The Foxconn factory manufactures devices for the world’s most powerful technology companies. Before his or her first shift, each factory employee must formally pledge not to commit suicide. Tough Love’s narrator has a British accent, injecting the American show with unearned sophistication, menacing over its subjects like a haughty anthropologist, and exploiting a national inferiority complex. He explains why factory officials now require the pledges. In 2010, there was an epidemic: eighteen suicide attempts, fourteen deaths, one method. Each employee leapt from a Foxconn building.
“In recent years,” the narrator explains, “only twelve total suicides have occurred, so Foxconn officials believe the pledges to be effective.” Shots of factory workers flash on-screen. “Employees wake at six thirty in the morning, arrive by seven thirty, and leave around eighty thirty at night,” explains the narrator, “working eleven-hour days, subtracting breaks. Speaking is prohibited. Standing is prohibited. If they finish their work early, which rarely occurs, they must sit and read employee manuals. At the end of the week, employees are forced to sign falsified time cards, reporting fewer hours than they worked.”
On-screen, an American boy—fifteen years old—slumps against a concrete, windowless wall on his five o’clock break. He is about to complete the first of three sixty-six-hour, six-day workweeks. Even if his assigned Character-Building Environment is a place of employment, a Tough Love participant cannot keep the money he earns while filming. This makes no difference to the boy, who would be compensated a standard wage of $1.54 per hour, the narrator explains. “Ryder’s parents are anesthesiologists.”
Ryder wears faintly checkered scrubs, a matching hat, and rubber gloves. A blue-patterned face mask hooked to his ears. “I never shoulda robbed Oma,” he says atonally. His face is the exact texture, shape, and color of an apricot. “I regret it, that’s for sure.” A swell of digitized strings. The camera slowly zooms as his voice and expression collapse into the pitch and asymmetry of real sadness. “I was just bored.”
In the background, two factory employees emerge from tall doors. They make eye contact with the lens for a beat. One employee forms a timid peace sign before the camera pans down, and the scene cuts to an advertisement for sleep medicine.
Todd rubs his arms.
“Did you just get the chills?” asks Blandine.
His expression confirms that she is unwelcome, and that she is correct.
“I did, too,” she says. “Whenever people look at the camera, I just—”
“Shh,” says Todd. “I’m watching this.”
In the commercial, CGI butterflies flutter around the head of a dozing woman, the scene cast in the periwinkle light of medically enabled sleep.
“This show is bleak as hell,” Blandine says. “How do you watch it all day?”
“I think it’s funny,” replies Todd. “Passes the time.”
His response is so cold-blooded, she can’t engage with it. She changes the channel on their conversation. “Did you work today?”
“It’s my day off,” Todd answers.
“You still at Buds and Spuds?”
He dramatizes his annoyance, refusing to look away from the screen. “Yes.”
“So, do you flip the burgers? Work the drive-through? Or what?”
Todd shrugs. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“Just depends.”
Blandine pauses. “Any plans tonight?”
“What’s it to you?” he snaps.
“I’m just curious.”
“I’m trying to watch this.”
“It’s a commercial.”
“So? I like them.”
An advertisement for a fried chicken burrito sandwich plays. Droplets of water like dew on tomato skin. Crinkle-cut pickles. Meat bearing no resemblance to its origin. Enlarged for texture, says a message at the bottom of the screen. “Meet the burritowich,” says a male voice. “The freak you never knew you needed in your life.”
Blandine stands from the futon-sofa, her skin sticking to the faux-leather. “We live together, and we know nothing about each other. Doesn’t that creep you out?”
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
“You creep me out.”
“Well, I should. I’m a stranger. I could be a murderer.”
“We happen to live in the same apartment. That’s it. End of story. Were you best friends with every one of your fucking foster families?”
“Whatever.” Blandine collects her things. She turns to go, but stops when an advertisement for the Valley development appears on the screen. She has avoided watching these, but now stays in place, mesmerized by the symphony, by the high-budget manipulation that is already doing its eerie work on her brain.
“What is home?” asks the once-famous actor from New Jersey who has, for reasons mysterious to Blandine, become the voice of Vacca Vale’s revitalization. “Home is a place where you don’t have to choose between big-city life and the comforts of a small town. Home is wood in the fireplace, rain boots by the door, a mug of cocoa, game night with friends. Home is first steps. Belly laughs. A barista who knows how you take your coffee. Home is a pie in the oven, live saxophone downtown, and a backyard of fireflies. Three generations, fishing on the river. Home isn’t just a place. It’s a mindset. Vacca Vale: Welcome home.”
At the end of the commercial, Blandine looks at Todd. Tears glint in his eyes.
“Whoa,” she says. “Really?”
He turns his face away from her.
“No offense,” Blandine says. “But I’m genuinely curious. You can watch real people getting tortured by the extraction economy with, like, sociopathic indifference. But this tourism commercial makes you cry?”
“Can you just shut the fuck up, Blandine?”
Blandine holds her book close to her chest. After clenching her jaw for a minute, she chooses not to retaliate because that’s the kind of person that she’s going to be, from now on.
Welcome Home
Listening to Blandine descend the stairwell of the Rabbit Hutch, Todd opens his laptop and searches for the Vacca Vale commercials. There are five. He watches each one over and over, pressing his shirt to his eyes. Damp and salty cotton. Recently, one of these commercials came on when he was with Jack and Malik, and he had to pretend like he felt nothing. Maybe they were pretending to feel nothing, too. The thought comforts him, makes him cry harder. Todd gropes a plastic grocery bag beside him—a texture he associates with ghosts. The living room has dimmed to the liminal gray of twilight, and he can sense a storm brewing outside, preparing to make a theatrical entrance. He eats the last of his radishes, savoring the burn in his mouth.
Your Auntie Tammy
Joan lives with several plastic plants in Apartment C2 on the first floor of the Rabbit Hutch. She aspires to own live plants one day but can’t summon the confidence. On the evening of Wednesday, July seventeenth, she returns home from a day of problems to her oldest and most vexing one.
Like most of Joan’s problems, this one derives from two incongruent points of goodwill. On holidays, Joan receives packages from her sweetest, loneliest aunt. The aunt has fake teeth, glamorous penmanship, and a fondness for disabled pets. She dyes her hair crimson and always smells like baby powder. She is Joan’s favorite relative. In her most honest moments—after two glasses of red blend, or during hot thunderstorms—Joan will admit that she prefers this aunt to her own mother, who was so afraid of dying she could hardly live, and also to her own father, who ate his way to premature death.
The packages from Joan’s aunt usually contain objects like crucifixes, stationery emblazoned with cherubs, homeopathic remedies, luggage tags, and kitchen gadgets with unreasonably specific functions. Aunt Tammy always includes a card with illustrated, big-eyed ciphers of American Holiday Cheer grinning on the flap and a truism typed inside. Beneath the printed, unthreatening font, the aunt scrawls messages like, Don’t forget that you’re as beautiful inside as you are outside, honey bear! So proud of you, no matter what, and your Mom and Dad are so proud of you, too, from Heaven!!! Happy Easter!!!!!! Get out there and REJOICE. Praise HIM for His Incredible sacrifice of BODY and SOUL. All my love, XOXOXOXO Your Auntie Tammy.
Joan considers crying every time she receives one of these packages, and occasionally does, depending on her hormonal balance. But when tears do arrive, it’s because she wants them there, to bespeak her sensitivity, not because she needs them.