The Employment: A Prize-Winning Animation About Why We’re So Disenchanted with Work Today

What did Argen­tine film­mak­er San­ti­a­go Gras­so have in mind when he cre­at­ed the prize-win­ning ani­ma­tion El Empleo (The Employ­ment) five years ago? Was it some­thing about the dehu­man­iz­ing qual­i­ty of many jobs in the mod­ern ser­vice econ­o­my? Or the grim shift towards menial labor after the great reces­sion of 2007-08?  Or, nowa­days in 2016, could you see a com­men­tary on the work that will be left once automa­tion fin­ish­es dis­plac­ing liv­ing, breath­ing employ­ees–every­one from burg­er flip­pers to hedge fund man­agers? Robots will do the work, peo­ple will be the door­mats, and maybe (as Elon Musk sug­gests) the gov­ern­ment can pay us all a bare min­i­mum wage?

The Employ­ment will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our larg­er meta list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The Cre­ators Project

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

William Faulkn­er Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spec­tac­u­lar Let­ter (1924)