Britain's railway unions recently launched their largest strike since 1989, reminiscent of what the late anthropologist David Graeber said in "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs": "Subway workers The fact that they can paralyze London itself shows that their jobs are really indispensable, but it seems to be the reason for people's chagrin." He distinguishes between "shit jobs" and "bullshit jobs": the former are mostly low-paying jobs at the grassroots level. , but it is a necessary part of social operation; the latter is meaningless to society and workers, and the remuneration is often better than the former.
Among the overseas short films screened in this "Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival", there are several works of different genres and styles, all involving grassroots labor, meaningless work, and the absurdity of existence. The "Push Pins" task photo retouching service in The Push Pins symbolizes all kinds of boring, low-paying jobs in society. The two protagonists have to pull pins of a given color from the wall, and then the others put those pins back, forever. They can "freely choose" whether to work overtime to earn more pay, but they can be punished at any time for various unspoken rules.
Pulling the thumbtack" can also be interpreted as the process of maintaining the normal operation of the system, which must be carried out according to the procedures, but no one knows what the operation of this system means. Screenshot_2022-06-27_at_4_00_37_PM Image source: "Pushpin of the Heart" / Fresh Wave If the protagonist pulls out a pushpin of another color by mistake, something unexpected will happen-here the director used a surreal technique to express the hallucination of the character in a state of extreme fatigue.