Justice and Geographies of Power

 Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)

"We've been put in jail, we've been shot at, we've had dynamite thrown at us." So went the lives of those picketing miners and their families in Harlan County, Kentucky, in the 1970's. 

Being from Knox County, Kentucky -- just one more mountainous mining area -- coal-mining has always been a fascination and a disgust for me. It was my first brush with the powers of corporations and the ceaseless desire for energy, and the disrespect for a part of the country that shaped the foundation of modern-day America astounds me to this day. But it happened because it had to, because power was a necessity, because what were the poor and uneducated mountain-men going to do? It was ecological stereotyping to the highest degree. 

Harlan County, U.S.A., is a difficult film to watch primarily because it is real. Director Barbara Kopple and her team do a fantastic job of foregoing narrative touches to bring us a slice of life that could never be replicated in a script or with special effects artists. The words of these people and the events they experience strike hotter than fiction because they spark with lived wrongdoings, with all the anger and bitterness of losing loved ones and their own wellbeing. 

"Is it a fact that the Duke Power Company maintains housing for its employees that has no water and no indoor plumbing?" it is asked at one point, to which they reply cruelly, "Yes, sir." But this was merely the beginning of the hardships for miners, in a field naturally dominated by them. One often hears of "company scrip" with some level of incredulity, but to many miners, the idea of being paid in funds that could only be used at the company's own store was commonplace, a stark reality that such companies had what could almost be considered sovereign power over these people. In any case, surely they wielded a type of biopower. The famous "gunfire-under-darkness" scene, in which shots were fired at strikers before dawn, is but another striking example of the suppression of a people that wanted nothing more than respect and their own rights restored. In Roger Ebert's review of the film, he notes Kopple as claiming, "I found out later that they planned to kill us that day."

Though it may at first seem an impossibility that such events were openly occurring in America only a handful of decades ago, one only has to look at other examples, such as redlining, to realize that we are still uncomfortably close to our shameful pasts. Look to Son of Saul for a European example of human atrocities, if you wish, or Fruitvale Station for something even more recent. All too often, I feel we believe we are invincible, too far removed to revert back to the savage ways of our ancestors. It pays to remember that we are not so morally advanced, as a whole, as we may wish to believe. 

Harlan County, U.S.A. (Roger Ebert)

Film Festival: 'Harlan County' (The New York Times)