Tag Archives: Movie Reviews

Review of “Surrogates”

16 May

Basic Plot

In a world where people live their lives vicariously by manipulating cyborgs called “surrogates” from the comfort of their own homes, FBI agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is put to the task of tracking down a killer wielding a weapon which has the capacity to both kill a surrogate and its operator, all the while unraveling a conspiracy that threatens the lives of every person who uses a surrogate.

A Primitivist Message

The movie begins with The Prophet (Ving Rhames), leader of the “Human Coalition,” an organization for the abolition of surrogacy, delivering a speech over a montage depicting the evolution of the surrogate industry. The argument made throughout, by The Prophet as well as Canter (James Cromwell), the inventor of surrogacy, is that living through a machine deprives a person of their essential humanity. The main conspirator, before trying to wield a device that will kill everyone who uses a surrogate, argues to Agent Greer that he is doing this “so we can be human.” The villain, whose name will not be revealed in this review for the purpose of being spoiler free, states that these people who use surrogates are “already dead,” and further makes the claim. “You have to kill the addict to kill the addiction.”

The message here is that technology is responsible for alienating human beings from their essential humanity; that our dependence on technology has entombed us in a life of depravation. People no longer live but pretend to live. They spend their lives thinking that they are freer for their ability to use technology in the place of their own bodies, yet the reality is that humanity is trapped in their own homes, afraid to leave them because of the risk and uncertainty that comes from living one’s own life in ones own body. For comfort and convenience, people surrender what makes them human, and the result is a society that is essentially meaningless. There is a scene where Greer is pursuing a surrogate which has been high-jacked by the main antagonist, and as he is driving after them, he hits several people with his car. These people, who are not people but merely surrogates being operated by people from the comfort of their own homes, are no different than the clothing display mannequins in the clothing store he crashes into. Our technological society is therefore a lie, concealing the fact that we are really slaves to machines.

An Absurd Notion

One thing that struck me during the film was the implication that most of the world’s population are using surrogates. In the introduction sequence they claim that 98% of the population are using such things. This truly is laugh-worthy. Most of the world doesn’t have access to a telephone. Most of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean would not be able to afford expensive robot bodies.

A Critique of Internet Society

Anyone watching Surrogates who has spent any length of time interacting with others online is bound to pick up this film’s critique of internet society. One of the first events of the film involves the murder of Canter’s son, who is attacked using the anti-surrogate weapon while borrowing his father’s surrogate. He is attacked while in a back alley, kissing a beautiful blonde surrogate that he picked up at a night club. When the broken surrogates are traced back to their operators, who have had their brains liquefied as a result of the anti-surrogate weapon, their identities are revealed to be very different from those of their surrogates. The woman, it turns out, was a middle aged man pretending to be a woman. This critique of internet anonymity becomes an essential part of the plot when Greer’s partner’s surrogate (Radha Mitchell) is high-jacked by the antagonist. You can never really know who you’re dealing with on the internet, whether it is someone who isn’t honest about their true identity, and there is a risk that you could be talking to someone who has high-jacked someone else’s online accounts for their own purposes.

There was also an interesting theme which is critical of the awkwardness of communicating electronically. There are many moments where, in the middle of a conversation, a surrogate freezes while the operator takes a break to use the bathroom. There are also moments where users disconnect from their surrogate in order to express emotions that they didn’t want to express in public (such as crying, in the case of Canter upon hearing of the death of his son). This is much like communication via instant message, where a conversation consisting of relatively little dialogue can be stretched out over several hours thanks to people losing interest and doing other things. The sincerity in someone’s communication is lost when technology is the central means of communicating. Just as ones true emotions are masked by using a surrogate, they are concealed in our own online interactions, replaced by emotions and cheap jargon. Life has become a MMORPG, a game of people pretending to be something else, and technology allows people to live this insincere life.

Critiques of Beauty Standards and Consumerism

A central theme in surrogates is the theme of beauty. Surrogates are made to be flawless, a picture of what the operator aspires to be, and the result is a society of people who look like the sorts of models who grace the covers of clothing magazines. The result is that surrogates, especially when their operators have disconnected from them, look like dolls. This comes in contrast to the operators we see at home who are imperfect. Greer goes from looking like a younger and more handsome version of himself, as he operates his surrogate, to being a unshaven, balding and comparatively less attractive version of himself for the remainder of the film. Another part of the film where we see this theme of beauty in play is at the surrogate salon where his wife JJ (Rosamund Pike) works to make modifications to people’s surrogates. We see these surrogates having their faces removed and being altered to better suit the operator’s preference for their physical appearance. If this isn’t a metaphor for cosmetic surgery for the purpose of conforming to unrealistic beauty standards, I don’t know what is! To boot, this is tied directly into a critique of consumerism, being that the surrogates themselves are a commodity, and the means of attaining these unrealistic standards of beauty is by purchasing surrogates and upgrades for them. Just as people spend money online to buy clothes for customized avatars on the Playstation Network, they are spending money here on a doll that will be their avatar in real life.

Verdict: A Swing and a Miss

This movie has a fascinating premise, and could have done a lot more with it, yet too much emphasis was placed on the action and special effects rather than on the script, which generally consisted of weak dialogue and cliche. In addition, complaints are raised about modern society being a force for alienation, yet there is no attempt to analyze why, or offer a solution other than “smashing the machines” like the Luddites of old. There is no criticism of capitalism, which thrives by exploiting and alienating workers and ultimately drives people towards escapism via commodity fetishism and disconnecting from reality. There is only a petty-bourgeois thumbing of the nose at society, and because of the shallow nature of this message, I can’t say that the criticisms provided here are important or ground-breaking. This is typical Hollywood blockbuster fluff that tries to be edgy and unique, yet misses the point, and so I do not recommend sitting through it for any other purpose than special effects and seeing Bruce Willis wearing a blond toupee.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review of “V For Vendetta” (Movie)

12 May

“Terrorist vs. Freedom Fighter” as a Plot Device
The 2005 film version of V for Vendetta directed by James McTeigue and produced by the Wachowski Brothers is the most obvious example of the increasing desire for heroic cinematic revolutionaries. Films nowadays never hesitate to have the protagonist take the form of a revolutionary who is labeled a terrorist by the powers-that-be. The familiar ideas of revolution have been projected on-screen to the approval of the masses for the last decade. This is to be expected given the circumstances of our time with the rottenness of imperialism and capitalism leaving one alienated and in search of a new social order.

The Subject of Revolution

The film shows explicitly the connection between the ruling fascist party and the bourgeoisie of the pharmaceutical company. The film does embrace the Marxist perception of how the state operates, and also acknowledges that fascism is the most openly terrorist form of capitalist government. It also defends the rights of groups such as blacks, Muslims, homosexuals, women and communists. The horrors of fascism are not spared or whitewashed. There is systematic ethnic cleansing shown, as well as torture and medical experimentation on “undesirable” groups. At one point a character is executed for possessing a Qur’an, just like in America and the UK today it is certainly not fun being a Muslim.
 The movie version of Britain is in a permanent state of emergency to justify persecution and free-for-all for corporations. The threat of terrorism is blamed for these measures. The movie conjures a mockery of Rush Limbaugh in the form of Lewis Prothero, a prescription-addicted TV and radio host that is a puppet voice for Norsefire. V for Vendetta shows a possible future given the decay of capitalism—a world ravaged by wars and plagues, and countries replacing bourgeois democracy with fascism.

V for Vendetta also endorses the right to rebel against reactionaries. Throughout the story, V personally kills state officials and individuals responsible for committing or aiding the crimes of the Norsefire regime. V’s idol is Edmond Dantes from The Count of Monte Cristo, a novel based on justice by those wronged. V’s actions are shown as just retribution and there is no moral equivalency to be made between him and the Norsefire regime. Hugo Weaving does an excellent job voicing V and gives the character charisma and presence. This allows him to make his political speeches very well. The audience takes an instant liking to the character and he seems humanized in spite of his mask. Natalie Portman is competent in her performance as Evey, though before her “transformation” into a revolutionary her timidness and small physical size reeked too much of the damsel-in-distress formula. As always, John Hurt gives an amazing performance as dictator Adam Sutler. He is genuinely intimidating as Chancellor. The special effects and action are riveting as you would expect from those involved with the Matrix films.
 This film is well-made, mostly well-acted and does endorse revolution, and because of that it gets a passing grade.

Anarchism & Political Perception of V

The film, while progressive, is in other places bogged down by anarchist politics. The events that happen are shown as merely the actions of a handful of greedy, power-hungry oligarchs and nothing more. Aside from the links between the bourgeoisie and the state there is not a lot of class struggle or anti-colonialist flavor to either the book or the movie. It is purely anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian and pro-revolution.
The character V in the original book is an explicit and self-conscious anarchist. This is not as clear in the film. The most “anarchist” scenes from Alan Moore’s comic were cut from the movie, such as the famous scene where V engages in a “conversation” with a statue of Lady Justice, claiming she has betrayed him and he no longer believes in justice under the system, he now only believes in anarchism. He then blows up the statue.
The result of these scenes being cut is two-fold. On the one hand, it does away with anarchist labels and allows the viewer to imagine V as any type of revolutionary one wants. This is a somewhat positive thing. However, as Alan Moore himself has complained, it allows the viewer to see the film as merely a fight between neo-conservatism and liberalism or as a cheap anti-Bush film with a more “radical” edge.

Individualism & Adventurism
 The main weakness that bothers me about V’s revolutionary plans is that he seeks to smash the capitalist and fascist state, but no hint is given of what he wants in its place. I assume anarchy, but this is never discussed. V claims to be a personification of the power of ideas, and though he eloquently gives speeches about the horrors of the current system he seems to have no plan or example for how he thinks society should be organized. As well, his tactics are true to the anarchist form—he performs isolated, individual acts of adventurism by blowing up landmarks. In reality, stunts like this would not provoke an uprising in of themselves. Mass organizing and raising awareness would be required. One example of this is the scene where V hijacks a TV station, but his techniques mostly revolve around terror.

The final sequence of the citizenry storming the British Parliament in the style of the Winter Palace may be riveting, but the political goals of it are not clear. The story seems to think that the masses, cowed into submission by fascism, require the adventurist actions of a few superheroes to “wake them up.” This unrealistic view of revolution is somewhat excusable in a science fiction film, but not so in real life. This film does not blur the line between a terrorist and a freedom fighter so much as it blurs the line between a well-meaning idealist and a freedom fighter. Is this a way to run a revolution? Judging by V for Vendetta’s box office success (making three times its budget), audiences get it, scientific or not.

Conclusion

The APL recommends this film. V for Vendetta may not have a realistic portrayal of how revolutions actually happen, but for our time and for our age, it has served its purpose of putting the idea of revolution back into the hearts and minds of people.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review of “Enemy at the Gates”

20 Apr

Personal Reflection: “The Reds” as the Good Guys
 I was about ten years old when my mother took the family to see Enemy at the Gates (2001). For one, this was the first time in my life that I was exposed to the Soviet Union as being the “good guys” rather than the place the “evil reds” in action movies came from. At the time, I had a rather typical understanding of the Second World War for a boy my age. From all of the John Wayne and other Hollywood films about it, as well as learning about the war in history class, my understanding was that the war was won by American GI’s landing in Normandy and single-handedly beating the Germans back beyond their own borders, then dropping a couple of big bombs on Japan to teach them a lesson about sinking ships in Hawaii. Yet here I was, sitting in a movie theater, seeing men and women flying red flags and wearing hammers and sickles, fighting the ultimate “bad guys.” Who were these people? Why don’t we talk about them more? Weren’t they fighting the bad guys too? These were questions I asked myself, and this experience led me to look at the Soviet Union with a more open mind down the road.

Basic Plot
 Enemy at the Gates, directed by Jean-Jacques Annuad, follows the story of Vasily Zaytsev (Jude Law), a Soviet sniper famous for his participation in the Battle of Stalingrad and his duel with Major König (Ed Harris), the head of a German sniper school, who has been dispatched to Stalingrad to hunt Zaytsev down. Plot points include his romantic involvement with a fellow sniper named Tania Chernova and his relationship with Commissar Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) whose responsibility is to report Zaytsev’s exploits.

The Purpose of this Review
 There are, no doubt, many things wrong with this film, from historical inaccuracies involving uniforms, tanks, etc., to outright chauvinism in the depiction of the Red Army and its soldiers and officers. This much is to be expected from a Hollywood film, especially if the topic involves the Soviet Union. The purpose of this review, however, is not to dwell on these mistakes, and instead focus on the utility of an American made film that, despite these faults, acknowledges the central role of the Soviet Union at the battle of Stalingrad and in the broader battle against German fascism. For a more in-depth analysis of the failings of this movie, we recommend you read the special section below.

Stalingrad: A World in the Balance
 The movie begins, after a brief scene involving a young Vasily Zeitsev (Alexander Schwan) learning how to shoot from his grandfather (Mikhail Matveev), by describing the situation presented by the Battle of Stalingrad.

“Autumn, 1942. Europe lies crushed beneath the Nazi jackboot. The German Third Reich is at the height of its power. Hitler’s armies are charging through the heart of the Soviet Union… towards the oilfields of Asia. One last obstacle remains. A city on the Volga… where the fate of the world is being decided. Stalingrad.”

For every attempt to portray the Red Army and Soviet command as bumbling fools and tyrants, this movie cannot deny the incredible importance of the Battle of Stalingrad. Indeed, the fate of the world was decided at Stalingrad, and it was the Red Army armed with arms and equipment produced by socialist production.

Briefly on Historical Inaccuracies
 Here we will discuss the major historical inaccuracies of the film. This list is not meant to be comprehensive, merely a list of major errors.

1 ) The anti-Soviet distortions start in the beginning, when they lock the doors of the train. Army trains ran with doors open in case of an air raid.

2 ) The scene where Red Army soldiers are dragged from the train is almost laughable. One of the biggest mistakes—in the docks scene, there is absolutely no organization whatsoever. Red Army soldiers are yanked off the train by commissars—no squads, platoons, companies, NCOs, officers—just a big herd. No weapons either, and barely any equipment. Russian soldiers are shown as being horribly frightened on the boat ride across the Volga. Take a look at how Hollywood (Enemy at the Gates, based on its actors, writer/director, and production company can’t really be blamed on Hollywood) portrays American soldiers and marines in recent films. Fear is displayed realistically, largely based on the advice of actual veterans. Band of Brothers and the recent series The Pacific are wonderful at this. Enemy at the Gates was insulting to Soviet war veterans.

3 ) The 13th Guards division and the 284th Siberian crossed at night, not during the day. Vasily Zaitsev was actually a clerk in the navy, attached to the Pacific Fleet. He transferred to the army upon reading about the action in Stalingrad. As a result he wouldn’t have been such a stranger to military life, which brings us to the next point.

4 ) The plot point about the rifle shortage is a bit ridiculous. This kind of thing happened (one man shoots, one man follows), but mostly in 1941 in certain crisis situations. If I recall correctly, the book Enemy at the Gates it mentions a shortage of rifles in the 13th Guards Rifle (in other words, not Zaitsev’s unit), but usually a shortage of rifles just meant that those without were issued machine pistols, which were extremely abundant and very useful in Stalingrad. There is nothing in the literature to suggest that the depicted weapon distribution happened. This is clearly meant to make socialism and the Soviet Union look inefficient.

5 ) Of course, they show the typical “human wave attack.” Considering the nature of combat in Stalingrad, it is rather bizarre to see a moment of silence once Zaitsev and the men of his herd(since there are apparently no units in the Red Army) get up from the docks. The 284th went right into combat from the central landing stage to Mamaev Kurgan. The 284th might have had to take some of the heights overlooking the Central Landing stage but unlike in the case of the 13th Guards Rifle, they were not under fire from the buildings overlooking the landing stage (the 13th Guards had cleared these buildings upon arrival and placed their HQ in one of them, which is still preserved today). By the time the 284th arrived, they would have had some idea of how to fight in the city—they would not be lining up and charging en masse with half the men unarmed.

6 ) Why is Khrushchev given such a big role when in fact he had little to do with the battle? We don’t see Chuikov, Yeremenko, Rodimtsev, or anybody who was actually commanding in the city.

7 ) Tanya Chernova was not Jewish, and was also a blonde. She was injured by a mine set off by another female sniper (from her account it was probably a ‘Bouncing Betty’). The love affair has been claimed by Zaitsev in his memoirs and to the best of my knowledge was confirmed by Tanya herself, though they were never reunited after the battle.

8 ) The Major Konig incident may in fact be propaganda. This is primarily based on the fact that the name and branch of service of the mysterious sniper has two variants. It is possible that this was an urban legend as it isn’t difficult to believe that the Germans may have deployed their most elite snipers in Stalingrad. The 6th army itself was considered to be an “elite” unit based on its war record.

9 ) Stalin’s order 227 (Ни шагу назад!/Not a Step Backward) is misinterpreted. People were not shot for seeking cover or falling back, but for abandoning their post without orders, particularly in the case of officers ordering unauthorized retreats. It was designed to prevent panic, and as military historian John Keegan wrote in at least two of his books; a man in combat is most vulnerable when he turns his back and tries to flee. This is also true of entire units sometimes. Even a basic reading of the history of Stalingrad shows that there were numerous retreats, which did not have specific orders, wherein those who escaped were not shot, nor arrested. Some examples are Dragan’s retreat from the train station all the way back to the Volga. This is at least one kilometer.

10 ) Zaitsev was a hero no doubt, but we don’t see people like Mikhail Panikhakho, who after having one Molotov cocktail shot and its contents ignited all over him, continued to rush at a German tank, disabling it with the Molotov in his other hand—killing himself in the process. There is nothing about the 39th Guards Rifle Division, ex-paratroopers who perished almost to a man in the factory district. We don’t see the sailors who, numbering no more than 100, held off several German divisions for days from the Grain Elevator. We also don’t hear a word about “Pavlov’s House,” which held out for three months with a strength no larger than a company.

11 ) Finally, the movie really missed the essence of Stalingrad. The battle of Stalingrad wasn’t so much about snipers as it was about the machine pistol, the hand grenade, the bayonet, the knife, the entrenching tool, bricks and rubble, and even bare hands and combat boots. It was not about picking people off from a distance but rather endless hand-to-hand combat, often lasting for hours at a time, with opponents fighting over a single room, and all this time spent so close that you could hear the enemy breathe whenever grenades weren’t flying back and forth.

Verdict: Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
 Anyone who watches this film and has more than a summary knowledge of the Eastern Front is bound to be offended at some level, and the final “moral” concerning the viability of socialism delivered by Commissar Danilov at the end is downright insulting to one’s intelligence. Have no delusions: this is a propaganda film, designed to apply a bourgeois perspective to the Second World War.
 Yet all of this considered, any film that breaks away from the bourgeois argument that “socialism and fascism are the same thing” and portrays the Soviet Union as anything less than pure totalitarian evil is deserving of a little credit, especially now as anti-communist and crypto-fascist rhetoric is on the rise. The legacy of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany and all the sacrifices made towards that end are something that needs to be kept alive in our memories, and despite its many inaccuracies and anti-communist themes, Enemy at the Gates serves a purpose in breaking through the typical rhetoric about Soviet Socialism.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review of “Extract”

18 Mar

Basic Plot

Extract, written and directed by Mike Judge, involves the personal and business struggles of a small business factory owner named Joel Reynolds (Jason Bateman) as he tries to sell his extract business to the General Mills corporation. There are many different conflicts and dynamics in this film, from larger political economy factors such as race, gender, and class to cultural dynamics, such as the importance of age and seniority. However, the overarching contradiction of the movie is the class struggle between the factory owner and his workers. Joel Reynolds is a “self-employed entrepreneur,” who in classical Marxist terminology can be understood as being “petty-bourgeois.”

Plot points include the Joel managing the fallout of having hired a male prostitute to seduce his wife, which he did in order to not feel guilty about having an affair of his own with an attractive female employee, and dealing with a pending lawsuit from an employee who lost his testicle to an accident on the work site.

Mike Judge’s Reactionary Film History

Extract is more tripe from the mind of Mike Judge, who has a long and colorful history of creating reactionary entertainment. He brought us two apathetic adolescent males who don’t care about anything (Beavis and Butthead) in the early 1990′s, King of the Hill, a show that among other things supported George W. Bush’s presidency and advocated a foreign-sponsored coup in Cuba and Laos, The Goode Family, which seems to be Judge continuing his hackneyed stereotypes of progressives, and most famously Office Space, where the moral of the story seems to be that “stealing” from your corporate bourgeois exploiters “doesn’t pay”; instead you need to find a place in the status quo where you can be happy (being exploited), and not rock the boat.

This culminated also in Idiocracy, his wonderful romp into 19th Century Eugenics where he raises fears about “stupid people” outbreeding the “smart people,” which leads to a dytsopian future. In this scenario, IQ is based on biological determinism and not social factors (education, etc.). Take note that the “smart people” in the beginning are sweater-wearing and affluent, while the “dumb people” who are outbreeding them are working class and poverty stricken.

Considering Mike Judge’s long and distinguished history as an entertaining mouth-piece of backwards bile, Extract can be seen as his crowning achievement in this way.

Anti-Working Class Tone of the Movie

From the very beginning, we see workers viewed in a very negative light by the factory owner and his “second in command” Brian (J.K. Simmons). As the two talk about selling their factory to General Mills in the owner’s office overlooking the factory, they make comments such as “It’s like they are a bunch of children” and, in reference to an older woman employee, “Are we still thinking about replacing her with a machine?” Brian’s dismissive and hostile attitude towards the workers is made apparent by his refusal to learn any of their names. Instead, he refers to them each as “Dinkus” (except for the fork lift operator, who he mockingly refers to as “boy genius”). The message here is that workers are ignorant, child-like means to Joel and Brian’s profit-driven ends that are to be treated with disdain. As such, their demands for increased pay or more time off are met with a feeling of incredulousness and are summarily denied.
 The workers themselves are portrayed in a negative manner that follows suit with the petty-bourgeois outlook of Joel and Brian. They are shown not only as ignorant, but as petty and unprofessional. One instance that demonstrates this is the scene of the accident, where the old women workers (dissatisfied with the slow performance of their new colleague, a Latin American immigrant) cease doing their jobs in protest, leading to a back-up on the assembly line and a series of events (each displaying the incompetence of various employees, highlighted by Joel and Brian’s comments) that culminate in a worker being hit in the groin by a steam valve and needing to be medically evacuated.

Each worker in the factory is seen as having some kind of dysfunction which makes them less than ideal, from the old women on the assembly line who spend their work time talking to the forklift operator that is seen as being an incompetent “man child,” as well as the immigrant employees being seen as slow and lacking for their misunderstanding of English.

Workers Are Shown as Bumbling Fools in Mike Judge's Film

One character that particularly embodies the “blue collar worker” caricature offered by the petty-bourgeois management is the injured worker named “Step” (Clifton Collins). Step is portrayed as an ignorant, gullible, narcissistic “country boy” whose only means of making his point are to draw on tired, cliche “folksy” witticisms, which the managers mock him for. It is incredibly telling that even when Step declines to sue the company, his phrases “I wouldn’t want something for nothing” and “What’s right is right” are mocked by Brian, who would have much to lose if these attitudes weren’t taken by the employee who is declining to sue!

Elitist Outlook on Organizing
 The anti-worker vibe of the film hits a high note when the workers attempt to organize to advocate for shares in stock in the company to be sold to General Mills. When Joel and Brian are having a meeting with a lawyer hired by Step to sue them (after the weak and ignorant Step is seduced into suing by a woman) the workers on the factory floor misinterpret the situation they see through the window as Joel making a deal with General Mills to sell the company. And so the workers, including the inept forklift operator and yet another blue collar stereotype, decide to “go on strike or do that walk-out thing” if Joel doesn’t give them shares in the company.

After hatching their plan in a fashion that is portrayed as ignorant and egoistic, the workers confront Joel in a manner that is seen as equally deficient, with the “legitimate authority” of the factory owner being seen as being questioned by ingrates and half-wits, and after being yelled at by the poor, stressed-out factory owner whose life is crumbling around him, timidly go back to work as if nothing had happened.

Anti-Worker Sexism

At one point, Extract literally uses the term “working class” as a pejorative term. This happens when Joel is describing the female worker (Mila Kunis) that he wishes to seduce as “working class-looking,” to which the guy listening to him replies “So she is a slut, huh?” Just as the labor time of working men and women of the factory is exploited, the bodies of working women themselves are also coveted for exploitation by their employers. This is rationalized because working women are somehow more “promiscuous” and “dirty” than the daughters and wives of the bourgeoisie. Final Grade
 Extract is, for lack of a better turn of phrase, a steaming pile of anti-worker garbage.

Managers and other petty-bourgeois are seen as the levelheaded and decent arbiters of authority no matter what they do, and workers are seen as being inferior no matter how hard they work or what sacrifices they make. Yet the owner of the factory has the nerve to say “I’m a working man, too” toward the end of the film in order to coerce the injured employee from not suing, and after bribing the worker with the position of floor manager, gives a speech in which he places his factory on a higher rung than a “big corporation” because he “knows your names and is just right up those stairs. You won’t get that in a big corporation.” The class perspective in this movie is anything but working class, and reinforces a petty-bourgeois “middle class” fetishism that puts workers on a level below pigs and dogs.

Needless to say, we at the American Party of Labor did not enjoy this film.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review of “Capitalism: A Love Story”

16 Oct

First of all, I will give Moore credit for making certain ideas mainstream (what other remotely progressive or even politically challenging material are you going to see at a multiplex cinema?), and for his interviews with the working people of the United States and coverage of their struggles, which helped to energize me a bit. On the flipside, it must be stated that his new film “Capitalism: A Love Story” is not a condemnation of capitalism.
It is a “middle class” lament.
It is an Obama promotional video.
It is periodic social-democratic indulgence to release latent tensions that threaten to burst the restraining tethers of bourgeois society.

As usual, I don’t care for Mike’s theatrics. In general, I think that “street theatre” is an impotent mode of political agitation, and his clown tactics rarely yield constructive results. On the other hand, I recognize that he has to maintain an element of mass appeal, so he packages his film as a comedic documentary, as opposed to the conventional stuff on PBS.
The show begins, as do most Moore films, with a montage of old media clips and clips from his own childhood home films, showing a flurry of 50’s American nuclear families enjoying themselves in decadence (i.e. waterskiing) and working in industry, representing American capitalism in it’s consumeristic, not-yet-moribund state during the early Cold War.
So, early in the film it becomes clear that by no means is Moore criticizing capitalism. On the contrary, he exalts it to the high heavens, and waxes nostalgic about it during his youth. He shows this montage of clips representing how good capitalism was at one point, all with only the most minimal references to imperialism. How can anyone do a serious documentary about capitalism by focusing on the one country that is the recipient of all of the finished goods, wealth and flow of capital?

He states, without irony, that the US auto-manufacturing sector rose to prominence because of the destruction of the manufacturing sectors of both Germany and Japan (including horrific crimes against humanity like the attacks on civilian population centers at Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki). What Moore is noticeably quieter about is how these defeated countries were then turned into proxies of the United States and markets for their exported goods. He does point out that the United States rewrote the constitutions of the defeated Axis powers, but paints this as a very positive thing rather than imperialism.

So, it is not capitalism that Moore is criticizing; it is the post-Cold War polarization in wealth. It is the decimation of the “middle class,” and their subsequent loss of socio-economic privileges.

Moore then goes on to feature a lot of stuff about “What does Christianity think of capitalism?” This may ruffle the feathers of the more materialist and anti-theist, but I actually don’t criticize Moore for this approach. The United States is a deeply religious country, so he is finding his way to make some ideas acceptable to the existing level of consciousness of the people (I myself began as a Christian Marxist, despite the obvious contradiction). Scoffing at the religious sentiments of millions of American workers negates them, so Moore instead doesn’t directly tell them “abandon all ye Gods!” when he is (supposedly) targeting capitalism.
The only issue with this is, from a materialist point of view, it becomes pure bourgeois metaphysics. Moore literally asks the Catholic priests and Bishops “is capitalism a sin?” By doing this, he takes the root of the problem with capitalism out of the material world of tangibility, and places it onto the no-no list of divine preferences.
So now, the crimes of capitalism are put into the same basket as worshipping idols and unwed intercourse—there are no tangible negative effects from doing these things, but the faith considers them morally repugnant.

Moore could have settled for a compromise that showed Christian attitudes towards socialism, such as Acts 2:42 to 2:45, which state, “42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; 45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” He could’ve then contrasted these with attitudes towards capitalism: “…I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” –Jesus Christ, Matthew 19:23-19:24. But he did not attribute the ills of capitalism to moralism and the displeasure of a deity. This would have been a preferable stance.

Moore, at one point, looks at the rash of home foreclosures in the states and says, “This is capitalism.” Well yeah, but not in its entirety. That is only one of the symptoms, and it becomes meaningless because Moore doesn’t raise issues with the fact that even during the golden prosperity of the Cold War (built on the backs of rampant military expansion) workers were still confined to exploitive relations. So, ultimately, again it is not capitalism that Moore is raising issue with, but rather the disenfranchisement and polarization of the “middle class” in the face of monopoly capital. At no point does Moore draw the conclusion that capitalism is inherently exploitive, despite all of his “capitalism is evil” rhetoric.

At one point in the film, a couple that is being evicted in Peoria releases a pearl of wisdom. The husband says something along the lines of “there needs to be some kind of uprising of the have-nots against the haves.” If only Moore himself had taken this to its logical conclusion. Throughout the film, Mike endorses “socialism,” but of course by “socialism” he means Sweden, not the USSR. He literally drools over the “socialism” of Germany where Unionized workers have a say in choosing their board of directors (and of course, at the end of the day, they don’t own the factory that they are working in), and gives a cheer for the New Deal policies of FDR.

So here, “socialism = New Deal.” “Socialism = capitalism with concessions.” No worker control, no expropriations from the bourgeoisie, no abolition of private property, no abolition of class. Pension, pseudo-nationalized health care, giving the Unions a say in management… this is called “socialism.”

He points out how historically the National Guard under Roosevelt was used to protect striking workers in Michigan. He ignores all of the other times when the National Guard (or other state forces of the US) was used to put down strikes, which has usually included wholesale murder of strikers and union organizers. He unloads all of the crimes of American capitalism onto Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr., and absolves Jimmy Carter and FDR in the act. Bless their heart, they were just trying to help (at least he does shy away from Clinton nostalgia though).

And then, in the midst of all of the legitimate human misery portrayed in his film by the American people, a messiah emerges. That’s right—his name was Barrack Obama. The movie starts to wind down on a high note. Obama was elected, and this signaled the dawn of a “New America.” How so? Who knows?
Obama has so far continued the wars of aggression in the Middle East, voiced the same unconditional support for Israeli apartheid, clings to the same founding myths of the United States, still maintains the same capitalist system in place (in fact, he kept them on life support with public funds), and America is hardly “post-racial” as exemplified by the case of Professor Gates among others. So the film winds down as an Obama campaign ad. Things were horrible in the United States, but then Obama came, parted the Red Sea, and lead his people out of bondage in Egypt. Roll credits.

While to his credit, Moore features the fantastic action of the Republic Windows workers, who occupied their factory in lieu of unpaid wages, he ends their story on the high note that they got their wages and the struggle ended peacefully. So, here Moore reinforces the moral of his story: if the workers and oppressed people fight tooth and nail, the capitalists will part with some of their ill-gotten gains. Don’t really challenge capitalism, just take your bribe and go home.
He also portrays some worker -owned and operated industries in the US, like the reclaimed industries in Argentina portrayed in Naomi Klein’s documentary The Take, but he portrays this syndicalism as being a new stage of capitalism—collective capitalism as opposed to the top down pyramid model. Now, of course factory syndicalism in the US becomes meaningless because the overwhelming majority of the American economy is still in privately-owned hands with a division between ownership and labor, the United States ruling class still exists and thrives, and political power rests in their hands.

Essentially, all that Mike is advocating is Argentinean-style syndicalism in the workplace, Swedish-style social programs in society, and Jeffersonian democracy for all! Together, these elements do not equal socialism.

The whole thing ends with, of all songs, the Internationale (Billy Bragg lyrics) sung over the credits. I can’t tell if this was admirable or vulgar. Considering the pace and content of the rest of the film, about shrinking “middle class” privilege where “socialism = concessions from the bourgeois state,” this appropriation of the battle hymn of all humanity striving for emancipation seems like so much tasteless and degrading appropriation of socialist iconography as “revolutionary chic.” At least they didn’t defile the GOOD version of the song.

From start to finish, as usual, Moore plays the loyal opposition to the state wrapped in “radical” rhetoric. While this has succeeded in ruffling the feathers of the overt reactionaries like the National Post in my country, which featured a front-page article where they photoshopped Moore’s trademark glasses and ball cap onto Karl Marx, it boils down to same-old-same-old. Any condemnations of the still-ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Haiti are absent from the film. Why condemn them? Just make sure that the American working class gets their cut of the plunder, because that is what “socialism” is, at least according to Moore.
In the end, it becomes just another band-aid on the growing cracks in a dam that is about to burst. Just as the bourgeois economists of the recession declared “We Are All Socialists Now,” and defiled the legacy of working class emancipation by linking it to their own fascistic self-serving bail out, Michael Moore declares that workers’ need to fight for their right to more concessions.

Over all, Mike’s “middle class” woes become tiresome. The working class doesn’t need concessions, nor should they aspire to a relatively less exploited position as the “middle class” beneath bourgeoisie. If anything useful can be taken from this film, it is the knowledge that no problems have been solved in the United States, and the conditions that give rise to revolution have not been alleviated at all. If anything, the situation is more dire.

Tags: , ,

Review of “District 9″

29 Sep
One version of the Movies Poster

One version of the Movie's Poster

Spoiler-Free
The plot of District 9 revolves around an alternative history of the 1980s in which an alien ship becomes stranded on Earth, leaving humanity and along with that, imperialism, to deal with the alien visitors.
Throughout the film we follow Wikus van der Merwe, a representative from a multinational corporation that has been created to organize the alien visitors socially as well as reverse-engineer the highly advanced technology brought with them. This group’s name is MNU, who notably wear the same blue uniforms as the United Nations. The movie is shot in documentary-style camera, with the actors talking to the audience as if they were camera crew. The story unfolds as we follow Wikus and more is explained about how the aliens behave.

This brings me to the main point of the film. The aliens are a part of a caste system, and when they became stranded on Earth the ruling caste of this species either were killed, died out, or simply left, leaving the other aliens to be on their own. The “drones” of this species are lost without any sort of leadership or guidance, and have to deal with humanity—and in this case the movie even states that means the capitalists—who of course take advantage of the drones for labor and other menial tasks.
Now, I am a fan of all things science fiction, from early Robert Heinlien to Ridley Scott’s Alien, so it’s not a big surprise that when I heard about District 9 I was quite excited. The film has a quality story and character good development. However, in my opinion, the critics have somewhat missed the point. This isn’t a movie only about South African apartheid or how immigrants are treated, though that is certainly one part of it. This is also a movie about the classes and oppressed peoples in capitalist society.
The drones are being taken advantage of throughout the entire film, exploited for labor and later discriminated against, being made to live in a Warsaw Ghetto and being barred from entering certain restaurants and using certain bathrooms. The word “prawn” is even used as a racist slur for the aliens. In District 9, it’s not only a certain few who are exploiting their own species; it’s a species exploiting another species, just as nation does to nation under imperialism.

By all means this is a movie the APL recommends. It is not the standard brainless or reactionary cookie-cutter action flick, nor is the character development or dialogue become second priority to action. It is overall a progressive movie; however the idea that this is somehow made to respect, remember, or be an allegory for South African apartheid alone so utterly misses the obvious.

Tags: , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 143 other followers

%d bloggers like this: