the washing machine, because it deflected her guilt over treating Rosa as a "machine?"
I liked that one of the first phrases they learned in English was "Yes, it is very smoggy here." The second thing Enrique learned was "Do you want some more coffee?" Or something like that.
It's a wonderful movie. I guess not all films from the 80's suck. : )
I think she just could`t see Rosa washing by hand or something ...,but i did not understood how to wash with the freakin` machine after watching 4 time in raw the sequence (i ques i am stupid or something) i have owned an old automatic wasing machine but i threw the clothes along with the detergent an hit the maximum button ,but the way that lady explained "how to use the machine"...it just didn`t ring any bells in my head.
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Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
I filtered that scene through the rest of the film.
The people of lesser developed nations are used as "machines," but our ways of modern life distract or shelter us from that reality. That seems to be the point, to me anyway. It's sort of a postmodern statement on consumerism/ technology.
The other point, which all you folks may have missed, is that few had such a technologically advanced washing machine in 1993. As a matter of fact, one's own washing machine still lacks such advanced programming.
Rosa had never used any automatic washer. She seemed to enjoy doing the laundry by hand. IMO it was a link to her previous way of life,
Good lord it would take me awhile to figure that machine out. I don't think I've seen one that complicated, ever.
And you have like eight seconds to figure out the settings before it automatically starts on the default? That seems like a needless hassle.
Sounds like one more case of something having 100x more bells and whistles than most people would ever use--reminds me of most "smart phones" these days, lol. But these days I'm getting to be an old fart, I guess.
"No more half-measures."
You're right that it was an ironic moment on the level of symbolism.
However, at least the scene avoided the facile stereotype of making the woman an unfeeling bitch. She could have angrily asked why Rosa was "too stupid" to understand the washing machine, and she could have been furious that her clean clothes were laid out on a "dirty" lawn to dry. Instead, her reaction is based in part on some kind of compassion, and her greatest sin is her obliviousness to the everyday difficulties of undocumented workers, which is a characteristic of most U.S. Americans.