184. The Grapes of Wrath

Song - Don't Give Up (Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush)

Movie: The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)

I didn't know about this history! I am familiar with Dorothea Lange's famous photograph 'Migrant Mother', but somehow never registered that this was an American migrant (Native American even, which complicates things even further), thinking that it was an image that symbolised the great side of America, one that opens its arms to immigrants from around the world and is proud of its image as the melting pot. Similarly, I had been familiar with the romanticised vision of Route 66, as a symbol of American freedom and progress, and all the great promises of its culture and society. I was always aware that this vision was an outsized myth, but it still felt special to drive on it. I never knew that it first gained prominence as a site of misery, death and discrimination, where interstate border controls were set up to stop 'migrants' from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri get to California in search of a better life after being displaced by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. And that these migrants, American citizens, were treated as foreigners in their 'own' country, having to wait behind closely guarded barbed wire to enter 'the promised land' hoping that that the state police wasn't in the mood to beat them up. 

Many images in The Grapes of Wrath might as well come straight from contemporary news reports about the situation at the Polish-Belarussian border. And those two countries at least don't pretend to be the United States of anything. But this film should not make Europe feel better about itself, if only because 'we' haven't yet managed to make such a clear-eyed film about the current refugee crisis. Contemporary European (narrative) films about this topic tend to either be glorified Ted Talks or 'difficult' art films who in their attempts to convey the complexity of the problem often become needlessy abstruse and lose sight of the humanity of the refugees, representing them as helpless, almost deified victims of unspecified forces. In doing so, these films mostly decenter the refugees and put their focus either on the artistic integrity of the filmmakers or on the Europeans and on how their feelings towards the refugees are either right or wrong. This is not a highly moral approach, hasn't proven to have any political effect, and is also dull. There is really no good reason why anyone should see something like Those Who Feel The Fire Burning, one of those films programmers really like to include in 'Movies that Matter' screenings.  

The Grapes of Wrath doesn't fully avoid 'TedTalk' tendencies. Most of Jane Darwell's dialogue as 'Ma Joad' seems to mostly address the audience rather than her family. This also leads to a clash in acting styles between her and Henry Fonda, portraying Tom Joad, that only really works in their final scene together. Aside from this, it's a really wonderful film tthat introduces Tom as an ex-convict, suggests that his conviction wasn't entirely fair, and doesn't go out of its way to convince us of this. When Tom is welcomed back by his family they are all excitedly believing that he busted out of jail; poor Tom has to tell everyone he meets that he was actually released on parole. Aside from this being one of the funniest scenes in the film, it also establishes that the Joads are not some sad-eyed sadsack angelic figures, but complex human beings who don't always do the right thing and don't always agree with the way things are done in society. It forces you to accept that polite Californians may not find the 'Oakies' likable, without this being the 'Oakies' problem. 

This depction of the Joads, especially in comparision to modern European refugee films, may not be entirely surprising. American (popular) culture has always been (and still is) better at integrating and depicting 'foreigners'/Others in its stories than European culture. More surprising from an American perspective is the Grapes of Wrath's depiction of poverty, its causes and its solutuions. It shows shanty towns in the middle of California, presenting them from the point of view (sometimes literally) of the poor people living in it. Poor people in American films that sympathise with their plight are often depicted as hard workers or people who have suffered to create better lives for themselves who had no luck/no opportunity/bad health/any other misfortune that could happen to anyone. These films may believe that 'we' should help them through some sort of collective action that could make society better, but utlimately still mostly frame poverty as something that befalls individuals. The exception is when the poor people are non-white, in which case their poverty is often put in the context of the progressive struggle against racism, providing hope that with America becoming less racist there will be more opportunities for non-white people and less poverty. 

The Grapes of Wrath on the other hand depicts mass poverty among mostly white people and explicitly makes clear that this poverty is the consequence of conscious choices made by the American government and that these choices specifically target these particular people. There is absolutely nothing the Joads or any other family in similar circumstances could have done to escape their poverty. It is morover a consequence of decisions fully in line with the norms, values and ideals of their country. I know that by 1940 John Ford was not yet the fullblown American icon he was about to become, but I was still amazed that the guy who turned John Wayne into the embodiment of America's greatness made this film. In the way it criticizes ideas fundamental to the existence of America, The Grapes of Wrath resembles an Oliver Stone film. Interestlingly, Ford uses for this some of the same imagery that helped him mythologise America in his westerns. Here too he likes to frame characters against the backdrop of wide majestic landscapes. America is full of spaces stretching to eternity and yet people have to migrate far and wide, because most of these spaces have become the property of the banks. Once Ford also starts glorfying the unions, disparaging the easy answers religion offers, and promoting workers' democracy it becomes increasingly hard to believe that this became a popular canonical American film.