It's do-able, but it ain't gonna be purdy

Here's the centerpiece rant from Ray McKinnon's 2001 short The Accountant:

It's brilliant, actually. One world, one culture, one corporation, whatever you call it.

First they take way the little man's ability to produce his own food, by devising a system by which he has easy access to credit on easy terms. Once they get him hooked, then they change the rules. Suddenly they want their money and they want it yesterday.

So the farmer works harder, plants more crops, adds more hogs. But then like magic the price drops -- supply and demand, they say. He's offered a hundred an acre for what cost him two hundred to grow! The greater his yield the further he goes into debt with them banking corporations 'til he's drowned by it.

That's when a farming corporation comes in and takes this fella's land, leaving him with no choice but to go into town to work for some manufacturing corporation. Or retail.

But they aint' done with him. 'Cause see boy, this farmer still has his culture, and that scares 'em. His roots, based in independence, even rebelliousness, his country-ness, if you will.

So what do they do about that? Well that's where them multimedia corporations step in. They begin to bombard their new company man with caricatures and stereotypes of hisself. Gomer Pyle, Dukes of Hazzard, Beverly Hillbillies, Hee-Haw, so on and so forth until finally he can't trust his own reality. He don't know what it is. He starts acting country instead of being country! One day he'll be like Scottsman who puts on his kilt once a year to celebrate his Scottishness!

Until finally this man, this farmer, who once worked on the land and with the land, can be controlled. So he won't question his purpose in making rivets, or sitting in front of a computer screen from 9 to 5 five days a week for 40 years until he gets downsized and dies.

Or worse. Takes his severance pay and retires to Branson, Missouri.

And here's the last line:

If a man builds a machine and that machine conspires with another machine built by another man, are those men conspiring?

This 38-minute film can be had at BuyIndies.com.

Comments

[Janet]

I liked this film too. Dark and funny and so quotable. Plus, it's beautifully composed, with lots of attention to framing and color. A saucy little after-dinner treat.

[Daniel]

Funny. That's how I describe you to the boys at the bar.