"Sleep Dealer" and Digital Labor
By Melissa Harby

In the analysis “Sleep Dealer” we experience commodities are an exchange of goods in a society where everyone has necessities. For example, nodes are capitalized and advertised as a commodity fetish in "Sleep Dealer" to promote a lifestyle that everyone can enjoy because it pays for them to use their nodes for labor. This is not to say that “social value” is being diminished, but commodities do carry money at a high value. Another thing to keep in mind is the idea that the head-space and body are two different paths in this film. I’ll dive into this later.  Commodities and labor both have significance in Karl Marx’s piece as well as the film “Sleep Dealer,” but what makes labor useful is how products are being valued.

“Sleep Dealer” is a film produced by Alex Rivera. Memo, the protagonist, likes to create things by hand, but this time it is a listening device that he was able to use a code to hack into the military server. Soon, he put his family in danger because a military drone received the coordinates to Memo’s home. The danger of the day wasn’t what Memo was doing, they miscalculated who the person was and killed Memo’s dad.  Memo left home to find work to help out his family knowing his mom needed the help. When he first entered the new city he was staying at he became introduced with this new technology. They sold this technology off the black market, and if inserted into the human body wrong it could kill the person getting these nodes. Nodes are basic neurotransmitters that enter the body and connect to machinery for work and social lives. This is where he received nodes to connect to a company called Sleep Dealer. This company uses these nodes to connect to a machine to a virtual reality that works on buildings. Using Memo as the human behind these machine robots, he loses touch of the truth and searches for ways to gain information behind the connectivity to what exactly happened to his father, and how to make a living for his family back home.

An idea formed in Marx’s article that, “The sum total of the labor of all these private individuals form the aggregate labor of society” (Marx 2). Basically, Marx is trying to say that the men that do the labor, aka Memo, is exactly what helps societies turn objects like a table into a commodity; because now it is being socialized as something we need to have in our communities. It is a necessity. Commodities are objects that turn into a necessity, like Memo getting nodes surgically put into his body. But we can also look at nodes as a social connectivity.

By using the modern technology known as nodes in “Sleep Dealer,” we follow it as a way through technology, a connector. L. L. Thaver said,

“that awareness of such a technological clearing in which our social being is understood has the double-sided nature of pointing both to the danger posited as well as the saving grace which such awareness endows. The danger is that in an information and knowledge age our expression of everydayness, or the quotidian, is no longer defined by its expression of sociality, or social connectivity as forms of social ‘outreach’, and the ‘sociability’ that involves the practices we enact in effecting such social connectivity” (Thaver 2).

Basically, Thaver is saying that the nodes we see in “Sleep Dealer” are a social connectivity in the expression of everydayness. They use nodes to express a connection with a machine or another person, like Memo and Luz, to give their body a way to communicate with a dream-scape or work. Nodes are dangerous because they connect to the human’s body through their nervous system. If a node were to go into the body wrong, and/or miss where it was supposed to be inserted, it could kill the person. That’s right kill them. When connects to the machine in “Sleep Dealer” the body is creating this electric mode of information and knowledge to a system, that runs these robotic machines in a building. But the location is never direct. The workers running this company never know where they are working virtually.  What’s even more dangerous is the system could glitch or spark in some way, shape, or form, and the body that is connected to the nodes could make them blind with the contacts they wear. These contacts are dangerous because during the glitch they are in a virtual reality and if electrocuted, they become stuck and could instantly be blind. Social connectivity in this case is more for the ‘outreach’ of practices that affect the connectivity to technology. But another way nodes are a form of saving grace with the knowledge they carry.

When social connectivity is involved with knowledge, like when Luz and Memo connecting together, it becomes more of the saving grace effect. It can be seen as the double-sided nature of pointing to an awareness of life by connections. Mark Poster suggests that, “Individuals are now connected to one another, to the events and places around the world with an effective, instantaneous apparatus of information machines” (Poster 1). By Luz and Memo connecting themselves in ways that transport them to other places we are able to see that the nodes are the machine that brings them to reality, things that have happened, whether it is recent or not. Yes, we see a computer being involved in the knowledge that Luz has, but the nodes are what connect her to a place where no other person can go. Dreams and memories are a very special form of interaction and not many people are okay with letting their special moments be shared. But when the nodes connecting Luz and Memo together in such an intimate moment, the connection they take is to understand a memory of each other. It dives into the deepest parts of our mind that we have to bring to light a happy or sad time, whether it is chosen or not be don’t know, but it could be that is what the mind is thinking about and the result of connecting a memory is exactly the result. In a way, the body is not resisting to this form of connectivity in a social form, but its resisting the connection physically because their bodies are disconnected. It’s only the mind that connects them intellectually into one another's memories or dream-scapes.  

Being in a virtual reality using nodes that connect to machines is how Memo is working. He is being virtualized into a construction job to assemble a building with robots. Whether it is a positive or negative circumstance that Memo is working there, we don’t know, but what the film shows is that it’s dangerous. Marx’s suggests, “There, the existence of the things qua commodities, and the value relation between the products of labor which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom” (Marx 2). The (product) nodes are turning to a dangerous physical manifestation for the human in contact with the machine. The contacts that Memo has to in his eyes help him see into the job site. What is dangerous about the contacts is it can make anyone blind if there is a glitch in the system, and could possibly electrocute the body when they are hooked up to the nodes leaving the person to die from suffocation.

Thaver says, “It discloses worlds that come into being in referential whole that equipment sets into relief in those instances particularly when something becomes unusable or breaks down within the referential equipment world, so to speak” (Thaver 3). The dangerous part about an equipment breaking down is when it is brought to our awareness. In the film, Memo is attached to the machine with his nodes, when the guy next to him starts to become electrocuted and he falls to the ground seizuring. It took Memo a minute to understand what is happening around him due to being in a virtual reality. When he comes around Memo rushes to the guys side, but the head people already reached him, ended up dragging him through another door. We didn’t find out what happened to him afterwards, for all we know, he could have died from this machine. Memo started to realize just how dangerous his job is during this incident. This is where we see the mistreatment of humans. They are dehumanizing them because of the nodes that are attached to the machine and the human. Just because they are attached to a machine doesn’t mean that they are a machine. They are humans who have a mind and a memory. These nodes and machines are making their human life seem small or nonexistent based on the labor they are working on.

    In the film “Sleep Dealer,” Memo receives these nodes to enter the workforce. He is introduced to this company known as the “Sleep Dealer,” which promotes people who connect to nodes and work as machines. Memo suggests in the timeline that he is working in California, which may be right, but he doesn’t even know, nor does the viewer. It’s just an idea to him based on what the worksite looks like. Everyone around him seems to speak Spanish. Karl Marx argues, “The labor of the individual asserts itself as a part of the labor of society, only by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers” (Marx 2). What’s unique about this is that Memo is being used as a product both directly and indirectly. They aren’t interacting with the act of exchange in the work of machines, but they are interacting with the nodes that connect them to the machines that do the direct work. It is taking all of the human aspects of work away from the virtual reality that Memo has accomplished. What Marx is arguing in his piece is that the labor force is standardized, and in a way, the human element of these machines are being removed because of the way we value the object for production. Without commodities that societies have built in this world, we wouldn’t have a “fetish” as Marx calls it, we would just have the basic tools to survive.

Marx said that our human brain forms “the groundwork for the quantitative determination of value, namely, the duration of that expenditure, or the quantity of labor, it is quite clear that there is a palpable difference between its quantity and quality” (Marx 1). The labor through machines is faster at producing a commercial building, but it takes more time for mankind to build it, and get the final product. When mankind is standardized into a machine by using a machines form to do the man’s job, we are losing the humanity out of labor altogether. By labor being a social form we provide with the use of technology taking over the world with no emotions. People like Memo are forced to work hard, long hours that could render them useless because they are overworking their own system, the brain, mind, and body. Labor in “Sleep Dealer” becomes a dystopian society and is treated as an allegory. It is a virtual reality that is unfolding the true aspects of work by using human beings to do the hard work.

In “Sleep Dealer,” the body is almost a resistance in most cases. Memo watches his dad pick corn he grows from the field, but doesn’t quite understand why his dad produces corn. This is how his dad is doing labor. Growing corn is a form of work that people in this modern age call labor. The way the theorist could look at it is the body is resisting of nutrients because Memo resists the growing of corn. Food in this case is diminished from the film because of the economy he lives in, but also being diminished because they are eating the final product. If one were to look at the economy, the food that grows from the land is going to nourish the body more than the food that doesn’t come from the land. Although the only way to get water in this economy is to pay for it and fill up bags from the reservoir. It is shedding light on just how hard food and water is to have in this society. What’s interesting here is the idea that Memo doesn’t understand why his father is doing this form of labor. Food is the substinance of life. With Memo becoming a cyborg in a way through digital labor, he is diminishing the nourishment of his body because he is working twelve hour days or longer to provide for his family. When his father grew corn, he ate a meal that gave his body the energy it needs to continue going, but with Memo working long hours, he doesn’t get the nutrition he needs to stay awake, nor do we see him eat much after the beginning of the film. Near the end of the film, he finally comes to understand why the body needs to be nourished in this way and we start seeing him eating food again. Food is the equivalent to a healthy body. The body in “Sleep Dealer” is where we see Memo diminish.

To give you a clearer idea, Marx is trying to say that the value is being turned into a mystical character because of the determining factors of machine taking over mankind's job. Before Memo left his home in Santa Ana Del Rio, he enjoyed creating a listening device that got himself in trouble with higher people that used military drones to kill criminals. In the process of trying to find the criminal, the military personnel, Ramirez, is connected by nodes, uses the drone to kill his father not knowing they have the wrong target. Memo left home after that because he thought by using his expertise in something good, he could benefit his family by making money and sending the money home. A perfect example of this comes from Marx’s piece where he suggests, “it is a physiological fact, that they are functions of the human organism, and that each such function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, etc.” (Marx 1). With that being said, humans function differently than robots, and even though humans are being used as robots in “Sleep Dealer” there are no human emotions coming from the robot even if it were to fall off the building it is laboring. The virtual workforce that is created through these nodes gives one the ability to control their human connection rendering them to possess the value of humans whether it be for the good or bad of their morals.

This virtual reality is being used to diminish the human emotions or rather dehumanize them. For example, in the film, Ramirez kills Memo’s father and notices afterwards that he actually felt bad about what he did. And aftewards, Ramirez feels the need to find Memo to tell him that he is very sorry for what he has done, and he even wants to make things right even though he isn’t able to bring Memo his father back. The person behind the machine is the one having these emotions, and the machine is just doing what it is programmed to do. Thaver suggests, “In other words, if modern technology has taken everything up as resources, including human beings, then what might become of being, in such an eventuality?” (Thaver 4). This question poses a great stance by not only suggesting that humans are being diminished compared to technology, aka machines or robots, but that it is slowly taking over humanity. How many of us carry a phone around our body everyday? Do you walk with it hand in hand? We can also look at the cell phone as a commodity as Karl Marx says, “A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. It’s analysis shows that it is , in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” (Marx 1). Being attached to technology has become a way of modern life. It is an eventuality that our life is going to be occupied by modern technology no matter the cost of our being. In reality, as Karl Marx has suggested, the commodity such as the cell-phone is what brought on the use of technology today.

Although we do not see the usage of cellphones in this film, we see the usage of computers or machinery. In one form or another, this can go hand in hand with the commodity of technology or the use of machinery that becomes a linkage to our lives. Mark Poster suggests, “The introduction of the computer and now the linkage of computers to the global network of the internet vastly alters the patterns of life that have become customary in modern society” (Poster 1). With that being said, computers have built a framework for nodes and the machine that connects to Memo, in the film, to provide a way to project Memo into a virtual reality. Whether they are in Mexico or California this modern technology has given Memo a way to transport himself into a “robot” to perform a labor that provides a place of living for other humans. The human labor aspect disappears because the robot now being put in place of humans. It’s diminishing the human value of emotions over the mind and body through labor that so many of us have done for decades.

In the film “Sleep Dealer,” we see Memo being dominated by nodes. His body is becoming lifeless. Diminishing into nothing. There is a projection of mindspace within Memo. Connection with Memo by the contacts and the virtual reality is taking him to another place. His mind is still intact. But his body has no control over the machine. He is only in control of the robot in the virtual reality when Memo connects with the nodes. Memo is a projection in his own mind. Thaver also states, “Quite clearly, though variegated, what is being dealt with is a vast electronic expanse or clearing for exercising a wide range of techno and social skills for connecting with humanity or merely extending the self” (Thaver 6). This is the part of saving grace with the idea of danger with the body and humanity of self, which is unique. What we see is the humanity being deprived from Memo as he keeps going back to work. He basically works till he drops, and by drops he falls asleep standing up connected to the nodes. When Memo wakes up after realizing he fell asleep he is zapped awake after a few minutes of inactivity to make sure he is awake enough to work. That’s like zapping your dog for no reason with an electric collar with a remote at the other hand, or using a taser on a human for no reason. Technology has a mind of its own, and even though Memo knows what’s going on he doesn’t have control over his body during this time.