Written Assignments:

 Notes/Questions surrounding the movie Wasteland

1. What the the features of the recycling pickers' living conditions and wage labour?
2. Vik Muniz wants to change the lives of these people. How does he go about it?
3. Why does he choose the landfill?
4. Why do these people have to work at the landfill?
5. Has he addressed the material conditions that require people to live and work sorting through this garbage?
6. After watching this movie, what do you think the overarching problem is that requires people to work such demeaning and low-paying jobs?
7. If you said consumption, you're wrong. Its a problem with production.
8. Why are people forced to work there to survive?
9. Why does he choose only a few people, does this seem like the right choice given the format of the movie?
10. What changes for the viewer if there are a few selected stories about struggling brown people verses seeing hundreds of suffering brown people?
11. Does it seem easier to help?
12. Is it more personalized for the viewer?
13. Who is the woman Brooke?
14. What is her occupation and relation to the pickers? - To Vik?
15. She is a mediating figure – she mediates between Vik and who else?
16. When they are in the studio, who is shown doing the most work? Vik? The pickers?
17. What has he really done if they have to return to low-waged jobs once their sum of money has run out?
18. What socio-economic status do you think the pickers will be in in 5 years?
19. What about Vik?
20. What do the people who go to see the museum really get out seeing these pictures? Do you think it will spurn any of them into helping and agitating for the pickers?