agitprop ˈa-jət-ˌpräp noun
: political propaganda (especially communist propaganda) communicated via art and literature and cinema
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The word agitprop has appeared in 21 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on March 4 in “‘Sorry We Missed You’ Review: The Human Toll of That One-Click Buy” by Wesley Morris:
I’ll never forget the pleading that goes on in “Sorry We Missed You.” It’s desperate but futile. Life goes on, they say. So does the global marketplace. If you order a shower curtain or diapers or a new phone, you probably need it yesterday. Ken Loach’s brutally moving agitprop drama demands a thought be spared for the anonymous souls who drop this stuff off. That shower curtain might be the death of them.
It’s an easy movie at first. Ricky Turner (Kris Hitchen) has done blue-collar labor all his life. Now he’s through with bosses breathing down his neck, so he takes a job as an owner-driver for a third-party delivery company out of Newcastle in northern England. (The title refers to those door tags you get when a package needs a signature and you’re not home.) Gig-economy freedom appeals to him. But anybody watching Ricky natter on about blissful independence, in these opening scenes, can already sense the bad news rising — maybe even before his new not-boss, a big bruiser named Maloney (Ross Brewster), tells him, “Like everything around here, it’s your choice.”
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