What's interesting about Coal?

We watched part of a documentary about mountaintop removal, THE LAST MOUNTAIN.

Here's a link to the website to the movie.

I like this movie for a couple of reasons.  I'm going to skip my inclination to side with the filmmakers, because that's not something I can avoid or ignore.  I think that this movie does a good job of breaking the issue of mountaintop removal into manageable and understandable chunks - since I didn't understand it very well before this movie - and presents evidence or reasons for their position in relation to each of those parts.  For example, the movie points out that mountaintop removal is permitted partly because coal companies are required to return the mountain to its original state when they are finished removing the coal.  Then, they show a clip of a site after the coal company has allegedly returned the mountain to its original condition.  This becomes the logical beginning of a discussion about how coal companies manipulate the law to maximize profit.

There are some propaganda techniques evident in the film.  Clearly, some of the clips are intended to be heart-wrenching, sympathetic portrayals of union workers and protesters, and copious evidence of corporate wrongdoing.  But the film is unusually evidence-based, and I've seen other movies that present similar evidence against mountaintop removal.  They employ some breathtaking photography, lots of visual examples and contrast, and some rousing testimony from people on the "front lines."  I love that it's localized around one mountain (called Coal Mountain), and that the people around that mountain are the stars.

I think that this movie is on the leading edge of the current controversy around coal and "clean coal" technology.  I think that mountaintop removal is a horrible, destructive practice, and there is no question that coal companies are tearing apart wilderness for coal, and making false claims to defend their destructive actions.  These false claims are supported again and again by lobbyists, politicians, and the companies' employees.  It's a tragedy.

What's going to happen?

OCTOBER SKY and coal

Well, I watched this movie because it came up in the library database attached to the keyword "coal."  It's not really about coal, though it's set in West Virginia in a "company town," and the main character and his father are coal miners (or, in the case of the main character, work as a coal miner for a few months).  It's about someone struggling against unlikely circumstances to be successful in a way that people don't expect or predict.  It - or the director, Joe Johnston - sets the film in West Virginia, but that's more because of the "true story" that it's based on than because of any inherent need in the film for that setting.  Homer's dad could have been a steel worker, a dock worker, a farmer, just about anything that could be dangerous or boring, and it would also work.

I think this movie is relevant to the conversation about coal, though, and sheds light on the situation of coal mining that would not otherwise be noticed.  It's a mainstream, large-scale release of a film by a major studio (Universal) with some top-name actors (Jake Gyllenhall, though he wasn't a superstar yet, Laura Dern, and Chris Cooper), and several parts of the movie take place inside a coal mine in what appears to be a realistic depiction.  It's not friendly to the coal-mining industry, but it's also not friendly to unions, either.  It's that ambiguity about the setting that really makes it an interesting study for this topic.  

Here's a link to the IMDB profile if you want to see more about the film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132477/.  

Briefly, the main character's father, John Hickam (played by Chris Cooper) is a site manager or foreman at a mine in West Virginia.  He's grumpy, favors his older, football-playing son, and distrusts his youngest son's strange habits.  Later in the movie, after struggling with his son to contain an interest in rocketry, he is injured in a mine accident and sent to the hospital.  Homer, the main character (Jake Gyllenhall) is forced to start working at the mine, dropping out of high school.  The father recuperates, and begins working at the mine alongside his son, but Homer is inspired to return to work on his rockets and leaves his father behind.  

Homer doesn't seem to mind the job so much, though it is clearly not a good fit for him.  There's an aura of sadness (slow music, a shot of Homer staring up into the night sky watching a satellite as he descends into the coal mine), but it's not clear if we should be sad because he doesn't belong there, or because no one does.  When the mine workers are on strike, the abusive father of one of Homer's friends takes a shot at John and misses - he seems to be aligned with the union, and the union doesn't look too good when men like that are mixed with it.  There are good friends and honest workers among the miners, but none seem to favor Homer until he enters the science fair and becomes a town favorite.  

At the end of the movie, we discover that John died of black lung disease about fifteen years after the events of the movie took place.  All of Homer's friends - and Homer - escaped coal mining, and that appears to be a good thing.  Clearly, people aren't supposed to want to be coal miners.  But Homer lionizes his father, in the end, and the movie seems to make his father into a kind of blue-collar hero.  Even though the father died of a work-related illness, he was well-suited to his position and became a hero through his work.  He was fulfilled in that job, and - we seem encouraged to think - many people can be happy as coal miners.  Even though not everyone wants to be a coal miner.  

So, to summarize this into a pithy little statement: people ought to be allowed to choose what they do with their lives.  There is honor in everything, from rocketry to coal mining.  Honor comes from finding where you belong, and sticking to it.  Something like that.  

Coal mining is just another job, and some people choose to do it, and do it well.  Unions are not part of this equation.  Neither, it seems, are corporations, really.  It's all about individual choice.  

Filmic Thinking? - Key Points of Film as Research

Coal Company thugs bullying a union family in Matewan

I think it's important to notice that video (especially long, narrative films like these, and most especially fictional representations of actual events, like Matewan) can seriously manipulate - even mislead - our thinking about an issue or an event.  There are a lot of ways to construe this story, and a lot of things that you can say about coal mining and its checkered history.  Fictional films always present events from a specific perspective (a particular camera angle), and that choice always affects the representation of events.  Who is in the center, for example, in the above image from the film Matewan?  The sheriff (the guy with the cigarette and the gun on his belt, played by David Straithairn) is in the center of the frame, alongside the slightly-off-center Coal Company bully, who is speaking and directing the removal of these people's belongings from a Coal Company house.  This frame puts these two men at the center of the action, which will turn out to help with the next step, which is when the sheriff stops this forced eviction.

But if you move the frame a little to the left, you shift the focus to the young man with the suspenders and blond hair.  He becomes an important character because of the way the coal company men mock him.  (What a great depiction of bullying in this movie - the scene where the two coal men are sitting at the dinner table with the kid, his mom, and his grandma, and making fun of his preaching, even pulling a gun on him.)  If you do that, the whole scene shifts to the effects it has on the townspeople.  Shift to the right, and focus on the stocky guy with the suit - who is the other Coal Company thug in the town at the moment - and you make this "sidekick" character suddenly important.  Is he conflicted about their tactics?  Is he seething with hatred and prejudice against "hillbillies"?

The most important question, really, is this: who's standing next to that guy?  Who is outside the frame?  Who is left out of the picture?  And, why does the director - or whoever is deciding what goes into the frame - choose to leave these people out?

As soon as you ask that question, you start to realize that the whole film is deliberately and carefully constructed from a huge assortment of film, and that every scene - every image - every moment reflects a conscious, purposeful decision.  Someone has a message to convey, and the images - their order, their content - even the sounds that go with them - represent an attempt to convey it.  Film is no accident.

Roll that up with an understanding of bias and perspective, and you start to think about how important a director (and whoever is helping the director edit the film) really is.

Watching a movie like Matewan as a kind of research is a lot like reading a novel about coal.  It's a made-up story from someone's point of view, really just meant to entertain.  Watching a documentary about the coal industry is different, but it still represents a carefully crafted message, delivered with a purpose.  It's easier to forget that manipulation with film.  It's easy to forget that someone is holding the camera, and that someone else is cutting and putting scenes together for the final product.  Someone is controlling what you see, and we must be careful that we don't forget that when we watch a movie.