The Absurd Reality Through an Even More Absurd Film

review by Mark Bedetti

3/14/17

ICA Boston “NoNoseKnows”

            To most people, a woman sneezing out plates of noodles as the scent of flowers is wafted into her face is nothing more than a peculiar scene on the surface. In reality, the film “NoNoseKnows” by Mika Rotenberg is an attempt at showing the global systems of capital through an exaggerated metaphor. An impressively tall white female rides a motor scooter through a quiet and polluted city in China on her way to work. She makes her way into a building and proceeds through a series of colored rooms until she eventually reaches a room full of bouquets of flowers, dozens of plates of pasta, a fan, and a pair of feet protruding from a bowl of pearls. The room directly below her is a dark with a long table down the middle with Asian women of all ages seated on either side cutting and inserting pieces of clam tissue into other clams using household items such as rulers and knitting needles. A young girl spins a wheel which in turn spins the fan in front of the woman above to blow the scent of flowers into her face. This triggers the women to continuously sneeze out plates of pasta which is later seen being eaten by more women in a factory counting the pearls. This cycle continues over and over.

            The white female is seen as having the higher role in the business both literally and figuratively. The woman has far less of a tedious job and a far less strenuous job as well as the Asian women below are in a cold and unpleasant state while the woman upstairs is in comfort. It is also apparent that the white woman is benefiting from the other women’s manual labor. It is also interesting to notice that the manual workers were all women required to work at such a young age. Although parts of the film are unbelievably exaggerated, a lot of it is necessary to get the message across. It did an amazing job at allowing the viewer to see the enormous amount of capital associated with the profits from these situations such as the pearl industry and the continuous cycle based around it.