Nomadland (2020), Channel 4, Film 4, written, produced, edited and directed by Chloé Zhao. Based on the 2017 nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/nomadland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomadland

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/02/nomadland-living-in-cars-working-amazon

‘I’m not homeless, I’m houseless,’ Fern (Frances McDormand) corrects a young girl she’d tutored after a chance meeting in a superstore, who’d heard she was homeless. In other words, Fern had gone from being one of us to one of them. A person to be feared and derided.

‘I want to work,’ Fern tells a job advisor. She lists all the things she can do and has done. The job advisor remains sceptical. Fern is old.

Cannot afford to stop working, or retire, but cannot afford to pay rent. Nomads are presented in a positive way. It’s the journey that matters and living hand-to-mouth is the price they have to pay. Fern’s sisters says much the same thing when Fern has to ask her for her a loan to get her van out of a garage after it has done too many journeys and broken down.

Who does the shitty and worst paid jobs when everyone else has gone home? People like Fern. Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, makes use of transient labour. An estimate of one-in-four RV and those who live in cars help make him wealthier. They actively recruit such workers. They are the Joads of modern America, as in John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath, without the wrath. Used up and spat out again by middle- class Americans.   

There was a real hatred for the Okies and the mobile poor in Depression-era America. States with larger urban areas and high housing costs, such as California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, and New York, have been reported to have relatively higher numbers of people living not only in RVs but mostly cars. Their presence, as with the Okies, has been criminalised.  

Fern goes to a show and sits in Camper Van or a house on wheels. She makes brumming noises like a kid. The average cost of a new single-wide manufactured home can range from around $50,000 to $100,000 or more, while double-wide homes or larger models can cost upwards of $100,000. The Okies had to sell their mules at a carrion price that had once helped them plough a field. Those living in cars or camper vans are as likely to buy a mule as being able to pay for those creature comforts.   

The selling point here is Frances McDormand. Without her helping raise the money to make the film, there is no film. Without her as the main character, there is no film. But with or without McDormand an increasing number of Americans are being criminalised for being poor and homeless. I don’t expect the moron’s moron Trump to win the next election, but if he does, shit flows downhill. There’s an in-film joke in a scene about different-sized containers and taking care of your own shit in cars and RVs. My worry would be closer to home. But my kinship and compassion would increase for people like me. The nomads, immigrants, outcasts and Okies of our modern world, when state-sanctioned hatred grows exponentially into a black hole that swallows us all and benefits only the super wealthy. We’ve already lost the propaganda war to the super-rich like the Koch brother’s shrink-tank tactics and sponsors of Trump’s hatred and lies. We’re already on that road. Nomadland is a feel-good stopping-off point.  

How the world laughed when the moron’s morons’ foot-soldiers stormed the Congress buildings.

 Captain America.

But the price of freedom is high, it always has been. And it’s one I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not.

I was scared the moron’s moron would, inadvertently, take us into the Third World War (delayed). I’ve got a roof over my head, enough to eat, and quite like being alive. As Malcolm X said before he was murdered ‘the chickens have come home to roost’.

The 45^th American President, the pedlar of hate and conspiracy theories—who got into the highest office in the land, with Fox News help, a Facebook disinformation campaign, and the Russian President Putin providing logistical support—under the pretext of a taking back control, incites riot and unlawful assembly. A mob army to dispute an election he lost, we’re back at Charlottesville here, with ‘those very good people’ that are gun-toting, flag-waving white and right.

Not since 1812, we’ve been told has this happened. General MacArthur brutally dealt with a citizen army, many of them veterans of the first world war, that had come to Washington and demanded government help during the hungry thirties. It will be interesting to see what happens to those moron moron’s supporters, who, for examples, filmed themselves sitting in Presiding Officer’s chair. That’s how dumb they are.

They believe that the purity of their brand of patriotism will protect them from the law. Without the moron’s moron in office how can there be any law? Just or otherwise?

The bankrupt 45^th American President, who when called to fight for his country in Vietnam, but said he’d a sore foot, ends in farce. When it comes to taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich, I’m a revolutionary. This was no storming of the Congress by Captain America surrogates, but was dis-United America showing its face for the television and the mass media. Andy Warhol’s everyone requiring their fifteen minutes of fame in La-La land. Poetic justice as the moron’s moron bows out.