Kenneth Lonergan, the Apolitical Bard of Service Workers
Over two centuries, many a novel or film has investigated the various corners of oppression in a capitalist world, issuing powerful protest on behalf of slaves, farmers, and factory workers. In the 19th century, Western literature saw the publication of the great slave narratives, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the works of Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo. In the 20th century, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and movies like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Chaplin’s Modern Times brought the artist’s critique of capitalism up to modern speed.
Today, Americans live in an economy dominated by business and commercial services, but they still doesn’t have a great protest novel or movie (or any other cultural work) about service workers. Sure, there are and on bankers, real-estate protest art like the right-leaning or the right-wing conspiracies in the left-leaning . But these works were all challenging, in some way, the dominance of business services. There are great books, movies, and television shows about consumer services, but ,, ,, andnever advocated for immediate socioeconomic reform, let alone revolution.
