On an overcast afternoon in March, I took a friend to the world premiere of SWEAT!, choreographer Jennifer Nichols’ film adaptation of an opera verismo about sweatshop workers, at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival. Would its revolutionary undercurrents captivate as they had in Rent or in Dancer in the Dark? Musical theatre and social justice have long been electrifying comrades. I admit our hopes were high for an invigorating and creative protest against marginalized labour practices. “Transport me,” I silently pleaded. “Shore me up.” As I watched the film, it was my friend I turned to for solace.
SWEAT!, written by composer Juliet Palmer and playwright Anna Chatterton, chronicles a day or so in the lives of sweatshop workers who are exploited and abused by the factory owner and overseer, and ostensibly—although it’s never explicitly referenced—by global networks of capitalism. While there are nods to collective action (one woman tries and fails to convince her co-workers to sign a document stating their intent to unionize), the systems of oppression at work here are never exposed. At one point workers sing about sending money home, but their dreams are primarily about buying Porsches and wearing high-fashion dresses.
In the film version, the intimacy afforded by the camera collapses the fourth wall between performer and viewer, while post-production elements extend the lush arias and vocal arrangements. But ultimately, the internalized misogyny of the story desensitizes the viewer to the workers’ struggle. If I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me, I could probably forget that the women were calling each other sluts who needed to “close their legs.” The leaps and trills of the coloratura were thrilling, and the clarity of line and dynamic interactivity between the dancers were beautiful, but phrases such as “sew up your hole” intruded upon my reverie.
The most agitating aspect of this piece is that the undocumented working women of the story lack empathy for each other. The misogyny of women within systems of oppression could be an avenue of critical exploration, but here it is escalated to an absurd degree. In one scene, a worker sees another woman being raped by the sweatshop owner and warns her to back off her “meal ticket” rather than helping her. I founded this artistic decision jarring: As a survivor of sexual violence, I recalled how deeply I relied on the aid of other women. What a dismal view of women! What purpose does this unrelenting misogyny serve in the storytelling?
At the post-screening Q and A, I asked Chatterton if her research had led her to depict women in this light. She has read hundreds of stories about women’s experiences, she told us, and didn’t want to “shy away from the truth.”
We trudged back through the snow, in clothes that had probably been made by sweatshop workers. We felt hollowed out. My friend made the point that Black socialist working women drove third-wave feminism. Collective organizing requires solidarity among workers, she said. “So how is that not part of this story?” I couldn’t answer.
The tragedy of SWEAT! is not only the workers’ fate but also that they behave awfully toward each other. It overshadows any possibility of a critique of exploitive power structures in the garment industry.
The dancing is nice, though.