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• 1 media/8371451914_4992242309_b.jpg media/8371451914_4992242309_b.jpg 2023-12-13T05:59:22+00:00 Matewan 18 A film directed by John Sayles (b. 1950) image_header 2023-12-23T03:40:06+00:00

  Summary

  Matewan (1987) dramatizes the events of the historic Battle of Matewan, which took place in 1920 during a coal miner’s strike in West Virginia. The film opens with the arrival of Joe Kenehan, a labor organizer for the United Mine Workers, who has come to Matewan to help coal miners organize a strike against the Stone Mountain Coal Company. As Joe rides the train into town, he witnesses a group of white miners beat up a group of Black and Italian miners who were brought in to cross the picket line, establishing for the viewer a clear racial dynamic at play within the film. As he begins to organize, Joe meets Few Clothes, one of the Black miners, Danny, who is a 15-year old miner and preacher, and C.E. Lively, a union infiltrator who is later revealed to be secretly working for the coal company. He is also introduced to two widows of miners, Bridey Mae Tolliver and Elma Radnor, who runs a boarding house and is Danny’s mother. After learning Joe’s intentions, C.E. calls in Hickey and Griggs, two men who work for the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, a private eye company notorious for violent union-busting and labor repression. 
    
  The Baldwin-Felts men attempt to evict people from their company-owned homes, but are stopped by the sheriff, Sid Hatfield. The strikers then set up a tent encampment outside of town, which is also attacked by strikebreakers and anti-union men. Tensions begin to mount between Joe and the other strikers as union national funds are not being dispersed, with Joe encouraging patience and nonviolence while the other miners push for more direct action. C.E. Lively manipulates Bridey Mae into falsely accusing Joe of rape and plants a letter to make him look like a spy, which then leads the other miners to plot to kill Joe. However, Danny, the young preacher, manages to convey a covert message of Joe’s innocence through his sermon, preventing the murder. The climax of the film occurs as Hickey and Griggs torture and kill a teenage boy in order to obtain names of union organizers. The miners and Baldwin-Felts agents engage in a massive shoot-out during which Joe and several other men from both sides are killed. The film concludes by identifying Matewan as the beginning of the West Virginia coal wars of 1920-21, cementing its significance in the historical record. 

  Coal as an Agent for Community and Violence: Race and Class in Matewan (1987)

  Matewan opens in total darkness, and the only sound one can hear is slow drips of falling water. Suddenly, a carbide lamp is turned on, illuminating a coal miner covered in black soot. As the miner affixes the lamp to his head, the whaling of a harmonica starts, calling to mind traditional Appalachian folk music and lending a strong sense of place to the film. The miner then proceeds to prep and light the fuses used for extracting the coal. By opening the film with this dimly lit, gritty depiction of the actual motions of coal mining, John Sayles places coal at the center of Matewan. Although we do not see another scene in the mines until the closing credits, it is clear that coal is the center of life in the Matewan community, woven into every aspect of the film. Within John Sayles’ Matewan, coal and coal mining are depicted as tools of unification across typical divisions of race, forming strong communities of resistance and class solidarity. However, Sayles also depicts the inherent violence that communities centered around extraction create and experience. 
      
  
  A scene in which this uniting power of coal and mining can be seen takes place after the arrival of Joe Kenehan and the Black and Italian miners intended to be strikebreakers in town. As Joe and these miners arrived on the train, a white mob who was angry about the Black miners (unknowingly) acting as scabs attacked the Black miners, hurling racial slurs and beating them up. This scene establishes a clear racial divide amongst the workers. Later, however, Joe convinces the union men to allow the Black and Italian workers to join. He draws upon notions of class solidarity against the exploitation of miners, stating that “you ain’t men to that coal company, you’re equipment, like a shovel…. They’ll use you till you wear out or you break down, or you’re buried under slate fall, and then they’ll get a new one, and they don’t care what color it is, or where it comes from” (22:21-22:46). He then says that “they have you fighting [against each other]... when you know there ain’t but two sides to this world- them that work and them that don’t” (23:21- 23:34). These sentiments show the depiction of coal and mining labor as a tool of community unification, all while downplaying the intricate difficulties of cross-race coalition building and lifting up coal as transcending traditional societal divisions. 
  
  The penultimate scene of the film, however, demonstrates the violent impacts that capitalistic coal mining can have on the communities that exist around extraction. In this scene, the mayor of the town and the men from the Baldwin-Felts agency have gathered in town in order to fight over the pending evictions of strikers from company housing. Clear sides are created through framing, with the detectives and agents positioned on the left side of the screen and the miners and the Mayor on the right side, facing each other head-on. Suddenly, from the back of the frame, Joe comes running up the street, trying to stop the fight and demonstrating nonviolent principles. In a cruel twist of fate, his sudden appearance startles the Baldwin-Felts men and a shootout begins between the coal company agents and the people of Matewan. In a violent flurry of bullets, Joe and several other townspeople are killed along with seven Baldwin-Felts agents. This bloody end to a story centered around the push and pull of violent vs. nonviolent action sends a clear message to viewers that despite the best efforts of organizers, there is inherent violence within the extraction that the communities organized around energy generation are unable to truly escape. 

  Conclusion

  Ultimately, Matewan provides an engaging but oversimplified view of the complex conflicts around coal and labor in the early twentieth century. Rather than exploring the nuanced divisions of race and class present within the time period, it sorts people into “good” and “bad” actors and oversimplifies the narrative. It presents coal as both a community builder and destroyer, leaving the viewer with a question as to the overall message of the film: Does energy do more to bring us together or to tear us apart? 

  
  Bibliography

  Sayles, John, director. Matewan. Cinecom Entertainment Group and Film Gallery, 1987.