My Unofficial Comment on a One-Night Only PuSh+ Presentation
American monologist Mike Daisey is a god. Two and a half hours passed in an instant. I definitely was glad I made an effort to get out to this one night PuSh+ presentation. Kudos to Norman Armour and the PuSh Festival for bringing it to a sold-out Vancouver audience at the Vancity Theatre.
In the days since I saw this show, I have started noticing news articles about manufacturing in China. Daisey's monologue ranges from his love of technology and design to the life of Steve Jobs to the rise and fall and rise of Apple to the reality of working in a 430,000 person factory in Shenzen where they make 52% of the world's electronics. Including Apple products.
I usually write a fairly short, pithy review. This performance is defying my best attempts. Part of me just wishes that I could be Mike Daisey. He makes a monologue seem so natural. It reminded me of when my dad took me to see Bill Cosby live – Daisey has that kind of compelling gift. But he doesn't tell the same stories.
I sat next to a friend - she left unimpressed and even angry. She believed that Daisey should truly be making a call to action... that he needed to tell the audience to stand up against working conditions in China. But I don't agree. He was doing something different. He was bearing witness to that which had been done and what he had seen with his own eyes. He was asking us to listen, to really listen and to open our minds to what the development of technology that we use every day means to Chinese men, women and children who live half a world away.
Technology and consumer goods surround us in North America. Manufacturing seems like magic. I have never been in a working factory. No one I know does repetitive labour for up to 16 hours a day or sleeps in a 10' x 10' room with 16 other people in hammocks hung from the wall. I have never seen a building where the corporation running it has set up nets intended to catch workers attempting suicide.
Yet I do own an iPhone. I do have multiple computers in my house – even one hooked up to my television which gives me a 50-inch screen for web surfing or YouTube viewing. I have a small cellphone graveyard which I've been meaning to recycle but I just haven't gotten around to running that errand. I bet most of this technology comes from China – I probably even own items that were made in the factories visited by Mike Daisey. You probably do too.
My partner Shane always says that Apple is a hardware company. He's right. That's why Steve Jobs killed the iPod Mini to bring in the iPod Nano (even though the Mini was a bestselling product which was released January 6, 2004 and discontinued September 7, 2005). That's why Apple is continuously updating its products. Apple needs to improve the products in order to sell new hardware. Despite Jobs' claim that Apple is a software company – most of their revenue is generated by hardware sales. And they are making products that have a limited use and despite the software upgrades to my iPhone 3GS, it's still not as good as the newer, fancier iPhone 4. So I want to buy the new one! Which was built in a factory in China by people who are treated like serfs.
Think about it. Mike Daisey sure is.
CREDITS: Created and Performed by Mike Daisey. Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory. A PuSh+ presentation at the Vancity Theatre.