Lukas Buxton
Soc 101
Assignment # 4 The movie I choose to do my assignment on was Roger and Me, I have watched this video a few times now, once in high school in my AP English class, and twice recently, but my main reason for choosing it was based on some local news; recently Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law a very controversial bill, the “right to work” bill, which prohibits union agreements between labor unions and employers that can require employees’ to get a membership, which comes with a payment of union dues, all required in order to keep your job. This has a lot to do with the movie based on how the movie concentrates so much on the union for the first half of the documentary. Which can all tie in with how the movie shows the repercussions of capitalism as well as corporate and government issues that conflict with the basic needs of people and their families. This documentary, written, directed and produced by Michael Moore, gives a liberal humanistic view on General Motors closing down of auto plants in Flint, MI in the late 1980’s. In a quote by Karl Marx about conflict theory, he says “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another” where as you could compare the owners of General Motors exploiting the workers, to GM being the freemen, and the workers
