"Sleep Dealer"

At the very least "Sleep Dealer" is a film that describes a point of view on the progression of the abuse of slightly foreign workers such as Mexicans in this case. Despite the legalities involved in the citizenship of real life Mexican migrant workers they are a very important factor to the American work force. This film which can easily be juxtaposed to the "Matrix" which we also screened in class reflects on their involvement in the world we see around us in reference to how we live our lives. In this film there is a look at a possible but at the moment exaggerated future.
In this film the characters who are Mexican are linked to a system which converts their physical energy and sends it to work places in the U.S. The main character, Memo, is a young man who has left his families farm in search of a better life. Unfortunately this improvement he seeks comes at a high cost as it does for Mexican migrant workers in the present day. He eventually does acquire a job that requires him to implant nodes into his body. These nodes act as an open tap to physical energy. When working, cables are linked to the nodes to extract this energy. Lenses are placed on the eyes so the worker can see what he is doing at the physical work place.
As time progresses Memo notices the harsh reality of what is actually going on. His energy is being sent to a robot on a construction site in an American city. The robot obviously makes for a better worker seeing as it does not suffer from many of the same flaws the human body does. The cost of this seemingly productive system though is the effect the human body being drained is subject to. Some workers like Memo are pulling extensive shifts. These work hours would take their toll on any human being even in the present day. This exploitation however is in a sense by choice. The people working in this work place simulation obviously took the job out of need. The long term affects are much more then what they bargained for. Some people died and those that didn't were permanently disabled.
Although this is not exactly what the "Matrix" portrays as a synthetic reality there are many common ideas. The sense that in one way or another this technological progression we glorify in the present day will lead to the demise of our fundamental humanity. Our physical energy powering machines that we depend on. We all want technology to provide us with more convenience in our future, but at what cost?