Brave New Mundo

It’s been said that the only reason American businesses don’t outsource janitorial services is that they haven’t invented a broom handle that reaches to the Third World.

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In a sense, Alex Rivera’s 2008 movie Sleep Dealer shows us a world in which that broom handle has been invented. “It’s a science fiction thriller set in Mexico,” says director Rivera, an American of Peruvian descent, by phone from New York. “It looks at issues like the border, immigration, and globalization, five minutes in the future.”

The protagonist is a young Mexican man who leaves his village and tries to come to America, only to find a huge wall at the border. He then goes to work in a factory in which he’s hooked up to a machine in the States and operates it remotely. The film, says Rivera, “Depicts a brave new world in which America receives the labor of immigrants without receiving any of the people.”