"As is well known, the demand for shorter hours mostly disappeared from organized labor’s agenda after World War II, for complex<http://books.google.com/books?id=lv9cfP1QMAcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false>
and disputed<http://books.google.com/books?id=yV2xgJBNfo4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=cutler+uaw+hours&hl=en&ei=edPjTZqZAoPq0gH07Z2yBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false> reasons. The sign I saw in *They Live* is one consequence of abdicating the positive class argument for shorter hours. By the time the movie was made in 1988, the eight-hour movement’s greatest slogan could come to seem not like a cherished victory of the working class, but rather as a piece of dystopian propaganda. “Eight hours recreation” becomes the command to “play eight hours”, and this “play” is refigured as obligatory participation in consumerist culture rather than the opportunity for political, intellectual and moral development that it signified for the eight-hour campaigners. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that these days long hours are often portrayed as an issue of individual preferences or “workaholic” psychology, rather than the outcome of organized labor’s long political defeat."