Beijing Bicycle and a Degree of Futility

I remember the first summer I worked at Starbucks. I had taken time off school to get the job, and by May I had completed my training to become a certified barista. A bonus to having completed training was being able to collect tips for working non-training, real shifts. Suddenly, I had thirty dollars in my hand, cash. I bought a pair of shoes. They were lovely, with a silver-grey strap and a rhinestone ring ornament. And they were 100% mine, my first luxury item purchased as a working citizen. When the shoes disappeared one afternoon, I was heartbroken and angry. I found out later that my cousin had borrowed them to complete her own outfits. Bitch.

There is something about the emotional satisfaction that material items will give a person. To me, those shoes marked that I had accomplished something; their value was far beyond the twelve dollars I used to purchase them. Those shoes were the mental breakdown I had when I chose to take a semester off school, the ten job applications I filled out in December, the half-dozen interviews that were never followed up, and the three months of training I endured after finally being hired at Starbucks.

For protagonist Guei in Beijing Bicycle, this bicycle is one hundred times more valuable than my pair of silver shoes.

The opening scene of Beijing Bicycle sets the tone for the whole story perfectly. Several country boys introduce themselves by name and origin, smiling and laughing, adorably nervous. They are unique individuals trying to find a place in the world with new opportunities. Immediately following this introduction, their manager strips them of their identities and humanity by giving them hair cuts and uniforms. Now, the boys represent the company, not their own interests.

Guei does not give up the bicycle to the bullies.

Four of the initially named boys fade into the background, further emphasizing the harsh class divide as the story focuses in on the protagonist, Guei. The theme of class divide runs through the whole plot as many of the Guei begins the cutthroat dance of furthering their circumstances and is cheated out of opportunities by those above him in economic and social hierarchies.

During the manager's identity-stripping rant, the shrewd business man informs the new employees that, in order to pay for the company-issued bicycles, the company will claim an additional 20% on top of the 50% already taken from each young man's earnings per delivery. Each messenger boy earns only on commission when the pick-up and delivery of packages is complete. The steep cut in earnings breathes gross injustice on its own right, and the commission-based earnings makes a miniature shark tank within the messenger company. Not only is there capitalistic competition between this delivery company and the many in Beijing City, the Manager pits each man against each other within the company.

In his article, "Where Did The Future Go?", Randy Martin categorizes the messenger company's behavior as securitization, debt in the guise of security. Martin refers specifically to the practice of home and car mortgages; for Guei, the bicycle puts him in debt, but it's a debt that secures his job with the company. The bicycle equals work equals money equals the potential for a better life than what he might experienced in the Chinese countryside as a farmer. The messenger company's capitalism more resembles the broken feudalism seen as recent as the sharecroppers in the American South. The wealthy land owner lends land to former black slaves for a percentage of the produce; sometimes that land went right back to the plantation owner after the farmers were cut or cheated out of the land.

This enslavement of the less fortunate is not isolated to a hundred years' past or across the Pacific Ocean. Securitization is what the American economy thrives on, especially in public education. A recent poll by NPR, college graduates were asked simply the subject of their bachelor's degrees. Overwhelmingly, college graduates pursue business or medical degrees on the fundamental of securitization: will this debt or investment get me a job after I've finished? It's the butt of liberal arts majors' jokes, the potential for work post-graduation, but the issue is as real as an empty pantry. Time and money and physical prime are given to the education corporation, but what is the student going to get out of it? Worse, whether or not the student gets a job after graduation, they must continue paying for the bicycle for the rest of their lives.

"A Degree of Futility" by Austin Smith

Works Cited

Beijing Bicycle. Dir. Xiaoshuai Wang. Taiwan Arc Light Films, 2001. DVD.

Bui, Quoctrung. "What's Your Major? 4 Decades Of College Degrees, In 1 Graph." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 09 May 2014.

Martin, Randy. "Where Did The Future Go?" Class Handout.  

Thoughts on Capitalism, A Love Story

In Michael Moore's Capitalism, a Love Story, Moore is constantly highlighting the fact that big money corporations are focused on devaluing people in order to accrue profits from consumers. With labor being the largest "obstacle" between the businesses and their profits, I'm wondering when the documentary will stop objectifying people like the banks and business have done.

I'm curious to see if Moore will acknowledge the problem in the education system. How are we going about preparing kids for this apparent future where their work will be devalued?

We're sending them to college.

In order to offshore their profits, corporations need to ensure that there is no one left in the US (where the rights supposedly are) to demand places in the labor force and the livable wages they deserve. They're lucky; they have the base of the "American Dream" to build this culture on. They tell each child, "Hey, you with the face! You know what you need? College! Stay in school! For, like, ever. Get in debt. But that's okay. The more school you get means you're this much more likely to get a better job afterwards, and then you can spend the first few decades of that career paying us back, not spending the money one yourself for your hard-earned efforts. It's gonna be good."

No one wants to be a laborer. No one wants to garden. Let's even take away the rights of those who do clean and care for us by trying to deport them because those are our jobs we don't want to do.

A Politically Incorrect Rant about Marriage Equality

The Supreme Court of the United States has been reviewing the constitutional validity of California's Proposition 8 for the better part of today.

Proposition 8 declared that only marriage between a man and woman was to be recognized and validated in the state of California. Just over half of voters in the state agreed to this definition of marriage. I was not one of them. 

I do not regret my decision to vote for the definition of marriage to remain between a man and a woman in the mere fact that my personal beliefs about biology, culture and religion stand behind this agreement. However, I do sincerely regret that I voted against the happiness of many who dwell in my state. And, at the core of it, my own beliefs are not honored in the state's definition of marriage as well.

I believe that marriage is a promise between man, wife and God, a life-long commitment and partnership between two people to uphold a set of ideals in a community, to unite in personal decisions, and to pass these ideas on to another generation - their children. 

What makes me regret my vote? My definition of marriage has nothing to do with the state. It has to do with community and interpersonal relationships, the keeping of vows, the raising of children. But not a bit of it has to do with the state of California or the Unites States of America. I see marriage as a personal decision to unite my life with someone else, and that the binding of that tie is the will of God. 

I fully believe in the separation of Church and State, and in that, I feel like the State should not have a definition of the word "marriage" as it pertains to personal and religious agreements. 

Unfortunately, what I want requires a redefinition of culture. The argument for marriage as an historical institution that honors the union between man and wife is valid up until people bring the word "love" into the argument. While Americans have been marrying "for love", marriage is truly a business, and the institution of it as a business is the real history of its millenia-long establishment. 

Women were not people; they were commodities that produced more commodities. Women were bought from their fathers and sold to other men to continue life as was known. A father got rid of his burden, giving her to another man who promised to take care of her in exchange that she properly service his needs. Marriage was not about love. It was about money.

That's not today, right? Hahahahaha! What's the number one reason people get divorced? What's on a single woman's criteria for a husband? Money. Marriage by law is honest to goodness about money. 

Separate marriage from money. Separate the Church from the state. Get rid of entitled bigots from either side. Make a vow genuine. Love truly.

Get the state out of my marriage, get the church out of the government.