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Beneath the scenes and dialogue of “Up in the Air” are profound
messages. The film points out the hypocrisy in the rationales attempted
by its central character (George Clooney plays a man who travels around
the country on contract to help various corporations fire their
employees). It shows the personal hollowness resulting from his lack of
ethics, and the shallowness of the satisfaction he enjoys from his
unencumbered lifestyle.
The self-deception of Clooney’s character breaks down when his
working routine produces a tragic but predictable outcome. This is
fostered by the humanity he sees and comes to respect in the reaction
of his apprentice, the ties to family and community he comes to
understand during his trip home, and his realization that the woman he
would like to share that with has already established it without him.
The achievement of this film is that it draws a neat and
orderly picture of a dehumanized man and then demolishes it by the
simple yet deeply important lessons of everyday life. Viewers can sense
an underlying message and leave the theater dwelling on questions of
what defines us as people.
The answer the film provides is that we cannot escape our
connections to our fellow workers, communities, families, lovers, and
even strangers whose worth as more than the bottom line they initiate
can never be avoided. No film in recent memory does that in terms so subtle yet clear as “Up in the Air,” and that is
its strength.
The film raises important issues that are ever present in basic
social ethics: How do we define ourselves—as individuals and as social
beings? Do we have responsibilities to our fellows, those closest to
us, and those who we meet in passing? Can we live fulfilling lives
while remaining aloof from the emotions that tie us to our social environment?
For us, as socialists, that has its most obvious application in
our relations with our fellow workers, because as Marx pointed out,
work is a primary social interaction. The nature of our work relations
has much to do with why the proletariat is the revolutionary class at
this stage of history.
While the lead character in the film is more allied to
management than the working class, his humanity brings home the lesson
that we all have a fundamental solidarity with everyone around us. It
is a good and necessary message to send to the audience, as the
alienation that increases with the increasing contradictions of
capitalist production and its particular manifestations in our culture
poses this question more acutely.
Much could be contributed to the general happiness of people if
we had a society based on a cooperative ethic as opposed to a
competitive one. This film seems to deliver that message in a more
basic way—understated, not specific, but meaningful and important
nonetheless.
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