There’s No Price Lower Than Free
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The free showings, promoted at walmartmovie.com, are part of a grassroots campaign to create momentum for the film, a strategy director Robert Greenwald successfully exploited for his previous documentary, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. The Wal-Mart film marshals an army of familiar charges against the giant retailer, beginning with the way it knocks out local businesses and ending with security problems in its parking lots. Greenwald’s main point is that Wal-Mart’s low prices are subsidized in numerous ways by taxpayers: according to the film, the federal government shells out an estimated $1.5 billion annually to provide medical care and social services for the chain’s 1.3 million U.S. employees, while local governments continue to provide hefty subsidies to bring new Wal-Marts to town. And then there are those $3-a-day factory workers producing Wal-Mart products in China, and seamstresses in Bangladesh working for 13 cents an hour. More than 7,000 of the grassroots screenings were scheduled nationally this week, with some still to come in the Chicago area this weekend.
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