They Shoot Workers, Don’t They?
What we can learn about exploitation from a 1969 thriller about a dance competition.
by Ryan Lambert
The American Dream may lure many a foreign traveler with the temptation of industrious opportunity for themselves, their kin, and their spawn, but the people in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? — the 1969 film from Sydney Pollack about an upbeat dance marathon during the Great Depression — these people just want enough money to eat. Their desperation reeks like rotting vegetables. They are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, all allegedly welcome to achieve great success in this nation — a promise that seemed increasingly dim circa 1932, after the ceiling caved in on those Wall Street gamblin’ men, crashing the stock market like a pane of glass heard shattering round the world. A lack of jobs leaves one option: dance the pain away, winner take all, where the lucky man and woman at the end of the road will take home a whopping $1,500 in silver dollars. Foreshadowing a career of fighting the system offscreen, Jane Fonda stars as Gloria Beatty, a cynical woman with bitter views about the circus around her. Despite her protestations at the foolishness of it all, she still continues to swing her hips, acting as a vessel for the epic level of exhaustion that takes place over the course of the film’s runtime.
After luring in a motley crew of characters, the truth of the matter is slowly teased out: the event is designed as entertainment for an audience of bored, well-paying customers. The impoverished contestants are the products, their struggles fodder for pleasing the wealthy, their bodies used to advertise for local businesses who choose to “sponsor” their favorite couple. The bright jazz tunes underscoring the misery somehow make it worse, like a mouth stapled into the shape of a permanent smile. By dangling the carrot of a coin purse in front of the poor, then hitting them with a metaphorical stick as part of the carnival act, these desperate teams of dancers are exploited then tossed aside when they can no longer serve the machine of commerce. In this way, despite the fact that the film was made fifty years ago and takes place almost one hundred years ago, the themes and details of the character’s struggles have much in common with the state of our modern world and economy.
The bright jazz tunes underscoring the misery somehow make it worse, like a mouth stapled into the shape of a permanent smile.
A deceptively simple critique might take this form: no one forced the partners to participate in the contest, they chose to attend and try their luck. Yet a total dearth of economic opportunity is what gave rise to dance marathons in the first place. These events were popular because they provided a roof and a hot meal to people who needed it, but no kind act comes without strings. People are obligated to dance a jig in order to get their basic needs met, foreshadowing the bureaucracy and shame associated with modern systems of unemployment relief, in which welfare surveillance reigns supreme and constant justifications — drug tests, interrogations, home visits, and audits — are required to maintain status as a poor person in the eyes of the state. The title of a short Spanish-language film from 1974 sums up the situation: “They Kill Me If I Don’t Work and If I Work They Kill Me.”
Rocky Gravo, the manipulative emcee with a name like a lug of an enforcer for the Sicilian Mafia, isn’t satisfied with just the dancing. He takes pride in his showmanship and wants to stretch the dollar value of each paying ticket holder, leading to a series of sprints which force the couples to dash around a small circle for ten minutes at a time, cheered on by the animated audience. These segments are the most directly symbolic, bringing to mind images of betting on quadrupedal thoroughbreds at the racetrack, hoping for a big score by picking the fastest animal. Like horses, humans here are simply tools for commerce, with only death freeing them from their responsibility to the rich: both are put down when they fall out of use, and the wheel keeps on turning. Since the Great Depression, this disparity between haves and have-nots has only lengthened, as those who benefited from social programs in FDR’s New Deal kicked away the ladder after their ascension. Yearly payouts for those at the top have increased exponentially — thanks to inflation and booming markets trending upwards — severely outpacing the growth of real, post-taxation income for those at the bottom.
This is Bootstrap Theory as a literal farce, people futilely trying to climb out of their social caste and being made into fools in the process.
As the dance marathon stretches on, and an evening of competition becomes weeks of exhausting monotony, all is not as it seems with the rules of the game. People lured in by the idea of easy money are shocked as that promise proves hollow — the devil is in the details, the con is in the contract, and the winners will be billed for each day’s room & board, resulting in almost zero dollars in post-contest take-home cash. This is Bootstrap Theory as a literal farce, people futilely trying to climb out of their social caste and being made into fools in the process. With the cards stacked this high, there’s no chance of improvement, only delaying the inevitable loss of life, liberty, and the pursuit of anything other than this web of sorrow. This is existence within the cycle of poverty: the majority of an individual’s waking hours go towards working (or dancing) for sub-par wages, barely keeping your neck above the sewage water of predatory rental agreements, transportation payments, and food — a deadly situation when alone, further compounded by having kids in the mix as well.
Whether as dancers in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” or oil-drillers and dynamite-transporters in the equally-bruising, pessimistic “Sorcerer,” one truth remains clear: The Bosses don’t give a shit about The Employees beyond the scope of the labor they provide, as evidenced by corporations fleeing the domestic landscape for browner pastures via cheaper rates in dirt-poor third-world countries. There is no safety net. You work, you die, and someone else fills your shoes. It’s that simple.
Ryan is a filmmaker and critic from Atlanta. He takes inspiration from rhythm and people-watching, and his other interests include 8-ball, artificial intelligence, and clowns. His previous video work has appeared in showcases organized by Out on Film and Collect Atlanta. He is currently in development on two feature-length film projects. Sign up for his newsletter at flickpicking.org for weekly movie picks and production updates.
