Hollywood Remakes Represent Regressive Ideology

I recently saw the original version of the Wicker Man (1973) and was reminded of something Zizek had written about the ideologically regressive nature of Hollywood remakes.  In Hollywood Today: Report from an Ideological Frontline he describes the ideological trajectory of three adaptations of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend thusly:

The gradual ideological regression can be observed here at its clinical purest. The main shift (between first and second cinema version) is registered in the radical change in the meaning of the title: the original paradox (the hero is now the legend for vampires, as once vampires were for humanity) gets lost, so that, in the last version, the hero is simply the legend for the surviving humans in Vermont. What gets obliterated in this change is the authentically “multicultural” experience rendered by the title’s original meaning, the experience of how one’s own tradition is no better than what appears to us as the “eccentric” traditions of others, the experience nicely formulated by Descartes who, in his Discourse of Method, wrote how, in the course of his travels, he recognized that “all those whose sentiments are very contrary to ours are yet not necessarily barbarians or savages, but may be possessed of reason in as great or even a greater degree than ourselves.” The irony is that this dimension disappears precisely in our era in which multicultural tolerance is elevated into official ideology. 

Such ideological regression can also be seen in the two versions of the Wicker Man.  The first version is a commentary on the cultural and societal changes that took place in the late sixties and the resistance from the old-guard status-quo.  In the first version the police officer is an interloper in a neo-Pagan, Dionysian utopia.  He is a devout Christian and struggles with the hedonistic nature of the Summerisle society.  

In the 2006 remake Nicholas Cage (who is always awful in whatever he is in) plays the police officer who finds himself an interloper in a matriarchal/radical-feminist utopia where the men are demoted to the status of obedient servants.

In the original, 1973 version we are to revile the uptight cop who sticks his nose where it doesn't belong and gets what's coming to him in the end.  In the 2006 version we are to pity  Nick Cage's character as a victim of feminine seduction and, in the end, feminism gone wrong.  This is clearly an ideologically regressive trajectory.

Another example is the J. J. Abrams bastardization of the Star Trek franchise. This version of the Star Trek universe is far from the vision of anti-racist, anti-sexist, socialist harmony that Gene Roddenberry established in the original series and the Next Generation. What's more, Abrams has turned the characters into caricatures in the worst possible way.

Hollywood.com writer Christian Blauvelt described the regression quite elegantly in a recent article reviewing why Trekkies recently voted Into Darkness the worst Star Trek movies:

...Uhura's a Less Progressive Character in 2013 Than She Was in 1966

When Star Trek first aired, Nichelle Nichols' Uhura was a competent professional who was defined by her intelligence, her skills, and the ambition that saw her serve aboard the bridge of a major Federation vessel. By Star Trek Into Darkness, however, Zoe Saldana's Uhura is defined entirely by her romance for Spock. Not to mention that unlike most other incarnations of Trek, Into Darkness doesn't even pass the Bechdel Test.

For those that don't know what the Bechdel Test is, here's a little video for explanation.

Pretty simple basic criteria:

1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it

2. Who talk to each other

3. About something besides a man

To close, I'd like to demonstrate the emancipatory nature of Star Trek:

 Click here for more information on Star Trek and communism. 

Scientific Socialism

Marxism is a science, based upon a scientific method.  It is also an ideology, but only until the ideology is rendered irrelevant by material conditions.  Until now Marx's critique of capitalism has not been rendered irrelevant.  Capitalist apologists have not been able to prove that the warnings in Kapital have not come true.  Inequality, crisis and violence continue to be aspects of the capitalist mode of production.  Ye, Marxism is all the more relevant today as Climate Crisis approaches a critical stage and the reactionaries continue to insist on a revisionist conceptualization of environmental science that does not rely upon empirical evidence.  Clearly, green capitalism is not sufficient to rescue the planet from extremely corporeal global catastrophe.  Of course, the reactionary profits will warn that any attempt at planned economy will result in totalitarian disaster. 'Just look at the Soviet Union under Stalin, or China under Mao!'  Certainly, these individuals orchestrated what they knew would be disasters.

Those who would insist that these individuals knowingly created the conditions that would lead to famine and starvation give these individuals more credit as agents with the ability to steer the course of history than I would.  Mao apologized for his role in the Great Famines in China.  He said that his had about a 20% role in the famines through mismanagement of the economy and the rest was nature.  Stalin of course, never made such an apology, but he was, of course, the "Man of Steel."

Admitting mistakes is a sign of political maturity.  Castro apologized for jailing LGBT folk.  A socialist leader sees themselves not as a god-king in the Egyptian sense, but as an agent of history, and perhaps even an experimental political scientist.

The WWII period was a politically experimental time.  Industrial capitalism had reached a critical point, and there were variations in the way the major players reacted to it.  In USSR they had a proletarian revolution, and the cult-of-personality of Stalinism prevailed.  This was a mixed blessing.  On one hand, USSR had an authoritarian leadership that suppressed counter-revolutionary activity.  On the other, collectivization and the uplifting of the Soviet economy was a priority.  In Germany, Italy and Japan these themes presented themselves as fascist appropriations of leftist-populist rhetoric combined with capitalist ruthlessness and insistence on efficiency and profit.  In the capitalist Republics of UK and USA the pressure from the proletarian dictatorship of USSR manifested itself as a strengthened welfare state.  For a time, these nations united against the common, fascist enemy, but not long after the war they became engaged in a ruthless cold war.

Much of the experimentation was done for us in this period.  We found that fascism and welfare capitalism eventually devolve into disaster.  The authoritarian socialism of Stalin may have been extreme.  He may have tried to collectivize the economy to fast.  Socialism in one country may have been an unrealistic insistence.  But a successful revolution redeems all previous failed ones.  Next time we won't make the same mistakes.  The scientific method insists that we must revise our hypothesis for differing conditions (this is not, or course, an endorsement of Kruschevian revisionism).  The USSR went from agrarian late-feudalism to industrial socialism in a very short period of time.  This was a triumph for socialism and for the Russian people.  For them to regress back to capitalism was a disaster, but it would not have been possible except for the proletarian revolution of 1917.  Let us learn from the past and move forward with strategy in mind and with winning as the goal.