In his latest experimental documentary, the two streams of Caldwell’s research interests come together in a rush. Parallel with an interrogation of Kern County, California, as a backdrop for Hollywood’s representations of rural communities — from John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) to Zach Galifianakis’ Baskets (2016–2019) — Caldwell carries out a deep dive into the actual history of labor struggle, racial tensions and environmental destruction that has marked its actual residents. It’s a heady mix of critical theory, ethnographic fieldwork and media archaeology that frames mining, industrial agriculture and film production as a single economy of extraction that yields, alongside vast profits, a culture of white masculine victimization and an ever-expanding rural-urban divide.