Ascension Reveals the Absurdity and Humanity Behind the Made-in-China Label – Vogue

Almost everything is made in China nowadayseverything. I was brainstorming different factories to shoot in, explains Jessica Kingdon, director of the documentaryAscension, about Chinas industrial supply chain. I thought about how Chinas an innovator of A.I., and the first thing that popped up was A.I. sex doll.

You might be surprised at the craftsmanship involved: Meticulously, women workers paint areolas rosy pink with their fingers, hand trim bikini lines, and mold the rubber with hot iron rods. (I immediately looked up the cost of such a premium sex doll after seeing how painstakingly handmade they are; the number can soar into the tens of thousands.) It was the pinnacle of irony in the workplace, Kingdon says. You see all these women tenderly making these dolls for the most base of male desire, but at the same time for them its just a job.

Its the most memorable scene from one of the years most compelling documentaries, an image-driven, impressionistic portrait of Mainland Chinas factories, workers, and consumers. Through a series of mesmerizing vignettes that ascend from the factory floors to the aspirations of the middle class and the hedonism of the newly moneyed elite, Kingdons feature directorial debut reveals sharp observations about labor, consumerism, and wealth both in the worlds second-largest economy and our own.

The New Yorkbased filmmaker was drawn to China partly because of her heritage (her mother is Chinese) and the countrys drastic changes within mere decades. A nation that used to be known as the worlds factory is now also one of the largest consumer markets in the world, Kingdon says. Im interested in the philosophical question of the paradox of progress: what capitalism looks like, what progress really means. Seeing capitalism in a different context helps mirror it back to our own culture.

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Ascension Reveals the Absurdity and Humanity Behind the Made-in-China Label - Vogue