All of these news reports are like made in China, Made in China, Made in China.

Under the Dogs, Yeah, under the Dogs.

Very we're breaking the looks.

Funny you could they arise all the.

Shots they can, like the Dogs under the docks, under the ducks.

Yeah, under the Dogs, under the Dogs.

Oh ho, married docs, miss under the Docks, paranoid a man kid Sean Chris.

When we watch the documentaries and tell you if you should or shouldn't watch.

You Jingle Jingle baby.

Yeah, we're making a list.

We're checking it twice and we're gonna tell you which documentaries are watching.

Xmus Without China twenty thirteen film, directed by Alice Dwayne and narrated by Tom g But I don't know how to pronounce Tom's real name.

That's just his American name, just so like people know Tom is a now American citizen.

I believe this film.

Dives into I thought it was important that we got this one around the Christmas time, and it's from twenty thirteen, and it's always good to go back and see what was going on in this film.

It's like a social experiment where Tom coming from China, being a Chinese citizen becoming an American citizen and.

They'd say that.

Towards the end spoiler alert, he grabs a family and wants to see if they can live Christmas one Christmas season without anything made in China, and that's pretty much the premise of the whole film.

Well, the catalyst too, is that he's watching pretty much Fox News, but it was any of the mainstream news of the time, and they're all freaking out about these toys from China that have lead in the paint or that they've got these toxic chemicals.

And he's watching these and in his mind he's like, man, the American public has just all worked up about these Chinese toys.

They're gonna kill their babies.

And his dad is sitting there next to him, his super Chinese dad, right like they're straight immigrants, Like he's a first generation immigrant to America, and.

His dad's like, why are they hating on China?

China doesn't have bad stuff.

So I was also like, I don't know, guy, I mean.

Maybe the reason why there's so much manufacturing over there is because they don't they don't have to pay the guys to check to make sure it doesn't have so Anyways, the premise of the movie is that Tom goes out and he's like, all right, if everyone's freaking out about China, let's find someone.

And he puts these flyers together, saying, we're looking for someone that's going to celebrate Christmas without anything from China, including anything that's already in your house.

Has got to go.

Plotting the course.

Now, this is going to be some crazy terrain because it's not our typical breaking down analysis of like hey boom claim claim point point right.

It was more like a social experiment.

That's how I kind of looked at it as and I like the film direction, like at first, like where they're trying to find the family, like as you spoke earlier, like they're trying to find somebody that's willing to do this, because he's kind of feeling like pride, like hey man, like you know, China has a lot of good products.

His dad's telling him like, hey man, you know they can't live without China, like you know how much how important we are?

Like so you're seeing these two perspectives of like the Americans of like what we don't make.

Anything man anymore?

And then like but the other guy, like China's not as bad.

They're not.

There's not leading everything, you know, So on this one there wasn't as many points.

But one of the points I thought that was interesting is the fact of having the perspective of the American citizen and then the guy that's transitioning from a Chinese citizen to American citizen, as well as having the first generation immigrant.

It's the thoughts are are pretty interesting.

I liked how they spoke about China and it made me think of, like, this was twelve years ago and think of how different it is now.

Well, it's the start of the same mentality now though of like we need to stop buying everything from China, and we need to so in this movie, they do a really good job of Okay, here's what that looks like.

Let's say that you were going to go cold Turkey, no China.

It's not even that.

And one of the examples comes.

The first one that comes up are the Christmas lights.

The guy has to go out and buy Christmas lights for the house.

And normally when you go to Target or Walmart or Dollar Store wherever, you would go Amazon and just order whatever lights were suggested.

Right, Well, ninety.

Nine percent of those things they're going to come from China in some capacity, either the gel that covers the lights and makes the color, the light itself, the plastic housing, the wiring.

Some part of this is likely coming from China.

They actually find lights, but they have to get them from like a Mexican created light strand, So it's still not from America, but it is from well, it's not from you know, the United States.

It's from Americas, but it's one hundred and five or one hundred and fifty dollars.

It was over one hundred dollars for us for just one little strand of lights to put up around the house.

And I think the equivalent would have been it would have been twenty to thirty bucks max if they had just gone to Walmart and got something off the shelf.

So the very first thing that they do when they go out to buy stuff, you immediately realize that this is not tenable.

No one on the planet would go out and just spend one hundred and fifty dollars on twenty dollars worth of lights just to prove a point and give them money to Mexico.

Anyways, And that's funny because when he asked him, he goes, hey, how much do you think this was?

He's like, I don't know, like maybe like thirty fifty bucks tops he's like one hundred and sixty six dollars and he looks so upset, like because in the initial I think the family, the Jones family that they're following in this, I think they were like, oh, easy, pasy right like, And I don't know if money was off, because it seems almost like there was a prize because I'm like, why are you trying?

Or maybe it was just the pride of like, oh America, like we're gonna do it's just because they're doing it so hard, like where they're like, oh man, this is rough.

You know.

There's a point as where mister Jones is ruth drawling from Xbox and he's like, I gotta go into the storage.

You rips open the cause the backtrack a little bit.

They got a giant storage un in put it on there and they said, put everything that's made in China in your house into this this storage locker, and pretty much like there's like what sixty to seventy percent of their things like coffeemakers, all their toys, Like you have the kids crying like.

Oh maybe my bunny or like my.

Little everything was made in China, and I don't think the family really it shows like the family new things were made in China and there's that joke going around, but like when you actually physically took the stuff, I think they were like overwhelmed, like, oh man, we don't have anything.

And it comes to a point where the dad goes and breaks into the storage locker AND's like, yeah, had to get Xbox out for a little bit, you know what I mean, Like he couldn't take it.

And this was like three or four weeks and he just couldn't make it.

But also I feel like they smoothed over some of the stipulations for I guess the ground rules.

So a there is no.

Prize, there's no money, there's no financial assistance.

You're just making your Christmas harder for really no huge payoff other than hey, look we did it, we made attempt.

We did it.

Although spoiler, yeah, the dad doesn't even make it.

At a certain point in like three weeks in and some change, he's like I had to go into the.

Storage unit, shows him play Xbox online.

I had to go to the storage unit for just an hour or two whatever, like gonna I'm going crazy here.

But I also feel that there was They didn't really spell out the rules exactly, like precisely in the documentary, but I feel that anything part of the actual house itself maybe didn't get included because they make a big deal at the very beginning once they get everything into the storage unit, and by the way, they get it all back like they're just doing it for just December, and then life kind of goes back to normal.

So they put everything in the unit.

But then Tom's like, how about those lights?

Are those lights made?

And he's like, damn it, Tom, They unscrew the lights and sure enough, all the lights are made in China.

So they're like, Okay, we're gonna start tomorrow or whenever.

We can buy new lights that weren't made in China so that we're just not living in the dark.

And right as he was saying that, I was thinking, I mean, what about the wall plates, what about the outlets, what about the wiring that's actually going through the house.

So if it's not an old, you know, build from the sixties or something, and chances are it's got all sorts of material insulation, you know, the hinges.

So granted there was there was some sort of cutoff, and it was anything that could be removable, but I was also wondering, what about the dishwasher, the washing machine, the stove, all of your pots and pans, Like they don't show them going out and buying all new everything.

So and maybe it was just limited to I guess consumables, right, like food and things that you're going to be using on camera and that short amount of time.

I thought too that when they'd changed the lights, I thought they were like, all right, man, I think they like had an off camera, like we can't take everything right.

Yeah, that was the because you see the dad break down a few times where he's like, we're not getting paid for it.

I'm just spending more money and stressing ourselves out.

And this is supposed to be Christmas that we're enjoying with the family, not this stressful time.

And uh, that was some of the excuses that he's making when he's playing the Xbox too.

But you can feel that frustration building over this entire time as he realizes even if he wants to do it without China, in some cases you just can't.

There was this one toy that the mom bought her kids.

It was like this big pirate ship, and she did all this research and couldn't figure out if it was made in China or not.

She orders it and they unpack it and then sure enough they find it's got like a little Maid in China sticker on it.

One of my thoughts that was, like you knew you knew that was when you saw the price tag and you saw all stuff it came with.

There's no way you were like, oh, this was probably made in Swedeten in Germany, because they show one part of the movie where she actually does find one shop that has non China stuff in it and a stuffed frog or like a stuffed there was one hundred and fifty dollars or something, and they had a stuffed pig that was like ninety nine dollars.

And that's what they end up getting.

They ended up spending like four hundred and sixty bucks on it, and watching it, I was like, this twenty thirteen, so that means in today's money that would be nine hundred and eighty two dollars.

So like I was like, oh my god, like I'm buying everything from China.

I was like, I'm not getting it.

Hey, I want to get American made, but like you're like, okay, well, if it's five dollars, I get throw it away, I'll take it.

But also they walk out of that store with a couple stuffed animals and maybe a wooden puzzle, right, And for that amount of money that they spent at that time in twenty thirteen, you could have gotten yourself another Xbox and three or four games and an extra controller.

So it was like, sure, they.

Did it, but they got a tiny little pile of presents the kids probably didn't even want.

And I do gotta say, man, I was impressed with either the editing or the kids themselves.

The kids were on board from day one.

There was a little bit of no, that's my favorite stuff, But as soon as that initial period was over, they were probably better about wait, mommy, like, isn't that made in China?

And they were doing so much better.

And I would love to see like a ten year follow up on those kids, Like they're in college now, right, or they're graduate in high school, And.

I wonder like, hey, do you avoid China?

Are you more cognizant of when you're spending money on Chinese goods?

Or what.

Yeah, because they even do an eighteen month recap, like hey, let's revisit this, and they come back and she's like yeah, they're still like hey, that's made in China.

Like I wonder if it's ingrained in them like this social experiment.

Yeah, probably affected the kids the most.

I think the parents felt the weight of it because they're like going to work and all that, and they don't.

Do the research.

Right, there's stuff you could probably find out better prices than our American may not.

Granted, there's tons like we're like you said, there's there's ways we can't get away from China.

But like some of the like when they were doing the gift shop and I'm like how much good research.

There's places you can go reuse stuff.

But kudos to the parents as well, because I think they also like were pretty good to their kids.

Because the kids also what they got for Christmas were like super excited, Like they weren't like, oh man, where's where's my This is not the Johnny Fov like this is not the top like whatever toy, this is not Tikomi Elmo, like you know what I mean.

Like they seem like a good family that was together so it worked.

But the main thing too, I liked was when the dad, the immigrant dad, Tom's dad, started saying.

Like, hey, man, don't ruin their Christmas.

Like you know what I mean, Like this is an important holiday to Americans, and like I thought that in retrospect, it's cool to see like another point of view from like an immigrant, like he still loves China.

And then like you have this middle guy, which is Tom, and then you have the Jones family, which is like America, but you still see the thought process of like, look, man, I know, like we're not a Christmas people, but like, man, that's important to them.

Man, you're getting about your ruining it for them.

Yeah, the dad was Everyone was exceptionally rational in this movie, which is one of the reasons I could tell that it wasn't a Netflix documentary or it wasn't some other big mainstream It was really just this one kid that had an idea and decided to film it.

And it's a little early on too, because I would have loved some straight up ground rules.

Okay, here's what we're including as maid in China.

Here's the exceptions you allowed to keep your house.

And then when the original catalyst was reports about lead poisoning and toxic chemicals.

I would have loved to have seen a little bit of and here's the actual number of reported you know, deaths are or recalls based on in twenty thirteen or in twenty ten or whatever that time was.

It's missing little bit of that part.

But you do get to see that it's not just him trolling.

He's legitimately interested if someone can do it.

But the dad, his immigrand dad is like, you can't do that.

There was not a question in his mind.

He was just telling him, like, son, it's impossible, and you're asking these people to do something that is literally impossible during Christmas time, and.

He struggles a little bit.

But I think part of him is like, hey, if they want to voluntarily sign up for this, and he's not on the hook to pay out any sort of reward or anything like that, then why not do it.

I think we should start under the docks.

Life without China Island.

Yeah, I don't know.

As I was watching this, I'm just thinking the kids are probably taking this well, because if I was one of those kids, I'm like, all right, I'm going to Johnny's.

I'll see you guys later.

For dinner, right, and then I'm just playing PlayStation at Johnny's house.

Hidden Treasures and overboard moments.

I'll start with my hidden treasure, like it's not really there was like a lot of statistics or facts, but I thought the hidden treasure was towards the end where like you kind of see this connection being formed between the Jones family and Tom where it's kind of I don't know if it was meant to be this, and this is like one of those I think natural things that happens.

It kind of showed you, like what Christmas is supposed to be about in general, or like the thought of any holiday or thing is where you connect with people you care about, remembering people that were important in your life, and when they start going through like the pictures of like you know, when mister Jones the dad was kind of going through withdrawal from Xbox and he kind of like goes, hey, you know my mom passed away during Christmas season.

It's like an intense time.

I thought.

The movie really flips right there and it makes it so humanized and Tom's kind of like, dang man, there's more involved in this Christmas thing than I thought, And it really made them closer than I thought it made the film.

It resonated more with me personally, because I'm like, you know what, that like, who cares about the presidence at that point?

And I think they kind of like went past that, like you know, we can do this.

And I think that's why when they did the recap in the eighteen months of like, hey, how you been, I.

Think everything was better.

I think that was a breaking point of like, you know what, I'm using all these things to mask, like Xbox, not saying you can't play Xbox or have fun, but it just kind of I think revealed to the dad like hey, I'm kind of masking a lot of this stuff.

And maybe I'm not saying he didn't prove we don't know, but it just seemed like it would be on that way, and it kind of made it more of a heartfelt story that way.

I don't want to take away from the heart felt part of that, because I actually agree with you.

I think my overboard moment was that same exact note though, because they walk in with the you know, video camera recording and Dad's just posted up on the couch playing Xbox and then he's just like, yeah, my mom died a cancer blah blah, And I was just like, bro, don'll be throwing your dead mom dying of cancer as the reason why you get to play Xbox.

Like.

It was just it was weird for me the way that he was like, Oh, let me just play this card real quick.

That means that I can play with my Chinese goods again.

Although I wasn't watching under the same lens that you just described that.

Yeah, the way you describe it is that maybe he's trying to revisit an earlier time.

He's trying to get like that nostalgia going to like carry him through the storm a little bit.

But when I was watching it, I was like, this dude really just uses mom's cancer as the excuse of how he gets to play Xbox right now.

No, I agree with that too.

That's where.

But then as soon as when they started getting into like the pictures, and I think.

They like kind of forced it again.

I don't know, I'm putting my own, like, you know, a sauce onto this a little bit of how I perceived it.

But once they started like opening it up, I feel like they kind of maybe it kind of seemed like the dad was like, yeah, maybe I'm being a jackass, like and using a deniability of like, yeah, I'm just to go.

To play Xbox room.

My mom like Xbox.

So like when I I've first seen that, I thought the same as you.

But as it transitioned into the you know, opening up the pictures and what things were and like, but I could totally see where you're coming from on that.

You're right, You're right on that.

I think the I wouldn't say like a hidden treasure or anything.

There's nothing really hidden or kept away from you that you kind of discover at the end.

There's no big twist ending.

It pretty much plays out exactly as you think it would.

The dad lapses and plays Xbox and then at the end of the movie, the experiment's over.

And as you mentioned, they do keep that little storage unit for another six months plus, right, because when he goes to revisit him eighteen months later, they're like, well, we've got the storage unit out front because we're still trying to keep ourselves isolated.

And in my head, I was like, y'all are just hoarders.

You probably already filled the space up with more shit because you didn't want to have to go into the storage unit and find something in the back.

So we didn't get any confirmation if they had really moved on.

But my I guess my one ending treasure was the Tom, the guy that makes this documentary.

He mentions that his name is Tom just because when a teacher was asking everyone their names on like the first day of school.

I guess he just didn't want to put out this name that everyone's going to look at, or teacher wasn't gonna be able to spell right, and he just really liked Tom and Jerry, so he just said Tom because of Tom and Jerry.

And now that's his name, Like that's the origin story for why he's called Tom and not, you know, some derivative of his Chinese name.

And my overboard moment is kind of similar to my hidden treasure, because my overboard moment is that sometimes they could like in some of those scenes, they get a little melodramatic over things like where you're like, all right, man, like it's it is just Xbox bro like and the guy's kind of around like probably a little bit older than us, right, Like I would assume because I was twenty thirteen and I'm like, dude, I could go I didn't even have a cell phone until like two thousand and nine or two thousand, Like I didn't care.

I had just had a househol I'm like, yeah, it's going in the house fold like you know what I mean, Like none of.

That really bothered me.

Like yeah, I like to play video games too, but like I would just like you said, I'd be like, all right, well, I'm just gonna head out or I'm gonna go do something else.

But like some of the scenes of like where you're like they were attached to things that we were like.

All right, man, like it's just a theme.

Bro.

Like, well, I guess because you could say that no Xbox, what that really means is no electronics period, no Internet, Like you're not getting on the internet if you're gonna cut China off right, all.

Right, it's that time sink or swim.

Uh.

I gotta give this one a sink.

Not because I didn't like it, but just because after it was over, I thought this could have just been a TV special.

This could have been a reality show where they did this with six different families or something.

It didn't necessarily have to be a full on documentary.

And I don't know if I really learned anything at all.

I knew this going in that it's not easy to live without any Chinese goods, and even if you want to, there just aren't us counterparts.

There's not Mexican.

There's not any counterparts to some things.

If you want to play a PlayStation, guess what, there is no Mexican or American version of the PlayStation, and you can go right down the line with all your favorite stuff.

So because I didn't learn that, and mainly too, because it would have been so good to see.

Here's the actual statistics.

How many kids actually got lead poisoning from China during these years compared to the year after, and let's compare it to the toys we get from Mexico or whatever.

That extra tiny little bit would have made this into like a full blown real documentary and not kind of a reality show.

I agree, I like this film, but I still have to give it a sink.

Like I enjoyed it, you know what I mean.

I enjoyed watching it.

I thought it was.

Some unintentional things, but I agree because like where it shows me how much money are they profiting off of America showed me some more like if you would have chopped it up better, and like not focused so much on talking back to the dead.

I get where they're coming from.

That like where you get to see the perspective of the.

Immigrant the middle like kind of like immigrant child but then grew up in America and then the American family.

Right, you get three different perspectives.

But like I would have liked them to splice in, like, hey, China's GPD.

I mean GDP is blah blah blah.

Right here, America is this much dependent on China.

This is how much products go out.

These are the bad product, Like you were saying, you know what I mean, have more factual evidence, like where we could be like, well, what's going on and compare it, not just like hey can you do it?

So it kind of just felt like a reality show, as you said, but I'm going to give it a sync.

But I would still suggests people to watch.

It's pretty decent.

If you had to summarize this documentary and if it had some kind of a message at the end, The message isn't about whether China is poisoning kids with lead and having toxic chemicals.

The message is even if you want to, you can't.

That's it.

That's the whole message.

Of the documentary, or that you're gonna make your life so inconvenient and expensive that it's not even worth trying anyways, even if that wasn't the intentional message, that's that's the only message that you really get from this documentary.

And also I also got a message of is this Chinese propaganda?

Yeah, igret because the.

Guy, the guy even says it's like all of these news reports are like made in China, made in China, made in China, and they're all just talking smack about these and he's like, I was made in China.

We're in the Christmas mood.

You know how we do it.

Why don't you get into the Christmas mood?

Go to Paranoid America dot com, who grab your loved win a good comic book, emic mk ultra flip book.

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Until next time.

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