(S03E01) "All you need to be a coal miner is a weak mind and a strong back." James
One thing I love about 30 Days is that in every episode there is a wealth of information. In the first five minutes of this season's premiere episode, I more than doubled the amount of information I knew about the coal mining industry. More importantly, I was ready to learn even more.
This season's premiere, like the past premieres, stars Spurlock himself as the episode's guinea pig and just like the other times he has put himself in harm's way, Spurlock's wife Alex expresses her concerns. What I found funny is that her knowledge of the perils of your average coal miner was pretty equal to my own. It really doesn't go too far past cave-ins and black lung.
Before he goes back home to his coal mining town in West Virginia, Spurlock fills us in on exactly how his family made their living off of the coal industry and while he may be an elite New York documentarian, it was his father's hard work and digging know how that sent him to that fancy film school in New York City.
The first surprise for me was learning that the average coal miner makes $65,000 a year and that's just the laborers. The managers and the more experienced workers make considerably more. This really shattered the images I had gotten from movies like Coal Miner's Daughter and Zoolander.
On day one, Morgan meets his boss and the patriarch of his host family, Dale. Dale seems to be a great guy and when he says that he's worked twenty seven years in the mines without being diagnosed with black lung, the foreshadowing is almost enough to make you cry.
Spurlock does a brilliant job trying to express how strange it is heading underground for a day of work. The smells, the temperature, the noise, the lack of daylight are all factors that serve to make him nervous and it's clear that most viewers will never know the feelings that he's having and, more importantly, will never want to.
While Spurlock is given the simplest task in the mine, shoveling coal onto a conveyor belt, he still is reminded that if he doesn't watch what he's doing, he could get caught on the belt and killed. This made me wonder exactly how many different ways a person could die in a coal mine and also wonder if I was about to find out.
Halfway into the episode, Spurlock takes a look at the environmental effects of coal mining. In great detail, he shows us the more destructive ways that companies mine for coal and the effect it has on the landscape. The environmentalists he speaks with make a damn good case for the halting of mountain top removal.
In the very next scene, Morgan visits a lobbyist for the mining company who makes his case in black and white. Until someone can come up with a cheaper and safer way to power America, they will keep digging for coal.
One of the most heartbreaking moments comes when we meet Dale's older brother Coy, who suffers from black lung and even though he can't walk 100 feet without having to stop and catch his breath, he says he wouldn't have done anything differently.
One thing that makes Spurlock so engaging is that he isn't afraid to show sympathy for the subjects in his documentaries. Unlike Michael Moore, who stoically argues his position and ridicules those who disagree, Spurlock is sensitive to the fact that there are always two sides to every issue and more importantly, each side has a very human face.
When Dale and Morgan go in to get checked for black lung, Dale's news is, of course, bad and he is diagnosed with particles in both lungs. Even though, he is destined to end up like his brother, he makes it clear that he is in no position to retire or find another job so he must continue to work in the mine.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-04-2008 @ 9:45AM
Brian said...
I didn't watch it, but seeing the title, I couldn't resist singing that song.
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6-04-2008 @ 10:20AM
Bash said...
A solution not to mine that coal is to import it from Australia.
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6-04-2008 @ 12:10PM
kevjohn said...
I'm not particularly fond of outsourcing our problems to other countries. I wouldn't feel too any better about having Aussies dying of black lung on our behalf than I do about it happening to our fellow countrymen.
6-11-2008 @ 9:35AM
hollergirl said...
There is another solution to mining coal, there had better be-- as coal is a FINITE resource. USGS thinks we have about 60 years left. But if we don't stop burning the filthy stuff then we will cook the planet and the 60 years won't matter. Solar and wind is the solution- that change will bring about millions of Green Jobs.
I'm from WV and I'm a coal miners daughter. The episode had a sequence about mountaintop removal strip mining. FYI- the coal industry is using 3 1/2 million pounds of explosives daily in WV to blow up our mountains and homes. The black gooey stuff you saw --they called slurry or sludge is poisoning our drinking water. It is time to switch to renewable energy.
6-06-2008 @ 11:39AM
Frank said...
Hollergirl, you clearly missed the point.
You say yourself, there's 60 years left of coal.
So, yes, renewable energy will happen eventually.
But what to do until then? Clearly there is money to be made making the most of those "60 years" worth of coal.
As the documentary showed, this is why practicing like mountain top mining occur. If you KNOW you have to get out of the business in X years, you have to make the years you have the most profitable possible.
Interestingly, the same thing happens when a new species is protected (or about to be protected) on the endangered species list. People know their time is short and act in adverse ways.
6-04-2008 @ 11:38AM
Tess Capra said...
George Orwell wrote an amazing essay on working in a coal mine in Chapter 2 of The Road to Wigan Pier (http://tinyurl.com/yt6bq8). I'm not at all claustrophobic, but there's no way I could work in a mine. Submarines are rough, but at least most people can freakin' stand up straight in them.
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6-04-2008 @ 12:02PM
kevjohn said...
Great review, PG. I might have to start checking this show out now. It'll give Spurlock the chance to redeem himself from his underwhelming Where's Osama* film.
* - name of film shortened for the sake of convenience. Although it seems that having to explain that saps all the convenience right out of it.
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6-04-2008 @ 2:04PM
Michael Brennan-White said...
A very powerful entry in the series. I would suggest anyone unfamiliar with the series go to Hulu and see the shows from the first season.
The episode about Living on Minimum Wage was not preachy, enlightening and often very funny.
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6-04-2008 @ 4:09PM
Patty said...
I loved the show on coal mining. My husband has worked underground for almost 30 yrs. I did get to take an underground tour of his mines while they were working. I can tell you the smell is something you will never forget. It is a very dangerous job and even if a roof fall or black lung doesn't get you, this job wears your body completely out.
There was one thing Morgan left out that most American's don't know. There are no bathrooms, running water or tables to eat on. You eat where you can with dirty hands. You use an old worked out entry for your bathroom.
Almost all of the discs in my husband's back and neck are worn out, bulging or herniated. His last injury to his neck forced him to retire because Peabody coal refused to pay his worker's compensation benefits and he had no choice but to retire to support us. He wanted to go back even though his doctor said he risked be paralyzed from his neck down. I refused to allow him to go back.
We fought many times over this but I won!
I'd rather (as we say it) scratch with the chickens as have him go back and risk being paralyzed.
Thanks for showing America what coal miners have to endure for that $60,000 a year. My husband made around $50,000 and that was working almost every saturday too. Some mines (non union) have to work 7 days a week. They don't get a choice other than take it or leave it. They're told to work or don't come back. We have no other good paying jobs and that's the problem here in Southern WV. We need other jobs!
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6-04-2008 @ 11:02PM
Dee said...
FYI: Spurlock's dad was never a miner; he repaired the equipment used at the mines. It was his skill as a repairman and not his "digging know how" that sent Morgan to film school.
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6-04-2008 @ 11:41PM
Skapig said...
Great show and I'm very happy to have it back. We only get 6 a year, though they of course take a month to shoot each one and then you have to factor in having to piece all of that footage together.
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6-05-2008 @ 6:04AM
bo webb said...
Great job Morgan Spurlock! For the record I would like to clarify a couple of things.
1. I am not a former coal miner, my Dad was a coal miner.
2. Near the end of the show Morgan said there was 250 years of coal left. He must have gotten that number from the great exaggerater Bill Raney. New geological studies show that the number of years left of minable coal in Appalachia is more like 30 years, not 250.
Also, as far as Bill Raney, he said the same things he always says, and he loves to ask himself the same questions in every interview. When he says no one has offered an alternative, that is a not true. We offer wind, solar, and many other alternatives to coal. And we had better get on with those alternatives or there will be no jobs for anyone in WV 15-20 years from now. Raney knows the truth, but he is a "good ol' boy" for the coal moguls, a great a$$ kisser yes man.
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6-05-2008 @ 8:44AM
Steph Pistello said...
I thought you all might want to know that there IS another option and the good people at Coal River Mountain Watch are fighting to make it happen. It turns out Coal River Mountain is PRIME for wind development. They have to convince the local Commission and residents that it's a better alternative to the five MTR permits being considered. You can read about it here:
http://www.register-herald.com/local/local_story_155220219.html
I'd also like to point out that all the local politicians and even our federal government (Barack Obama included) are willing to sit back and let the major water source to the Southeast United States be buried and poisoned by this type of mining. But the British have something to say for it. Read this great article from the British Independent. We can't get the local papers to acknowledge it, but at least some jounalists have the balls to speak up.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-mountain-that-lost-its-top-831037.html
Finally, you can help stop MTR by telling your local reps to co-sponsor HR 2169, the clean water protection act. It will make it illegal for the coal companies to dump their waste into local valleys and streams. YES THAT IS LEGAL IN THE U.S.!
Find out more about it and YOUR CONNECTION by visiting http://www.ilovemountains.org
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6-05-2008 @ 12:41PM
youtube said...
This is great! Very awesome I love it
http://www.youtubede.net
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6-05-2008 @ 5:59PM
chuck nelson said...
Morgan you did an excellent job in bringing out the real truth about mining. No wonder Tracy Hylton got so upset and walked out. You exposed everything that they are trying to keep a blanket on. And the comments Joe Carter made about environmentlist showing him an active site, hell yell show people the destructive process of mountaintop removal. And I'm not only an environmentlist, but I'm also a retired UMWA underground miner. I wonder which side is the union leadership is on. Cecil Roberts shouldn't be asking this question, it should be UMWA members and their famlies asking the leadership, "Which side are you on. Great job Morgan.
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6-10-2008 @ 1:01PM
Jay said...
Spurlock hasn't always starred in the premieres; the jail episode from season 2 was the finale.
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6-11-2008 @ 9:55AM
hollergirl said...
No Frank, you clearly missed the point. It is NOT OK to blow up mountains, and people's homes and poison our air and water in order to mine coal. The coal industry is using 3 1/2 million pounds of explosives daily just in WV alone to blow up our mountains. The point is to do the right thing--not the stupid thing.
Wind, solar and geo thermal can provide electricity for us, and a switch to renewable energy will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs--not to mention it will keep us from cooking the planet.
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6-27-2008 @ 11:01AM
Dick Blizzard said...
The show never captured the Continuous Miner in action, or the roof bolting machine, and believe me they do not speard "rock dust" by hand. People want to belive that mining is done with a pick and shovel and that's what we saw. The Continuous Miner is capable of digging 600 tons and hour and long wall mining is three times as productive.
Wind, solar, hydro and nuclear are coming, but "clean coal" is the only way to keep the lights on and your hair dryer going for the next ten years.
My father-in-law worked underground for 43 years and lived to be 90.
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7-07-2008 @ 10:21AM
Carla said...
As a "coalminers daughter" and the fiancee of a coal miner I guess I'm a little partial to coal miners. Now these are men and a few women who have little skill in other fields of employment because this is all they have known. As far as what the environmentalists have told you well I guess they all think we are mushrooms anyway they are like our government they like to keep us in the dark and feed us S*** all day. Now if the coal mining stopped , what would so many WV families do? Is our government going to help us? NO how about all you good folks who think what is being done is soooo "whiney" wrong? NOPE..don't think so! hmmmmmm now what are all these people going to do ? Oh yeah, go on welfare, but isn't that what you all want?, to support a bunch of dumb redneck coalminers? No I don't think so, oh yeah windmills now there is a stellar idea, but wait the tree huggers say it disrupts the migration pattern of birds, oh I know how about ethenol now that might work if we all like to pay quadruple for our food and what not. Lets see now what else can we come up with? Well I can't think of a solution at the moment, but I will tell you this, WV is a blocked state our legislature and our so called "representatives refuse to allow certain "large hiring" companies come into our state. The same way our government is storing oil right now and making us pay huge prices at the pump, hmmmm does make you wonder what they are storing all that oil for doesn't it? Coal can be converted to oil. did you know that? But no, that would take the so called ethenol government experiment away from the farmers. Oh well I said my peace. NOW GO HUG A TREE
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