Analysis of Roger and Me Concepts of Marx and Durkheim
Michael Moore's Roger and Me is about Moore's home town of Flint, Michigan. He shows the viewer first hand the breaking down of what was once a booming town. The town of Flint was home to General Motors which employed many of the town's residents. General Motors was a key contributor to the town socially and economically. Many of the residents were bonded by their ties to General Motors and the parades and other festivities that GM supplied that kept the locals loyal to the company. That is why it was so devastating when GM closed 11 of their plants in Flint and moved their business to Mexico in order to gain profit and stay competitive. In the movie Moore shows us the consequences of the closing of the GM plants in Flint as well as his underlying quest to talk to GM chairman, Roger Smith, to get him to spend a day in Flint and meet the people that lost their jobs. Durkheim and Marx would have different views on what happened in Flint. Durkheim would say that Flint's disintegration as a community was due to its lack of social order where Marx's theories would solely revolve around the economic system. Durkheim would say that GM played such a major role in the lives of all of its workers that when GM left no one knew what
This is an example of definition of the situation because when a situation is defined as real then it becomes real in all its consequences. Durkheim measured the degree of collective conscience through suicide rates. Marx would have told the people of Flint to see through the gimmicks the town were playing on them in order to boost morale. There weren't nearly enough new jobs opening up for all the people that lost their job so suddenly instead of the people of Flint being bonded through their jobs they were competing for the jobs. Evidence of a weakened collective conscience in Flint can be shown through its increased unemployment, increasing crime rate, population loss, increased alcohol sales, and increased domestic violence. Ex-GM workers that got jobs in fast food often got fired from their new jobs. They would also agree that the old GM workers in Flint are victims of an economic system that the wealthy rule. Flint was caught in a downward cycle that Durkheim would say was due to Flint's lack of social cohesion caused by more jobs being lost than new jobs opening in the town. Marx said that putting people into a system of alienation and specialized work would only further spread the classes. Marx said that the ideas of the ruling class are the ideas of the society and by this Marx would say that the Flint workers were victims of ruling class economics. The collective conscience that could have been called mechanical solidarity was shifted to a very weakened organic solidarity. Marx and Durkheim had similar views on the idea of the division of labor. This is all evidence of what the effects of a weak collective conscience have on a town. When many of the old GM workers got fired from local fast food restaurants many of the other ex-workers did not even bother applying.
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