The United States of Wal*Mart

I haven't seen it yet to have much of a review, but for the store I love to hate and hate to love, find yourself a free local screening of the full-length documentary Wal*Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. It's cheap, it's easy, it's one-stop shopping for the budget-minded, from midwestern housewives to LA grad students. But it also drives wages down, stamps out local businesses, promotes homogenization and convenience over character and creativity, and lives on government subsidies, either directly or indirectly (see here for a by-the-numbers list of alleged infractions).

Truly, there is never just one side to any story. Of course there's another one here we won't see, and likely there are other businesses whose practices would be just as heinous on such a large scale. But I'm not sold on Walmart's party line either, the one where it claims to build community and provide good jobs and that whole load of crap.

Also recommended: The Corporation. An extremely biased, one-sided, doomsday-predicting documentary which aligns the modern corporation with the DSM IV definition of a sociopath. Absolutely ridiculous ending (in which it suggests that the world would be fine and dandy if everything were under public ownership instead) but entertaining (if a bit long), thought-provoking, and worth the price of admission just to see a ditzy ad exec gloat over how her company uses psychological research to get kids to nag their parents for new toys.

So what's a girl to do? I can, and will, boycott, but as one reviewer pointed out, the people who are promoting and watching this movie are probably the ones who can afford to boycott Walmart anyway. So getting enraged (and witholding the $8 I usually spend at Walmart annually) is only gonna go so far, when current economic realities have created a massive base of people who don't have the luxury of passing up the blue-vested hegemony.

Truth is, I don't know how to put my money where my mouth is much more than that. But I have to believe/hope/pray that when Jesus said he had been anointed to preach good news to the poor, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, it didn't have anything to do with rolling back prices.