Report

True Lies About Apple and Foxconn

Gurman, Hannah

2012

Overview

[Mike Daisey]'s inquiry into the lived experiences of these workers approximates through theater something like Karl Marx's de-fetishization of the commodity, bringing to light the otherwise invisible labor that goes into the things we buy. The dramatic center of the monologue is an account of Daisey's encounters outside the gates at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen. He details conversations with factory workers who are pushed to the limits of human toil, reportedly working successive 12-hour shifts and sleeping in overcrowded dormitories, with as many as 15 bunks to a room. He recounts a conversation with a 13-year-old worker and another with a man whose right hand has been mangled by a machine and is part of an underground union. This story becomes the basis for a profound shift in Daisey's relationship with Apple and, ultimately, a plea to the audience to join Daisey in a concerted campaign to force Apple to do something about these deplorable working conditions. The lies involve details about what Daisey said he actually saw in China. \"As far as we can tell, Mike's monologue is in reality a mix of things that actually happened when he visited China and things that he just heard about or researched.\" For instance, Daisey claimed to have witnessed the overcrowded conditions at the dormitories, but his translator said they never went to the dormitories. He reported conversations with 12- and 13-year-old workers, but she said he only spoke with one girl who claimed to be 13 and never confirmed the age of her friends. The underground union members he met did not actually work for Foxconn, but for another company. He did meet a man with a garbled arm, but he fabricated a scene in which Daisey shows the man his iPhone, and the man looks at the device he made in awe, never before having held the finished product in his hand. As [Glass] put it, Daisy \"pretends that he just stumbled upon an array of workers who typify all kinds of harsh things somebody might face in a factory that makes iPhones and iPads.\" Many, including Glass, have argued that Daisey should have labeled his show fiction. I would agree, but only on two basic premises: one, that fiction doesn't mean entirely made up, and two, that we understand the politics inherent in the particular kind of fiction Daisey has created. The great 19th-century novelists like Balzac, Tolstoy, and even Dickens were critics of industrial capitalism, but they were also interested in teasing out the moral complexity of the system. Although parts of Daisey's show attempt to capture such complexities, the scenes in which he describes his trip to China do not. These moments belong instead to the tradition of melodrama and sentimental fiction. Think Uncle Tom's Cabin or Carmen. Like the characters in those works, the Chinese workers Daisey interviews become archetypes. Yes, they lack the complexity that is inherent in the actual attitudes of most Chinese factory workers. But Daisy is not a realist. Rather, he is a provocateur whose work prompts us to take heed of our own role in the global labor system.

• Publisher: Inter-Hemispheric Resource Center Press
• Subject: 19th century / Accountability / Attitudes / Capitalism / Chinese languages / Complexity / Criticism / Dormitories / Emotions / Fiction / Globalization / Industrial workers / Labor / Marxism / Mobile phones / Multinational corporations / Novelists / Portable computers / Teasing / Technology / Translators / Union membership / Workers / Working conditions