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A review by vdarcangelo
Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser
4.0
This review originally appeared in the BOULDER WEEKLY
http://archive.boulderweekly.com/051304/buzzlead.html
Notes from the Underground Nation
Through pot, produce and peep shows, Eric Schlosser explores America’s shadow economy.
by Vince Darcangelo
- - - - - - - - - - - -
A poor Midwestern farmer serves time in Leavenworth for growing pot. Migrant farm workers from labor camps sleep in parked cars in Southern California. A comic-book salesman in Cleveland builds a pornography empire and turns the modern porn industry into a mainstream multi-billion dollar business. How in the name of Kurt Vonnegut are these folks related? They are all part of America’s underground economy, documented in Eric Schlosser’s new book, Reefer Madness.
In his newest work of investigative journalism, Schlosser, the author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation, explores America’s black market–a shadow economy that accounts for an estimated 10 percent of our country’s Gross Domestic Product–through essays on marijuana, illegal immigrants and adult entertainment. The essays in Reefer Madness stand alone as individual works of investigative reporting, but Reefer Madness is not an anthology. It is a cohesive, multi-layered piece tied together by a narrative thread that gives voice to the winners and losers of the black market.
"It’s a different kind of book, not purely a collection of essays because the three [topics] share a lot of common themes," says Schlosser. "But it’s also not a book that I sat down and conceived from scratch like Fast Food Nation."
Though he pitched this book prior to writing Fast Food Nation, Schlosser says he couldn’t get publishers interested in Reefer Madness until Fast Food Nation spent two years on the New York Times best-seller list.
"It was terribly difficult to get people to care about pot smokers being locked up and really hard to get people to care about illegal immigrants being exploited," he says. "It took the success of Fast Food Nation to provide the leverage to pay attention to these things. It’s a lot easier to write about Britney Spears if you want attention and publication, but poor people of color is not something that publishers are desperate to publish at the moment.
"I feel like a lot of what I’m doing is in opposition to the celebrity journalism that has been so popular for the last 20 years," he continues. "I’ve really been trying to do old-fashioned investigative journalism… to take voices and people who don’t have access to the mainstream media and give them the opportunity to be heard. I think these subjects are important, but they’re maybe not getting the kind of coverage they should be."
This is especially clear in the book’s second essay, "In the Strawberry Fields," which takes the reader beyond the produce counter and into the fields where migrant farmers are exploited for cheap labor.
"Once people felt comfortable that I wasn’t an immigration officer, people were really eager to talk," says Schlosser. "There are not reporters banging on the doors of migrant workers every day. These are people who are completely excluded from the mainstream, whose voices really aren’t heard every day."
Schlosser’s ability to gain intimate access to his subjects and follow them into the fields accentuates the human component of black-market politics, part of the struggle that is often neglected in discussions of legal battles and illicit profits concerning the underground economy. "In the Strawberry Fields" tackles the intricacies of immigration law, sharecropping and the agricultural industry, but what is most compelling are the portraits of the exploited workers, the tragic victims of America’s black market.
Another tragic figure in Reefer Madness is pornography kingpin Reuben Sturman, one of the black market’s winners whose improbable rise and ultimate fall is documented in "An Empire of the Obscene." Sturman was a comic-book salesman who built an adult-entertainment empire that shaped the industry in the ’80s and ’90s and was victorious in numerous freedom-of-speech battles with the federal government. But Sturman was eventually nabbed for tax evasion, making him an ironic figure akin to Al Capone.
"I found Sturman to be an incredibly charismatic, bright and interesting person," says Schlosser. "When he was battling the obscenity laws, I really felt like he was on the right side. When he was funneling millions of dollars in cash to offshore accounts and threatening people with violence, he went over to the dark side.
"He’s somebody who I just think got corrupted by power and money. He started out maybe in one place and wound up in a very different place. It’s a very American story in that sense," he continues. "But had the laws been different, you would have seen his face on the cover of Fortune magazine and hailed as this great, brilliant chief executive."
Whatever his thoughts on Sturman are now, in Reefer Madness Schlosser presents each of his characters with absolute objectivity. The impartiality and lack of an agenda in Schlosser’s writing allows the reader to experience the subjects as though they are the ones conducting the investigation. Schlosser attributes this to his approach of investigating first, opining later.
"I have the good fortune on most of the subjects I write about to start from a place of total ignorance," he says. "For me, a lot of the pleasure in the work is educating myself about what’s going on and learning about the subject. It’s toward the end of the research that I have very strong views about what’s going on."
This is especially true in the book’s opening essay, "Reefer Madness," which Schlosser says came about through a discussion with an editor at the Atlantic Monthly about whether there was anyone in prison for marijuana.
"I had smoked pot, but I didn’t begin the investigation from the point of view of trying to persuade people to change the marijuana laws because I didn’t know anything about it," says Schlosser. "Once I’m done with a subject and I’ve come to my conclusions, then I speak out, then I become more of an activist on an issue. I don’t start as an activist and then decide to write something."
The result is Reefer Madness, a thoughtful collection of essays that takes the reader into America’s economic underbelly and into the lives of its often colorful participants. In the end, the reader will never look at a doobie, strawberry or porn flick the same way.
"I think I write things to open people’s eyes and maybe wake them up," says Schlosser. "What’s gratifying to me is if people start the book and then finish it and at the end of the book they’re more aware than when they started it."
http://archive.boulderweekly.com/051304/buzzlead.html
Notes from the Underground Nation
Through pot, produce and peep shows, Eric Schlosser explores America’s shadow economy.
by Vince Darcangelo
- - - - - - - - - - - -
A poor Midwestern farmer serves time in Leavenworth for growing pot. Migrant farm workers from labor camps sleep in parked cars in Southern California. A comic-book salesman in Cleveland builds a pornography empire and turns the modern porn industry into a mainstream multi-billion dollar business. How in the name of Kurt Vonnegut are these folks related? They are all part of America’s underground economy, documented in Eric Schlosser’s new book, Reefer Madness.
In his newest work of investigative journalism, Schlosser, the author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation, explores America’s black market–a shadow economy that accounts for an estimated 10 percent of our country’s Gross Domestic Product–through essays on marijuana, illegal immigrants and adult entertainment. The essays in Reefer Madness stand alone as individual works of investigative reporting, but Reefer Madness is not an anthology. It is a cohesive, multi-layered piece tied together by a narrative thread that gives voice to the winners and losers of the black market.
"It’s a different kind of book, not purely a collection of essays because the three [topics] share a lot of common themes," says Schlosser. "But it’s also not a book that I sat down and conceived from scratch like Fast Food Nation."
Though he pitched this book prior to writing Fast Food Nation, Schlosser says he couldn’t get publishers interested in Reefer Madness until Fast Food Nation spent two years on the New York Times best-seller list.
"It was terribly difficult to get people to care about pot smokers being locked up and really hard to get people to care about illegal immigrants being exploited," he says. "It took the success of Fast Food Nation to provide the leverage to pay attention to these things. It’s a lot easier to write about Britney Spears if you want attention and publication, but poor people of color is not something that publishers are desperate to publish at the moment.
"I feel like a lot of what I’m doing is in opposition to the celebrity journalism that has been so popular for the last 20 years," he continues. "I’ve really been trying to do old-fashioned investigative journalism… to take voices and people who don’t have access to the mainstream media and give them the opportunity to be heard. I think these subjects are important, but they’re maybe not getting the kind of coverage they should be."
This is especially clear in the book’s second essay, "In the Strawberry Fields," which takes the reader beyond the produce counter and into the fields where migrant farmers are exploited for cheap labor.
"Once people felt comfortable that I wasn’t an immigration officer, people were really eager to talk," says Schlosser. "There are not reporters banging on the doors of migrant workers every day. These are people who are completely excluded from the mainstream, whose voices really aren’t heard every day."
Schlosser’s ability to gain intimate access to his subjects and follow them into the fields accentuates the human component of black-market politics, part of the struggle that is often neglected in discussions of legal battles and illicit profits concerning the underground economy. "In the Strawberry Fields" tackles the intricacies of immigration law, sharecropping and the agricultural industry, but what is most compelling are the portraits of the exploited workers, the tragic victims of America’s black market.
Another tragic figure in Reefer Madness is pornography kingpin Reuben Sturman, one of the black market’s winners whose improbable rise and ultimate fall is documented in "An Empire of the Obscene." Sturman was a comic-book salesman who built an adult-entertainment empire that shaped the industry in the ’80s and ’90s and was victorious in numerous freedom-of-speech battles with the federal government. But Sturman was eventually nabbed for tax evasion, making him an ironic figure akin to Al Capone.
"I found Sturman to be an incredibly charismatic, bright and interesting person," says Schlosser. "When he was battling the obscenity laws, I really felt like he was on the right side. When he was funneling millions of dollars in cash to offshore accounts and threatening people with violence, he went over to the dark side.
"He’s somebody who I just think got corrupted by power and money. He started out maybe in one place and wound up in a very different place. It’s a very American story in that sense," he continues. "But had the laws been different, you would have seen his face on the cover of Fortune magazine and hailed as this great, brilliant chief executive."
Whatever his thoughts on Sturman are now, in Reefer Madness Schlosser presents each of his characters with absolute objectivity. The impartiality and lack of an agenda in Schlosser’s writing allows the reader to experience the subjects as though they are the ones conducting the investigation. Schlosser attributes this to his approach of investigating first, opining later.
"I have the good fortune on most of the subjects I write about to start from a place of total ignorance," he says. "For me, a lot of the pleasure in the work is educating myself about what’s going on and learning about the subject. It’s toward the end of the research that I have very strong views about what’s going on."
This is especially true in the book’s opening essay, "Reefer Madness," which Schlosser says came about through a discussion with an editor at the Atlantic Monthly about whether there was anyone in prison for marijuana.
"I had smoked pot, but I didn’t begin the investigation from the point of view of trying to persuade people to change the marijuana laws because I didn’t know anything about it," says Schlosser. "Once I’m done with a subject and I’ve come to my conclusions, then I speak out, then I become more of an activist on an issue. I don’t start as an activist and then decide to write something."
The result is Reefer Madness, a thoughtful collection of essays that takes the reader into America’s economic underbelly and into the lives of its often colorful participants. In the end, the reader will never look at a doobie, strawberry or porn flick the same way.
"I think I write things to open people’s eyes and maybe wake them up," says Schlosser. "What’s gratifying to me is if people start the book and then finish it and at the end of the book they’re more aware than when they started it."