GUNG HO

by Kevin Koehler

We must must build spirit.  We must be a team.  One with one purpose only.  Thinking only of Company.

- Kazihiro (Gedde Watanabe), Gung Ho

Don't read any further if you don't wish to learn the ending to Gung Ho.  I'm about the give it away, so consider yourself warned.

Here's it is, in a proverbial nutshell:

Congratulations for working your asses off, car factory workers.  The unpaid overtime.  Working outside of your union, without a contract, for three dollars less than what you were getting a year ago.  We really appreciate the 15,000 cars you made in a month out of a misplaced sense of national duty, the highest total in our company's history (we'll overlook the poor quality control).  You have successfully proven that Americans can be the subservient worker bees you view the Japanese as if they simply put their mind to it.  For these sacrifices, you get to keep your jobs and we suppose you can have the salary you made before (as long as you don't complain too much, natch).  Now get back to work.  Sincerely, the Management.

This would be an interesting ending, even prescient (given this age of rising CEO salaries and a static minimum wage), if it were meant as satire.  It is not.  The closing shot of the factory workers doing jumping jacks in concert, at the direction of their supervisors (accompanied by the soundtrack of "Working Class Man"), is intended to be uplifting.  We are supposed to feel good.

In it's own misguided way, Gung Ho means well; rather like Hunt Stevenson (Michael Keaton) of Hadleyville, Pennsylvania, the foreman of the town's automobile plant.  When the factory goes belly up, Hunt is sent to the present/future of cars, Japan, where hat in hand he solicits a new manufacturer's business: the Assan Motors Corporation.  The town rejoices with news of his success.  No longer will they have to rely on food stamps for beer.

Little do they know there is a slight caveat - Hadleyville's finest are expected to perform to the standards of the Japanese working man.  They must acquiesce to the needs and culturally-specific attitudes of "the Company," such as showing up on time and not smoking on the job (and even further, not plowing over company executives during a softball game in a clear case of runner interference).  Hunt guarantees their cooperation in his typically blue-collar colloquialism: "Is a frog's ass watertight?"  The Japanese confer.  "Yes," they say.  "We believe it is."  Of course, it all begs the question: if Assan Motors wants their employees to to act like Japanese people, why not build the plant in Japan?

Even as it engages in cultural stereotypes (both Japanese and American), there's a something of a leitmotif about open-mindness, however lost it is in a boondoggle of mixed messages, globalization fears, and dime store economics.  You see, the Japanese aren't so bad, even if they are slowly trying to destroy our economy with their warrior mentality and masochistic willingness to work seven days a week.  Please refrain from accosting them at the supermarket.  As far as Americans go, they're not lazy or unmotivated - they just have different attitudes about time and punctuality.  Give them an economic incentive (or threaten their livelihood) and they can be as careerist as anyone.  And labor unions?  Well, if we can agree on anything, it is that they serve no purpose.  Who needs labor unions, as they simply poison the well of community?  Defile the convenant that is the relationship between worker and boss (what is the ending if not strike breaking?).

Can't we all just get along?

© Pretentious Musings. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.