Mardi Gras: Made in China
Most people don’t care where they come from. Most people only care that an effortless pitch of a set of hideous synthetic beads will be returned with the lifting of a shirt and the baring of breasts. The truth behind where the beads were fashioned isn’t of any concern to the thousands of drunken and farcical revelers who frequent New Orleans’ Mardi Gras celebration each year.
The beads have been traced to the Mardi Gras celebration from the late 19th century. The most common form was made of glass and featured many colours. Originally made in Czechoslovakia, the production of the majority of the beads moved to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally China after the free market took hold on the mainland.
David Redmon’s 2005 film Mardi Gras: Made in China highlights the assembly of beads for Mardi Gras in a small factory in Fuzhou, China, and contrasts it with the way in which the beads are used in New Orleans.
An impressive look at the effects of globalization, Mardi Gras: Made in China is a documentary that relies on the human stories and highlights inquisitiveness over talking heads. There are no purported “experts” in Redmon’s film; there are only the factual stories of Mardi Gras revelers and Fuzhou factory workers. The contrast is disquieting and discomforting.
This film focuses in on the true stories of the factory workers and offers exceptional access to a bead-making factory. The working conditions are bleak, the lifestyles of the workers are appalling, and the chronic pledge of “punishment” for any bad behaviour on the job is unsurprisingly intimidating.
Factory workers make approximately a penny for every twelve strands of beads they create, while in America the beads vend for about one to twenty dollars a strand. Most of the strands of beads are left behind, done in on the New Orleans streets and swept up by rubbish collectors after Mardi Gras concludes.
Redmon’s documentary spends time with the owner of the Fuzhou factory, a man named “Roger” who seems legitimately proud of what his beads are used for and seems to believe his workers enjoy the conditions and have good lives.
A fleeting look at the workers belies a different story, conversely, as the 15-plus hour days at ghastly wages in the company of perilous machinery and noxious chemicals showcase a less-than-admirable place of work. And a “No Talking” rule, enforced under threat of removing a full day’s wages, seals the deal. Don’t even think about getting together with a member of the opposite sex, as the punishment for that “crime” is a month’s wages.
Contrast the reality in Fuzhou with the actuality in New Orleans: Mardi Gras revelers hop up and down the crowded streets with countless strands of unsightly plastic beads, unmindful of where the artificial crap came from and ready to run from anyone threatening to “ruin their good time.” When Redmon does corner some individuals willing to see the Fuzhou conditions and where their beads came from, the results are often overwhelming.
It’s hard to ignore the terrible contrast between the wounded and bloodied overworked hands of a young Chinese girl and the ostentatious grins of bare-breasted bleached blondes.
Back in Fuzhou, the workers find it hard to believe that the beads they made are being used in such a way. “They’re so ugly,” one worker says of the beads. Other workers chuckle and giggle at the concept that their craftsmanship is being utilized to acquire a second-long flicker of bareness. It all seems so preposterous to them. I can hardly blame them.
But Mardi Gras: Made in China is not about shutting down the New Orleans festival and it’s not about guilt trips. It’s simply about equality. Redmon’s piece isn’t unforgiving or hypercritical; it simply utilizes human stories to expose the truth about the ostensibly capricious plastic beads that are so thoughtlessly tossed and wasted starting on Twelfth Night.
