Joe the Movie

Not so very long ago, and not too far away. There lived a man called Joe who’d worked hard all his life for very little gain. Joe was that dedicated chump that bosses all adore; he’d go that extra mile for very scant reward. He’d always be the first to arrive and very the last to leave. There was always one more final task to keep Joe working late.

The other men could count on Joe to always lend a hand. He’d even put their tools away when they could not be arsed. They said he loved to graft, that he worked like a machine. He’d clock up fourteen hours a day, for seven days a week. His family hardly ever saw him. He was a stranger in his own home and a mystery to the wife and kids he’d hardly ever known. They said that Joe would give you the shirt right off his back. There was certainly some truth in that. Joe was always giving out, but seldom getting back.

Then one day it seems that he’d finally had enough. Perhaps some grand epiphany had turned Joe’s head around. Or maybe the growing realisation that he was being taken for a clown. Whatever the reason; Joe turned up for work that day with a can of orange spray paint and daubed “Joe the Movie” on the factory wall. Then he squatted there beneath the sign taunting his fellow workers and giving them the full rhetorical.

“You cunts are nowt but fucking slaves. They have you by the balls. They control your every move. They control your fuckin’ thoughts. They tell you that you’re free, but the combine owns you all! You’ll graft away your days to earn an early grave, but everything you make – they’ll simply take away. They give you with one hand to take back with the other, the combine has commodified everything you need. They even orchestrate your dreams to make them seem attainable, but these are only opiates tae keep your noses tae the wheel. Your only purpose in this life is to satisfy the greed of their insatiable machine. So you can work from now till doomsday, but they’ll never set you free!”

Joe refused to get to work, or to talk to management – or answer to his slave name. As a free man he insisted on being addressed as “Seeker”. He declared he would be writing his own screenplays from then on. He wouldn’t be coerced into speaking other people’s words down the barrel of a gun. The bosses called security to show poor Joe the gate, but they were a little shy of him in case he ran amok. Eventually the cops were called and Joe was hauled away in chains. He was scrutinised by two quacks and sectioned under the Mental Health Act of 1983. That’s what they do to heretics in this day and age. They simply lock them away and castrate their minds with chemicals, they say it’s more humane than physical restraint.

They say a prophet is never recognised in his own hometown. The doctors labelled Joe as paranoid schizophrenic – he took to it the hard way round – and labelled them as his torturers and instruments of the combine. They pumped him full of Thorazine and other abominations, but he would not be silenced, he was evangelical in his cause. He would not be dissuaded through their psychoanalytical rhetoric, or through their chemical cosh. Joe planned to smash the system, no matter what the cost. He steadfastly resisted the combine and all its fiendish instruments until he eventually realised he was fighting a losing battle, simply because he had his tactics all wrong. So he adopted subtle subterfuge and employed a little guile. He learned to play the psychiatric game and responded well to treatment after just a short while. Joe was the soul of discretion and kept his cards well hidden. He never mentioned the dreaded combine, or espoused his true beliefs. So he passed his days quietly in relative grace and peace, while he awaited the revolution and his inevitable reprieve.

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