A recurrent trope in this project is what I call the farm-worker thought experiment, in which white men "become" farm workers or at least momentarily become subject to their historical social conditions. Recalling Hegel's master/slave dialectic, Heinlein and Lucas present white farm boys who test themselves by dropping to the level of racialized farm workers only to rise to a position of heroic mastery over them. By contrast, Dick's narrative foregrounds farm-worker subordination, whereas MacGyver projects an alternative world where privileged white men risk their lives in the service of social justice for farm workers. The most recent example of such a performance is by Stephen Colbert, who accepted the UFW challenge of spending a day as a farm worker. Afterwards, he testified about his experiences before Congress, and in the only moment in which he broke character, Colbert spoke to farm-worker social death. 

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