Review of American Factory (2019) by Jordanlayton — 27 Apr 2020
This Netflix documentary about a Chinese glass company opening a factory in a US town whose main factory shut its doors years ago was fascinating, if not particularly compelling. I have a very hard time believing the Chinese business culture that was portrayed in this movie.
When Fuyao (the Chinese company) was shown training 200 workers how to deal with Americans, the sweeping stereotypes and generalizations these training directors would use seemed ridiculous to me. I would have liked to see a Chinese culture expert of some sort brought in to speak on that and other cultural differences shown in this doc that came off so one-sided.
What this doc boils down to is a cultural difference in the way workers perceive employment. Do you live to work? Or work to live? That is the core of this story. Throw in a thread about unionization and a tag at the end about automation, and you probably have a good idea of how this one goes.
The story of this factory out of water is incredibly intriguing. My only gripes are with how seemingly one-sided the portrayal of the Chinese is and how the issue of automation is just tagged on in the last 5 minutes.
This review of American Factory (2019) was written by Jordanlayton on 27 Apr 2020.
American Factory has generally received very positive reviews.
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