Last night, I watched John & Jane Toll-Free at the MoMA's Titus Theater 1. It was part of the New Directors/New Films series. Here's a blurb about the movie and a link to the series:

A vast fluorescent-lit room in an anonymous compound in India – welcome to the world of overseas call centers. Indian by day, American by night – so they can accommodate U.S. business hours – the young men and women profiled here struggle to have their share of the American Dream as they sell products and troubleshoot for consumers. These 1-800 workers learn to identify completely with their American aliases – meet Glen, Sydney, and Naomi – and to reject their traditional values (until they return to their Indian homes and to mothers urging them to eat). Ahluwalia’s revealing documentary plays like science fiction and shows a consequence of globalization to be the outsourcing of souls as well as of goods. Cultural imperialism has never looked scarier or more complete in this ferocious, funny, and ingeniously constructed film.

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/film_media/2006/NewDir_NewFilms.html

I don't think the blurb does the film justice, because Ahluwalia doesn't condemn or endorse outsourcing. He just documents the lives of the employees there, and it's fascinating. Some of the employees can't stand their jobs, and some of them have totally embraced their jobs, to the extent that they have tried to make their work "personas" who they are. Val, Alexis, and I stayed after the movie to listen to the director answer questions. One of the things he mentioned is that the only reason he was able to film all that he was able to film was because he started in 2002, before there was this real backlash against call centers. That was when people in India couldn't fathom that there might be objection, even within the country, to this new vehicle of economic growth.

So it's unlikely that a documentary today could be quite as candid, and I definitely recommend the movie. By showing you, in such dramatic fashion, the effects of assimilation, you begin to wonder how much you've been affected without even realizing it.

Also, a friend from Bard College, Zubin Pastakia, was the post-production supervisor. Rockin' good stuff, Zubin!