The movie Biutiful (2010), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, presents a plurality of situations in which cultural interaction is at work. Among the many themes, the nature of the relationship between workers of different ethnicities is particularly thought-provoking. The film sees the story of Uxbal, Spanish man of a poor background, who acts as a liaison between immigrants of different ethnic groups (Chinese and African), providing them with work; he is also a mediator between these immigrants and the “regular” Spanish citizens.
The interactions between workers from different ethnic communities animate the plot, making this cultural artifact a good starting point to discuss the interplay between ethnicity and class. In this essay, I …show more content…
Uxbal, buys the cheap heaters, aware of their bad quality and the Chinese (apparently, almost “fellow”) workers die. Where did the solidarity go? What pushed Uxbal in this direction? What role does the fact that the workers were Chinese in Uxbal’s decision? Was racism the culprit? Or was it simply inter-worker competition (which is present because according to Marx and Engel the workers in the movie do not really form a class)?
Early Marxists were of the opinion that vertical “irrational kin-like bonds between people,” sometime in the future, were going to be substituted by horizontal links of class solidarity, born out of “rational principles of mutual interest” (Bonacich 1980, 10). Uxbal in this case seems to be the incarnation of the proletarian envisaged by the early Marxist, going beyond to boundary of race: he helps other workers, regardless of their ethnicity. Nonetheless, in the above-mentioned scene this theory does not hold.
According to another theory, primordialism, the actions of every individual are preordained to be ethnocentric, related to a sense of unchangeable attachment to one’s own ethnic community. There are three critics to this theory: the boundary of a certain ethnicity are never clear; there is often intra-ethnic conflict; inter-ethnic conflict sometimes does not happen (Bonacich 1980,
The interactions between workers from different ethnic communities animate the plot, making this cultural artifact a good starting point to discuss the interplay between ethnicity and class. In this essay, I …show more content…
Uxbal, buys the cheap heaters, aware of their bad quality and the Chinese (apparently, almost “fellow”) workers die. Where did the solidarity go? What pushed Uxbal in this direction? What role does the fact that the workers were Chinese in Uxbal’s decision? Was racism the culprit? Or was it simply inter-worker competition (which is present because according to Marx and Engel the workers in the movie do not really form a class)?
Early Marxists were of the opinion that vertical “irrational kin-like bonds between people,” sometime in the future, were going to be substituted by horizontal links of class solidarity, born out of “rational principles of mutual interest” (Bonacich 1980, 10). Uxbal in this case seems to be the incarnation of the proletarian envisaged by the early Marxist, going beyond to boundary of race: he helps other workers, regardless of their ethnicity. Nonetheless, in the above-mentioned scene this theory does not hold.
According to another theory, primordialism, the actions of every individual are preordained to be ethnocentric, related to a sense of unchangeable attachment to one’s own ethnic community. There are three critics to this theory: the boundary of a certain ethnicity are never clear; there is often intra-ethnic conflict; inter-ethnic conflict sometimes does not happen (Bonacich 1980,