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--- 329:question:329--week_10_questions_comments-2022 [2022/10/27 02:41] – [I.How does this movie work as a secondary source? What does the movie get right about history?] 76.78.225.170
+++ 329:question:329--week_10_questions_comments-2022 [2022/11/11 00:54] (current) – [V. The "So, what?" question] 192.65.245.80
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 Honestly, I found the movie to be very accurate. The depictions of the conditions that miners went through was disturbing. Thinking about the air itself being flammable from the coal dust just gives me the heebie jeebies. It blows my mind to think about how dangerous the conditions were, and how little the mine owners thought of their workers. In the beginning where the guy was comparing the miners to tools for the company really resonated with me.  -Michaela Fontenot
+I think this movie does an excellent job of portraying the general feeling of living in a small coal mining town. The film illustrates just how much power the coal mining company had on every aspect of life. When the boss is explaining the job to the newcomers, about how many thing will be deducted from their paycheck and how they can only buy things from the company store with company scrip, as well as when the detectives constantly reiterate that everything is company property which means the townspeople themselves own almost nothing. It was easy to feel the frustration and powerlessness the miners were struggling with because the setting was well curated. — Sasha Poletes
+This movie was great in its portrayal of the mining town and processes of the period. I think that the conflicts between the groups trying to go against the big company was also accurate. For this reason, I believe that this could definitely be used as a great introduction to the coal mining in the early 1900s. The characters were believable, as were their concerns in their lives. -Sarah Moore
+I believe the film was extremely accurate, due in part to the fact that the writer/producer funded it himself and was therefore given more creative liberty than a larger movie production would have been given. Not only did it do a good job of portraying the miners, but the town and the way it was governed by the company were amazingly accurate. Many of the conflicts shown throughout the movie were correct. The resentment and tension between the mining groups were reliable and the use of the red scare was canonical to this time. -Annika Sypher
 ====== II.	Problems with historical accuracy? Errors in fact? ======
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 Compared to the last couple of movies we have watched that are based on actual historical events, very few of the characters in this film are fictional. Joe Kenehan and Danny Radnor are the two main characters in this film that are fictional. I think that alone is very impressive and it is important that the director and writers wanted to stay as true to the original history as possible. I was very impressed by the cinematic accuracy of the area and the clothing, regional dialect, and general feel of the film. I think it did a great job of encapsulating the location and time period that the film was set in, and the awards and critical reviews that the movie received definitely give it the credit it deserves. --Olivia Foster
+Others have touched on the fact that a lot of the characters were fictional, even if they represented real people that would have existed. It seems like a few of the plot elements, like the section where the two detectives try to turn the town against Kenehan, were also made up to cause further drama, while the rest were based in fact. Even those parts are not totally unbelievable though since we learned that the detectives often did terrible things to cause conflicts, like putting kerosene in milk. I didn’t understand why they chose to keep some names and change others when they were all clearly based on real people. They kept the spy’s name, and the mayor’s and sheriff’s, but changed the detectives’ names. Either way, I think it is a little misleading to create fake characters and overarching plot lines that didn’t actually happen when making a movie about a real event — I think the general plot about the conflict between the miners and the detectives was enough. -- Sasha Poletes
+I think one of the main historical inaccuracies of the movie is the timeframe in which the events happened. In the movie they spread out the events of the massacre for the sake of movie making, however, the actual events of the massacre all happened in one day. The Baldwin-Felt agents arrived in Matewan the same day the massacre was committed. Cinematically it makes sense to build up the tension and to extend the timeline of the events, however, historically, it happened in one day. –Teresa Felipe
 ====== III.	How does the film’s overall interpretation(s) deviate from scholarly historical sources? ======
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 The time period that film was made definitely shows the progression of society. By the 1980s, unions weren't as taboo as they were at the turn of the 20th century. It is especially interesting since it was not too far removed from the time period it was presenting. It is possible that some (definitely not too many) people who lived during the labor movement were still living when the film was released.- Neonya Garner
 ====== V. The "So, what?" question	======
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 I feel like the fact that the main characters were fictional was a poor choice in an otherwise really accurate movie.The movie could have been just as effective without this addition, but it is understandable for why they made this choice, but I don't think it took too much away from the viewing experience. Despite that, this film was important as it brought to light a story that most of us have never heard of before. By bringing in a story about unions in a time with issues such as the red scare, it shows audiences a story that they can relate to while also highlighting the importance of unions. -- Logan Kurtz
 I feel the film did a great job displaying the tension between the individuals who were in the union versus the people who hated them, the people of color who would fulfill the jobs the white people didn’t do and the individuals who were part of the same union but different. I feel it added many different perspectives all from the same little town. Also the display of immigrant workers fulfilling in jobs that needed to be fulfilled that the company would place them into. As well as the description Danny gave of him working in the mines as a trapper boy (correct me if I’m wrong) showed how young children would work and the task they would have to do just to earn a bit more for their family.-- Paula Perez
 Overall, I did enjoy the film. Prior to watching this film and talking about unions in class, I had no prior knowledge on the bad conditions that miners went through specifically. I think the film depicted it successfully and made the audience understand what the union members went through and overall, why they felt it necessary to join a union and work for better working conditions. Erika Lambert.
+I think it is important for people to know about how the safe conditions we work in today came about, and I feel like this movie really captures that. Unions might not have been as successful as previously thought, but they definitely had a huge role in work-safety laws. -Michaela Fontenot
+Matewan does a good job of showing the audience why unions and workers' rights are important. Sure, the union failed to get better conditions for the minors. However, conditions did eventually improve. Miners aren't considered company property anymore (to my knowledge at least). That wouldn't've happened if unions hadn't continued to fight for workers rights despite all the setbacks. Workers' rights have gotten better over the past 122 years, but they still aren't perfect. Ex: Amazon, most retail jobs. We should take inspiration from the film to continue to fight for better conditions, even if we lose the first round. -Katherine Rayhart
+Prior to watching this film, I had basically zero knowledge of anything to do with coal mining. The extent of my knowledge was the coal mine I visited when I was 9 years old. So seeing it portrayed on screen along with the unionization was a great introduction to the subject. I also have not seen many movies based on coal mining and those that do it. Maybe my view is narrow, but this is the best mining film out of the one I've seen. I think the focus on unionization was great because of the time period, with union busting going on all over the U.S. - Sarah Moore
+This movie, unlike most movies we watch in this class, was a box office failure. It’s not mainstream and I had to go to YouTube to find the movie, it doesn’t even have background music for most of the film. Typically, most of the movies we watch have some pretty big societal impacts since some of them have won Oscars for best picture, or have been the number one film for decades.These descriptions don’t apply to this movie, it has reached a smaller population, it isn’t as widely viewed or known. Nonetheless, this movie is still significant. It came out in 1987, during Reagan’s presidency, someone who was very anti-union. The movie obviously was made as political commentary, and can tell us a lot about the period it was made in. Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge that this movie is also very historically accurate, compared to the other movies we’ve watched in class. This outlier of a movie for our class can also be seen as an outlier for movies in general. It has political commentary of both the time period it is portraying, but as well as the time period it was made. The creators chose to have less development of a romantic plot line between Joe Kenehan and Elma Radnor, and instead chose to develop the plot line of the massacre. –Teresa Felipe
+I believe that most other viewers would have like me, had a vague sense of the events of this time. Maybe, like me, it would have been part of a unit done in a history class that they took a decade ago. So, like me, while they would have had a sense of the time period they might not remember the atrocities that were actually committed. While the villains in this movie might seem cartoonish, it would be particularly hard to underplay how evil they actually were. This movie does an amazing job of informing the viewer what exactly happened at this time that the government and corporations might not want us to remember. -Annika