Holes & The Prison-Industrial Complex

[Music] so [Music] like no i actually mean it there aren't many movies that were dear to me in my childhood that i can look back on with even more fondness and respect more often than not looking back on a movie i enjoyed as a kid and with me either not liking it that much or quietly ranting about it for four minutes but sometimes i look back and discover something entirely new to appreciate about it some of these films have themes that went over my head before themes that resonate more deeply the older i get the color of friendship comes to mind kaf are bantu colored they all mean black people well not colored technically how many different words do they have for whites just white as does matilda coraline and bridge to terabithia but none more so than holes based on the 1998 young adult novel from lewis thatcher hols follows the 14 year old stanley elnetts iv stanley comes from a poor unlucky family and their luck gets even worse when he's wrongfully convicted of theft not just any penny that either but the theft of a highly coveted pair of shoes belonging to a famed baseball star as punishment he's sent to the juvenile correctional facility camp green lake light on the lake where he and other boys are made to take a five foot deep hole every day in the hot sun you take a bad boy make him dig holes all day in the hot sun and it turns him into a good boy that's our philosophy here at camp green lake and stanley's stay at camp green lake unfolds other stories some of which he himself is already familiar with as they've been told to him by his grandfather the story for instance that details the history of the family curse and why it wouldn't have happened if not for stanley's no-good dirty rotten pig stealing great-great-grandfather elya yelnets the great-great-grandfather in question wanted to marry a young woman named myra whose head was as empty as a flower pod madam cerrone's where it's not mine milo's father who has already been offered the fattest pig for his daughter's hand in marriage disapproves of elia's proposal because he has nothing to offer following the rejection elya seeks advice from his friend and fortune teller madame zeroni she tells him to take a small piglet from her and carry it up the mountain every day so he forgot that's what happened the other story told is one that has to do with camp green lake and the town that used to exist on it long before the lake dried up and the story we learn of kate barlow a school teacher who falls in love with the only black patron of the town sam who can fix anything i can fix that i can fix that later in the story we find out that sam and kate's love story ends in tragedy after the townspeople discovered their romance they destroyed the schoolhouse and killed sam in cold blood it's incredibly dark and admittedly still kind of hard to watch this leads to kate becoming an outlaw known as kissing kate barlow who robs people and murders them just a regular wednesday really the owner of camp green lake known plainly as the warden has a connection to the story as it's her grandfather trout walker a douchebag who owned the lake half the town and a motorboat who ends up killing sam or at least inciting the mob that kills sam all three of these stories converge into one each of them affecting the other stanley's time at camp green lake leads to him unknowingly breaking the family curse and the curse of the rageful racist who murdered sam in cold blood and as a result caused it to stop raining for hundreds of years i did not know how to shorten that in 2003 when the film adaptation was released it came in second at the box office beat out by anger management however the critical consensus favored holes i'm gonna quote roger ebert again okay the man left me no choice i walked in expecting a movie for 13 somethings and walked out feeling challenged and satisfied curious how much more grown up and sophisticated holes is than anger management knowing how many stories are told you could go into this thinking it would be poorly executed or rushed and no one would blame you having too many story lines is the kind of thing that makes lifetime movie networks so iconic there's three stories to tell here shifting back and forth from modern day camp green lake to kate barlow to sam to ellie yelnets and to madame zeroni it should be messy but it's not and that's really impressive the way that director andrew davis ties the stories together seamlessly comes off as effortless and certainly while all the technical achievements and master storytelling makes holes a worthwhile film upon revisiting it the technical aspects weren't what stuck out to me the most on the surface the plot is simple enough with themes of fate and friendship and family it's a mystery with folk tales and fairy tales in god's thumb but lewis thatcher whether intentionally or not ended up portraying a few complex social phenomenons phenomena like the punishment of poverty abuse of power and not so surprisingly the prison industrial complex so let's get into that the prison industrial complex coined by dr angela davis describes the phenomenon wherein you know what i'm going to let huey explain it the prison industrial complex is a system situated at the intersection of government and private interests it uses prisons as a solution to social political and economic problems it includes human rights violations the death penalty slave labor policing courts the media political prisoners and elimination of dissent and of course we use the term prison industrial complex to point out that there is this global proliferation of prisons and prisoners that is more clearly linked to economic and political structures and ideologies than to individual criminal conduct and efforts to curb crime before nixon declared that america's public enemy number one was drugs [Music] we were almost on our way to shutting down a lot of prisons but when nixon declared this war he set in motion laws that are still in effect today in 1973 when nelson rockefeller proposed that anyone involved in any drug crime serve a mandatory prison sentence it became clear that the war on drugs wouldn't see and end anytime soon and by the 1980s there was a sharp increase in the prison inmate population that increase doubled by the 1990s and doubled again by the 2000s you can only imagine where it is now well actually you don't have to imagine here's a chart since this declaration of war mass incarceration and overcrowding of prisons has only become more and more of a problem the industrialization of prisons has led to people mostly young black men being dealt incredibly heavy sentences for often incredibly petty offenses many businesses prior to the rise of the prison industrial complex relied on the work of people in different countries people who were made to work in inhumane conditions with very little pay and while plenty of companies still do this since the privatization of prisons lots of companies have gone with prison labor which is just as cheap because prisoners are barely paid for their work so there's that economic solution our political solution comes in the form of people like rockefeller and mario cuomo and all the political leaders who have benefited by way of an increase in political capital by basically fear-mongering nelson rockefeller for instance had run for president like four times in the past and then it wasn't until after he made these incredibly harsh drug laws that he became vice president of the united states the term prison industrial complex is a sort of remix of the military-industrial complex something that president eisenhower warned against in his farewell address the following is an excerpt from this article in the atlantic on january 17th 1961 president dwight d eisenhower used his farewell address to issue a warning as the united states continued its cold war with the soviet union and the councils of government eisenhower said we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex eisenhower had grown concerned about this new threat to democracy during the 1960 campaign when fears of a missile gap with the soviet union were ripped up by politicians the press and defense contractors hoping for increased military spending eisenhower knew that no missile gap existed and that fear one might lead to a costly unnecessary response though there's an insistence that the reason for the increase in prison inmates for the increase in prisons is because there's an increase in crime the statistics simply don't support that but that insistence whether it's factual or not look good for politicians when it comes to elections it is a confluence of special interest that has given prison construction in the united states is seemingly unstoppable momentum it is comprised of politicians both liberal and conservative who have used the fear of crime to gain votes impoverished rural areas where prisons have become a cornerstone of economic development private companies that regard the roughly 35 billion dollars spent each year on corrections not as a burden on american taxpayers but as a lucrative market and government officials whose fiefdoms have expanded along with the inmate population since 1991 the rate of violent crime in the united states has fallen by 20 percent while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by 50 percent i need to stress that i'm not at all suggesting any of what's in holes is intentional or that it is honestly and truly a direct fully intended allegory for the prison industrial complex but i do think it's kind of hard to look at the overall objective of camp green lake and not go prison industrial complex it's a prison industrial culprit right there after stanley arrives to the center mr sur one of the three main authority figures at the camp says you take a bad boy make him dig holes all day in the hot sun and it turns him into a good boy that's our philosophy here at camp green lake and this right here it's not a method of rehabilitating troubled youth and re-entering them into society this isn't therapy that teaches them how to deal with their anger issues their kleptomania or helps characters like zigzag who suffers from acute acute paranoia learn to handle their emotions in a healthy way it's physical pain-inducing labor the boys get blisters they risk heat stroke they risk getting written by rattlesnakes and yellow spotted lizards and they're made to dig from dawn until however long it takes them to finish their holes without breaks for food by the way the conditions are so bad that the movie actually opens with one of the boys intentionally pursuing a bite from a battlesnake just so he can have an excuse to leave except again the youths at camp greenlake are not digging holes to build character nor are they doing it to be taught a lesson they're digging holes because the warden knows that somewhere in that abyss of desert there's a buried treasure worth millions of dollars and she couldn't possibly dig all of that up on her own now could she [Applause] alternatively the warden could have recruited people to help her dig and then cut them in on the deal once the treasure was found but why do that when you can use the free labor of juvenile delinquents under the guise of rehabilitation and the part about how all of this is achieved through policing and imprisonment and surveillance the policing and the imprisonment parts are right there in front of us it's their surveillance that is never confirmed but alluded to so when stanley arrives to camp green lake he's never actually formally introduced to the warden but when he sees her for the first time she refers to him by name not by his legal name but as the nickname the boys in detent have given him my name oh yeah she's got these little tiny microphones and cameras all over the place and although i mean it's clear that most the boys don't really believe it the fact that directly after this scene stanley's in the shower looking for the camera shows that some of them actually do perceive their surveillance as being a reality and that perception is pretty important it's pretty clear that many if not all of the kids at camp greenlee come from lower class families we understand it especially with characters like stanley zero and a little bit of squid for stanley his impoverishment plays a bigger role in his sentencing than the crime he's alleged to have committed because of his poverty it's much easier for authorities to assume he's guilty and don't get me wrong they have evidence and it looks very incriminating but it's definitely reminiscent of how policing and imprisonment are much more severe in poor communities than they are in middle to upper class ones because the people in poor communities are defenseless and often forced to take deals where they end up in prison regardless of their innocence the fact that stanley and his family can't afford legal representation to dispute the charges to begin with guarantees his placement at either jail or camp greenlake despite the amount of poor teenagers at the establishment zero is the only one of the boys who experiences outright entirely unmotivated aggression by figures of authority he's also the only known character who was homeless before going to the camp and who is illiterate these things make him a target for dr pendanski the camp counselor where pendanski is relatively kind and gentle with all the other boys often telling them they have an opportunity to change their ways that they may have done some bad things but that does not make them a bad kid he antagonizes zero to the point of verbal abuse upon pendansky's first introduction it seems like he's the good cop but the more aggressive he becomes towards zero it's pretty obvious that he isn't a good cop because you know hey cap for cutie he's only polite and respectful to the boys who have families they'll return to but most importantly he's only polite and respectful to the boys who can read it seems like he's hostile towards zero for no apparent reason but when you consider that zero's illiteracy and the severity of his poverty are the only things that differentiate him from the other boys the source of pandansky's irrational anger becomes quite clear he hates zero because he's poor and he can't cause there's read going on in his stupid little head what does c a t spell huh what's his spell yeah he's a real genius he's so stupid he doesn't even know he's stupid poverty breeds literacy which breeds more poverty kids who are forced to drop out of school to start working end up working the lowest paid jobs and this continues long into adulthood they get those low paying jobs because they can't read because they're poor and then those low-paying jobs keep them in a state of poverty that their kids will be born into and that can affect their education as well and while not all children born into poverty will necessarily struggle with illiteracy most will struggle with getting a good education it's a well-known fact that schools in low-income communities despite needing the most help have the least support school funding oftentimes comes from property tax and for example in greenwich connecticut where the average home might run for a million dollars the school funding reflects that and poor communities where the property tax numbers aren't incredibly low get shortchanged with shitty funding any parent who's had to send their child to a school where their education is compromised would likely jump at the opportunity to send them to a better school to break the cycle but what happens when they do that in 2011 kelly williams bowler was indicted for falsifying an address in order to enroll her child in a better school than the one that was in their district she spent 10 days in jail and later had to pay a fine years later she stated that all she wanted was for her kids to have a good start in life similarly in 2012 tanya mcdowell a homeless mother in connecticut was charged with larceny and sentenced to five years in prison for falsifying an address so that her kid could just go to school the cases here are similar both mothers were black both were poor but it's important to note that bowler was not homeless mcdowell was so what you have here is an active punishment bestowed on poor people and an even harsher punishment toward the homeless keep in mind that mothers like laurie lawlin and felicity huffman who falsified much more dire information on their children's college applications were charged with two months and 14 days respectedly at her court hearing just before being sentenced tanya mcdowell is quoted as saying who would have thought that wanting a good education for my son would put me in this predicament contracts like these are reflected in holes with two things the first is that the kids staying at camp green lake never learn anything they get up early they work until dawn they eat dinner sometimes they might have counseling and then they go to bed but there's no education system in place at the camp something that always gets a little laugh out of me is that they keep the shovels in this little shed with library on the front of it that's the most schooling they get they're all kids but their education is put on hold while they toil day in and day out and for someone like stanley who for example has been sentenced to 18 months that means by the time he gets to re-enter society he's several steps behind his peers and reacclimating to the world is going to be that much more difficult the camp authorities also seem to outright disapprove of education something the film establishes early is that zero is really good at digging he works hard he and he works fast and always gets his hole dug before everyone else toward the midpoint he asks stanley if he can teach him how to read offering to help him dig his hole every day he's willing to work more to spend more time in the sun to spend more time exposed to rattlesnakes and yellow spotted lizards to spend more time exhausting his body just to learn how to read eventually stanley agrees to teach him but they soon get found out and it's not as if they were trying to keep it secret by the way because from their perspective from their correct perspective they weren't doing anything wrong but what happens when they're found out and no more reading lessons why i mean the whole good stuff who cares who's taking it right you know why you're digging holes because you're not learning your lesson are you yeah yeah well why can't i still just dig my hole and teach you how to read because and from what he makes a good point what does it matter if the hole still gets dug if he's still digging it why can't he teach zero to read because i said so oh my god and i don't know to me this kind of reflects real things that have happened and continue to happen just again on a smaller scale so you're punished for being poor you're punished for being illiterate and then when you try to get an education you're punished for that too [Music] so the abusive power at camp green lake is constant both the correctional facility and the town that it once was mr sir takes his anger out on squid and stanley after getting [ __ ] slapped with rattlesnake venom the warden uses the establishment to cultivate wealth and nothing more it doesn't even give a [ __ ] about actual rehabilitation sounds familiar i don't know we've established that dr penn fuckboy treats zero like [ __ ] and in the story of kissing kate barlow which i'll get back to i promise authority figures are depicted as being unworthy of trust the abuse of power at the facility isn't just physical but psychological mr sarah at one point brags about how he has all the boys scared out of their wits by treating them differently each time he sees them so they never know what to expect this system of punishment reward punishment reward shows up later after x-ray finds something interesting well he doesn't really find it but he told stanley this like his third day of being there you ever find anything give it to me you understand i've been here for over six months and never found anything no one has why should you get a day off and you just got here you know what i'm saying so he finds it him finding this tube of lipstick leads to everyone digging in that general area in the hopes to find the treasure in the early days of this the warden is in a good mood and she tells them they can all have extra shower tokens and certain benefits that have been up until this point kept from them but since they are digging in the wrong area they don't find anything then the warden's angry her rewards turn to punishments her enticements become threats she insists they aren't working hard enough after pendanski gets knocked the [ __ ] out zero runs away and no one makes an attempt to stop him in fact once he starts running the warden says you think i was gonna shoot him the last thing we need and they know there's no way for zero to survive out there and they're okay with that they're fully prepared to pretend he never existed they get rid of his file they erase any and all records of him ever having been at the camp and of course they can do that because zero was homeless when he was arrested he was orphaned and aspen dance he says he had nobody he was nobody now shortly after this stanley leaves to find zero because there's no way he's going to let him die out there in the zone are you kidding me and this this right here this is this is their plan listen to this [Music] in two weeks run away call in dogs helicopters the whole nine yards then nothing then at the end of the movie when stanley and zero find the treasure but they're stuck in the hole with lethal yellow spotted lizards no one tries to get them out because they figure they can wait until the lizards kill them then the treasure will be theirs to claim not one single authority figure at this camp gives a [ __ ] about any of those boys going back in time to when camp green lake wasn't a desert this sort of thinly veiled opposition to authority is fairly obvious the night sam gets killed a bunch of angry rioters burned down the schoolhouse i guess because sam was the one who fixed it up for free because none of the townspeople would kate is running all through the town trying to get someone anyone to help her this is her school house this is her whole life she finds the sheriff and what does he do he tries to force himself on her does absolutely nothing about the schoolhouse and says he's preparing to kill sam he mentions their kiss being against the law but i'm sure it's also against the law for the townsfolk to burn down the schoolhouse where you know the children get an education which is doubly [ __ ] up because the film establishes that in the evening kate teaches a reading class to the illiterate adults in the town by burning the schoolhouse taking away the education opportunities for the youth that now guarantees that they too will grow up to be illiterate and there's that cycle all over again anyway the film and the novel are clear in their portrayals of abusive power and corruption what i find especially interesting is kate's response to these injustices after sam is killed the first thing she does like the very next day is get dressed up and shoot the [ __ ] sheriff and she becomes kissing kate barlow the woman who robs banks and stage coaches and disrupts the broken law system even more interesting is the fact that kate couldn't care less about the money she gets from these robberies she cares so little in fact that the money she steals from stanley elnett's the first she buries it because it's not about the money it's almost like it's about saying [ __ ] you to the people in positions of power to the powerful and corrupt to the wealthy and to the men who don't understand no you know what i think we might have time for a kiss and kate barlow fan [Music] edited now holes isn't a perfect film like no i actually mean it it's it's a masterpiece okay and masterpieces don't have to be perfect grow up for all the good points it brings up again intentional or not there's something to be said about how the film explains racism while all the aforementioned observations of this story are completely valid it doesn't automatically mean that everything is depicted well the one on my mind in particular is racism or how holes depicts racism in the universe of poles racism is contained to horrid acts of violence leading to one painful tragedy racism is an angry mob racism is something only the worst of humans can perpetuate and then only to the most violent extent and when we transition to modern day where the town is now a correctional camp racism seems to have become entirely absent it's interesting that trout walker and the sheriff and the warden all share the commonality of being powerful and corrupt by valuing wealth over human life of status over human life yet the warden never does anything explicitly racist at least not in the film so it almost seems like a suggestion that racism in itself is an archaic wicked thing that died out with the generations of old but we know for damn sure that's not true but the shortcomings of holes pale greatly in comparison to its strengths the story itself is not only captivating but the twists and the turns and the connections between all the characters make for a really satisfying ending one of the things i love most about it is how stanley inadvertently breaks the family curse remember how literally all elia had to do to not have a cursed family was returned to madame cerrone and carry her up the mountain so she could drink from the stream now near the end of the film after stanley has run away into the desert to find zero the two of them decide to climb god's thumb so they can find refuge zero who found shelter under sam's old boat and survived on decades-old peaches get sick before they reach their destination and i guess you know that will happen if you're eating decades old peaches don't eat decades old peaches he passes out but of course stanley isn't going to leave him there so what does he do he carries zero up the mountain and then when they arrive there zero drinks from the stream now earlier he learns that zero's real name is and just like that the curse is broken it's stuff like this that makes hole such a fascinating read and watch it mixes lore with life reflections of reality slash in with glimmers of magical realism it's i don't care it's spectacular okay i like it now that we're at the end keep in mind that lewis thatcher has famously said that he doesn't set out to make any particular statements with his work so take all this with a grain of salt but you know death of the author or whatever all right thank you for watching um but a special big thank you to the patrons who not only helped me choose this um topic because we did like a poll a pool a pole we did a north pole and holes won so thank you to the womanizer patrons um yeah my tears are britney spears womanizer and britney spears circus i don't have a britney spears give me more or britney spears toxic because frankly i don't think i can afford that but anyway patrons thank you uneducated and enthused will cunningham justin snowden noah degrange gretchen howard the doom merchant i like that name quentin park lena rosa d nazarin rowan ellis thank you rowan ellis jasmine wellner mal purdulis samiari tobin v hoffman cam a day hey hannah madeline k lewin goodman anna esther volos thank you jane frank michaela nicholson the becker sattler clan brumo sanjo javier ortega sade intellectual films you stupid [ __ ] dog they asked me to call them that i swear to god i would not do that normally that's okay and uh snackamus prime thank you all so much for helping me choose this topic and thank you for your support um i know i don't know you but i kinda love you wanna sing an usher song to you but i won't okay gotta go

Channel: Yhara zayd

Views: 274,526

Rating: 4.9682951 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: ZhGELPFmmMw

Length: 28min 18sec (1698 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/orionsbelt05]

This sub introduces me to more youtubers that I instantly subscribe to. Love her vibe and her educated and insightful takes.

[u/TerpinSaxt]

Yhara is hella underrated.

Her videos on That 80s Show and on the pigeonholing of Hilary Duff's acting roles are also really great.

[u/theradek123]

You take a bad boy, make him dig holes all day in the hot sun, it turns him into a good boy.

[u/g7parsh]

"If only, if only", the woodpecker sighs

[u/sonsquatch]

If you don't upvote this, Madame Zeroni will curse you and your family for all of ETERRRRRNITY

[u/jamaicanjerkperson]

sound mixing issues

[u/MisfitPotatoReborn]

The video was hard to watch IMO. I normally love stuff like this but she talks very quickly, doesn't separate her ideas/"paragraphs" with space to let us think, and uses a half-whisper voice that's a little hard to understand.

Neither a deal-breaker on their own, but put it together and I had to focus on this much more than I should, sometimes even needing to rewind to catch something I missed. Not a mealtime video.