. There is so much to make.