Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer envisions the American Dream at its nightmarish (though by no means unimaginable) extreme—as one character puts it, “all the work without the workers,” or rather, all the labor without the migrant brown bodies. Node technology has “destroyed distance” by rendering the physical crossing of borders unnecessary, paradoxically keeping these undesired laborers at a far distance from their white overlords. The terminology of this alternate future reflects the entrenched role of these so-called technical advancements: where Coyotes traditionally escorted migrants across the Mexican-US border, now “Coyoteks” perform “node jobs” on the laboring bodies of internal migrants to Tijuana. Rather than taking shots of tequila to drown their woes, this working class indulges in node-administered doses of “Teki.” Though the dominant position is one of critique, the film also claims technological agency on the behalf of its main characters and situates possibilities for hope and resistance in the Global South.
Formally, Sleep Dealer features several cinematic techniques to represent the blurring of realities and disembodied experiences. Luz (which suggestively translates to “light” in English) and Memo especially are staged in scenes that either comment or cast doubt on the significance of embodied reality in their world. When Memo wanders aimlessly through the streets of the Tijuana, shots fade into one another, superimposing different montages of his disoriented figure against various backgrounds, finally overlapping with images of Luz’s careful pursuit. These scenes recall the film’s opening voice-over narration, in which Memo (we believe) tells us that he struggles to distinguish what is real. Later, during a conversation between Memo and Luz in the bar, a camera angle triangulates Luz’s reflection in the mirror to feature both characters’ faces in the same shot, despite the fact that they are facing one another.
In a sense, the mirror acts as another border between bodies which the cinematic medium can attend to and shift so as to represent the visual field differently: as Marez suggests in his introduction to Farm Worker Futurism, "cameras and other visual technologies mediate the visual field and its attendant power effects” (6). The mirror again troubles Memo’s cognitive grasp on reality when he comes face to face with his robot avatar in a pane of glass on the construction site.
Sleep Dealer also implies a crossover of the cinematic frame. A scene at the end of the film renders this most palpably: by means of a video call, Memo sits virtually face to face with his mother and brother, who report the miracle of the damaged dam. Memo’s brother reaches for the camera to take it outside, ostensibly so that Memo can see the waterfall for himself, but because the shot is filmed dead on, Memo’s brother appears to be tending a hand to Memo himself—and, by extension, to the viewer—almost as if to pull him/us through the screen into his reality/the reality of the film. Though the diegetic situation accounts for the head-on camera angle, this cinematic perspective stages a moment of direct address with the viewer that implies participation and extends responsibility beyond the screen. In a film deeply concerned with the crossing over of embodied realities across borders, it should come as no surprise that such a project should cut across the very cinematic medium that represents it.
Marez, Curtis. “Introduction: Farm Workers in the Machine.” Farm Worker Futurism. UMinnesota Press, 2016, pp. 1-42.