“The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”, Mike Daisey’s impassioned monologue at DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre, is agonizingly brutal about high tech’s high human cost.
Initially, Daisey waxes not just ecstatic, but orgiastic about Apple. No mere “Apple aficionado”, he’s an “Apple worshipper” who calls his iPhone “my baby”.
To relax, he used to dissemble his laptop into 43 pieces, and put it back together. “It soothes me,” he tells the audience, which laughs knowingly. The geekier they are, the harder they laugh.
Even a techno-nerd like myself will find the amusement and the eye-opening enlightenment.
Daisey compares fellow geeks to “lowland gorillas, fighting for dominance…about who’s the geekiest.” He roars like a gorilla, one of many sound effects he emits, even a spot-on dot matrix.
The inhuman sounds provide much-needed comic relief from numerous inhumane details of the monologue, some may say diatribe. He brilliantly juxtaposes Jobs’ and Apple’s history with the high cost of our addiction to low cost electronics.
“To be in love with Apple is to be in love with heartbreak,” Daisey tells the rapt audience.
The true heartbreak is in the southern China city of Shenzhen -- where 52 percent of all the world’s electronics are made --by “serfs”, and by hand. He saw this first-hand, by posing as a businessman to get inside its guarded factories.
The Foxconn factory, where Apple and other electronics are made, is high tech hell. Its 430,000 workers are as young as 12; they work 12- and 16-hour shifts – one died after a 32-hour shift; they perform robotic, repetitive tasks; they sleep in concrete cells where beds are stacked 15-high; and about a dozen workers committed suicide off the high-rise dorms.
“An epidemic of suicides occurred at the time of my visit,” Daisey says. “Foxconn’s total response had been to put up nets. That’s Foxconn’s version of ‘corporate responsibility.’”
He tells of one worker whose hand was crippled on the iPad assembly line. “When people can’t work any more, they’re pulled from the line and disposed of,” Daisey says. “People are not seen as people; they’re seen as parts in a machine.”
Daisey notes that he no longer dissembles and reassembles his laptop. Is that proof that he's practicing what he's preaching?
He ends by urging the audience to “see blood in between your computer’s keys… remember that your phone's made by children’s hands…”, and spread the word.
But what then? Toss all iPhone, iPad, other iToys? And buy what instead? One of the many other brands made in Shenzhen? Go Internet-less? Wireless-less?
In my guilt-ridden quandary, as I filed out, I was handed a sheet of paper labelled “WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?” Daisey suggests contacting Steve Jobs and Apple, even supplies Jobs’ e-mail address (I'll let you know whatever he may tell me) and Apple’s toll-free customer relations number; contacting other makers like Nokia, Dell, etc.; organizations like China Labor Watch; and talking about this – “Spread the virus.”
For more info and tickets: Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, www.woollymammoth.net, 641 D Street, NW, Washington, DC. Box Office, 202-393-3939. Through April 17. Post-show discussions with community members, artists, and scholars follow performances on Wednesday, March 30,Sunday, April 3, and Thursday, April 7.
Comments