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.

Pessimist Communism

Pessimist communism denounces state socialism (socialism in one country), social democracy (modest progressive reforms), and autonomous socialism (localism, anarchism, councilism, syndicalism etc.).  Internationalism is vital.  USSR and China restored capitalism because of a lack of internationalist approach.  Essentially, they could not compete with the more well established capitalist/imperialist powers (USA, England) When the conspiracy/libertarian crowd decry "globalism" the pessimist communist says global capital? No! global neoliberalism? Hell No! Global proletarian revolution? Hell yes! Global dictatorship of the proletariat? Yes! Yes!



Here Zizek provides us with two choices for the future: 1) Communism or 2) Fascist socialism.  Clearly, laissez faire capitalism cannot go unchecked for very long if humans are to continue to live on the planet.  Some kind of economic planning will be needed to avoid the very corporeal, coming, climate catastrophe and the more abstract, looming debt crisis fabricated by the casino charlatans on Wall Street etc.

In the USA (the proverbial, Marxian "belly of the beast"), the ruling class has two faces, both of which will eventually devolve into fascism. 1) Compassionate capitalism (green capitalism, black capitalism, pink capitalism, ethical capitalism, modest welfare state, limited Keynesianism etc.) coupled with excessive imperialism masked as "humanitarian intervention" (recall LBJ on Vietnam and Obama's wars in Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan and currently Iraq). These are what we call liberals, liberal-progressive, Democrats etc.  2) Cynical market fundamentalism (reckless capitalism, egoism, rugged individualism).  The second category includes libertarians, the ultra-rich (1%), Republicans and conservatives.  The second category, can of course, trace its roots to individualist anarchism.  From there, eugenics.  From there, fascism.  Pretty simple trajectory and pretty clearly marked by history.  However, the second category relies upon the first category.  The ultra-reactionary party must have a "bleeding heart" to denounce.

These cynical market fundamentalists love to hate FDR.  Of course, any good leftist worth her/his salt knows that he "saved capitalism from itself."  Conservative Democrat Seymour Martin Lipset (the original neocon) and multilevel-governance theorist Gary Marks concluded for the Hoover Institution:

The economic crisis of the 1930s was more severe in the United States than in any other large society except Germany. It presented American radicals with their greatest opportunity to build a third party since World War I, but the constitutional system and the brilliant way in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt co-opted the left prevented this [underline mine]. The Socialist and Communist Parties saw their support drop precipitously in the 1940 elections. America emerged from the Great Depression as the most antistatist country in the world.

Let us not forget, however, that FDR did not establish the American welfare state out of his compassion for the working class.  He did it because there was an actual proletarian revolution years before in the Soviet Union and because there was working class unrest in his own country.  The Communist Party USA, the Socialist Party of America and the Farmer-Labor Party were gaining headway as counter-hegemonic alternatives from the left. This the ruling class could not afford to ignore.  The myth of the compassionate liberal was thus created to co-opt the leftist tendencies amongst the working class.

Essentially, the "left-of-center" capitalist parties (Democrats USA, New Labour UK etc.) lend legitimacy to the capitalist system as a whole by creating a false alternative to cynical market fundamentalism.  They also function as a scapegoat for the failures of the market (recall how Obama was called a socialist when he gave golden parachutes to the banks and speculators on Wall Street) and a strawman to prop up ultra-reactionary parties (via backlash).

The working class throughout the world must not fall prey to these sado-masochistic mindfucks. When I hear working class individuals criticize fast food workers for building a movement to raise the minimum wage to a meager $15 an hour (other countries offer much higher minimums - see charts below) and call them lazy I am disappointed at the lack of solidarity and the blind swallowing of the ultra-right discourse.

 $15 minimum wage would be an improvement, but it's a modest demand.  Wealth redistribution is worth demanding, and hopefully we'll get there eventually, but a guarnteed minimum income would be good a start.

I will close this entry with something from Malcolm X that I think sums up the situation:

Neutrality Is Violence

To do nothing to prevent violence is itself a form of violence.  There is no neutrality.  If you are an active reactionary or a passive observer, either way you are allowing the oppressive status quo to maintain its hegemony.  Dissent is necessary.  It is a moral imperative.  To speak out against oppression and exploitation is the least we can do to counter the hegemonic ruling class.  We must continually come up with more creative ways in which to resist the powers-that-be.  A successful revolution redeems all previous failed revolutions... and isn't today a good day for a revolution?

Reflection of the Zizekian Concept of Violence

Obama's AmeriKKKa

Prior to the 2012 election, reactionary pundit, Dinesh D'Souza (yeah, this asshole) wrote a book called The Roots of Obama's Rage and made a film based on it called 2016: Obama's America. It played in major theatures and grossed $32.9 million domestically, which according to Wikipedia, makes it "the fourth highest domestic grossing documentary and the second highest domestic grossing political documentary in the United States since 1982." (Farenheit 9/11 is #1 on both lists thankfully, as it was a scathing expose of the Bush family's role in 9/11 and one of Michael Moore's best.)  The film was worth seeing, as it precisely enunciated the conservative argument against Obama.  If you didn't see it, here is the trailer. 

D'Souza makes the argument that Obama is an anti-colonialist and for that reason he must be stopped from being the commander in chief of the greatest colonial power in the world.  D'Souza's argument is more like pro-Obama propaganda than anti.  He insists that American leftist heros like Frank Marshall Davis and Bill Ayers have been close comrades and mentors to Obama.  If this were true, it would certainly endear me to the current president.  Unfortunately, it is far from true.

Self-described democratic socialist and philosopher/African-American studies theorist Dr. Cornel West supported Obama's campaign in the early stages, but it wasn't long before he became critical of the man.  In a recent Salon interview, he had this to say about the president:

He doesn’t realize that a great leader, a statesperson, doesn’t just occupy middle ground. They occupy higher ground or the moral ground or even sometimes the holy ground. But the middle ground is not the place to go if you’re going to show courage and vision. And I think that’s his modus operandi. He always moves to the middle ground. It turned out that historically, this was not a moment for a middle-ground politician. We needed a high-ground statesperson and it’s clear now he’s not the one.

And so what did he do? Every time you’re headed toward middle ground what do you do? You go straight to the establishment and reassure them that you’re not too radical, and try to convince them that you are very much one of them so you end up with a John Brennan, architect of torture [as CIA Director]. Torturers go free but they’re real patriots so we can let them go free. The rule of law doesn’t mean anything.

I think sometimes well meaning individuals get involved with the Democratic Party for the right reasons.  Obama may be one of these individuals.  According to Thomas Surgue in a Salon article, "Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC), a group on Chicago’s South Side whose tactics ... were inspired by [Saul] Alinsky." He also, occasionally, did go to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church. Unfortunately, however, along the way he became just another part of the establishment.  In fact, early in his political career, he ran against Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther,in a 2000 race for Illinois' 1st congressional district representative.  Already, he was flexing the stringy muscles of a moderate.

The situation in Ferguson, MO has shattered a lot of African-Americans' illusions about the extent to which Obama is their friend.  Red, black and green flags are a common site in Ferguson as the residents there express open resistance against the government.  In Texas, on August 9th, the "Huey P. Newton Gun Club" staged an "open-carry" rally in protest against "killer cops."

Obama's recent remarks on the Ferguson situation have been criticized as "tone deaf".  The fact that he has made any statement at all proves that it takes nothing less than a riot to get his attention.  Here is what he told demonstrators: 

While I understand the passions and the anger that arise over the death of Michael Brown, giving into that anger by looting or carrying guns, and even attacking the police only serves to raise tensions and stir chaos. It undermines rather than advancing justice.

It appears he is echoing the #notallcops and #stopthelooting cliche speech of such black liberals as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  

Mao said it best:

...[L]iberalism rejects ideological struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude and bringing about political degeneration in certain units and individuals in the Party and the revolutionary organizations... 

To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.

For those leftists who think that collaboration with the Democratic Party is necessary or even advantageous, THIS is what happens when a member of the Democratic establishment threatens the reactionary status quo:

Maybe some politicians get involved with the Democrats for the right reasons, but they ultimately are forced to make compromises.  Obama's government is the drone warfare government, it is the Iraq War III government, the Afghanistan surge government, the unconditional support for Israel's attacks on the civillians of Gaza government, the deportation government, the cuts in Food Stamps government, the electronic surveillance government.

Basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabar recently penned a brilliant article on the source of the current tensions in America.  He writes:

This fist-shaking of everyone’s racial agenda distracts America from the larger issue that the targets of police overreaction are based less on skin color and more on an even worse Ebola-level affliction: being poor. Of course, to many in America, being a person of color is synonymous with being poor, and being poor is synonymous with being a criminal. Ironically, this misperception is true even among the poor.

And that’s how the status quo wants it.

The U.S. Census Report finds that 50 million Americans are poor. Fifty million voters is a powerful block if they ever organized in an effort to pursue their common economic goals. So, it’s crucial that those in the wealthiest One Percent keep the poor fractured by distracting them with emotional issues like immigration, abortion and gun control so they never stop to wonder how they got so screwed over for so long.

...Rather than uniting to face the real foe—do-nothing politicians, legislators, and others in power—we fall into the trap of turning against each other, expending our energy battling our allies instead of our enemies.

I will conclude with a speech by Fred Hampton, another individual murdered in cold blood by police, that demonstrates what is needed in these times, better than I could say it:

We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.

We have to understand very clearly that there's a man in our community called a capitalist. Sometimes he's black and sometimes he's white. But that man has to be driven out of our community, because anybody who comes into the community to make profit off the people by exploiting them can be defined as a capitalist. And we don't care how many programs they have, how long a dashiki they have. Because political power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki; political power flows from the barrel of a gun. It flows from the barrel of a gun! 

One of those capitalist men today is Barak Obama, and yes, his skin is of a darker hue. He has proven himself to be no hero, no progressive prophet.  Electing another liberal Democrat will not solve the problems of the working class in America.  We need a proletarian revolution!  Combat liberalism!  Defeat the capitalist pigs!

 

Silly Libertarians:

So here's a scenario: private firefighting companies where you pay them before they put out your fire. You could argue that multiple firefighting companies could compete for your business and thus the price would be driven down. So a bunch of fire trucks would show up at your house and you haggle with them over which one is willing to put out your fire for the lowest price. Or not. Because house fires are somewhat rare (supply and demand) in your area there is only one fire company and it is in the next town over. They charge a high fee because they don't put out fires as often and must charge more to cover overhead. If you cannot pay (probably because your reserve of silver was in your house, which is now on fire, or you could use bitcoin except that your computer is also currently burning) your fire just spreads to the neighbor's house. They can pay, but the fire is only doused on their property so they must pay extra to run the water continually until your house burns completely (you can pay them later for the water that accidentally splashed onto your house). Of course, even if you could pay, you've spent too much time working out the details of the transaction that your house burns anyway.

Also, if a Libertarian has to park on the street and pay a meter they are pissed.  If they have to park in a private lot and pay a business they swell with pride.



Finally, check this out:

It Only Took Half The Wikipedia Entry On Libertarianism To Convince Me It Was The Right Political Ideology For America

#agitpop : 

2) Music as a liberating force. without getting too spiritual music is the soundtrack to ecstasy. militaries use music to rally their troops. sufis Use music to bring them closer to divine oneness. Punk rock kids use music to rock the fuck out. That is a sacred pursuit. Catharsis. It is both sacred and profane. this paradox makes it a valuable tool. it has the power to separate the individual from their ego, thus freeing one from oneself. once this process has occured it is possible for a feeling of being part of something bigger. Thus the individual, whether musician/vanguard or audience, can achieve a communal understanding. music is the object to this subjective understanding. the dialectic between musician/vanguard and audience thus gives birth to a third meaning. Eisenstein Understood this in the context of film, but in a different way. for him the juxtaposition of two images created a third meaning when filtered through the viewer's gaze. music is different in one respect. The creator of music has the ability to respond to feedback by virtue of the fact that music does not take as long to make as a film. this is especially true in live situations. thus music is participatory and democratic.

Meme Blast

This was a response to a friend of mine who posted this on a popular social media website and then proceeded to defend it by saying that feminism is divisive.

First (among other things that are better iterated below) my response was:

By declaring your opposition to feminism you are being divisive, insisting that the particular ways in which one group or another is oppressed is greater than the oppression that women face. Empowerment movements (such as feminism, black power, red power, gay pride ad nauseum) exist in order to change the conditions of oppression under which these groups suffer. What could be wrong with that?

Of course, after much internet nonsense, I finally wrote this:

Read [your response], still don't understand what your problem with the term feminism is. Was going to leave well enough alone, but I'll oblige this rather specific request for my two cents, or dollar or whatever. My response is basically what I said before: 1) feminism is an empowerment movement for an oppressed group the same way black power, red power, gay pride etc. are. 2) there is not one feminism, but many feminisms. what historians call the first wave was primarily concerned with suffrage and was also very much linked to the abolition movement. you argue that feminists betrayed abolitionism, but the reality is that abolitionist men betrayed feminism as they felt that the sight of liberated women in the abolition movement would turn more conservative men who might be sympathetic to abolition (industrialists mostly) against the abolitionist cause. the second wave I do have problems with. basically it was in the 1970s and women were bossing other women around telling them that they shouldn't have children or do house work, but instead focus on their careers. this was particularly beneficial to capitalists as they were able to pay lower wages (adjusted for inflation) to both men and women (although there is still a pay gap between the sexes to this day, women making 70 cents on every man's dollar) as now heterosexual households were expected to collect dual incomes. the third wave started in the 1990s and concerned connecting struggles of oppressed peoples. unfortunately, some feminists in the current era seem to have reverted back to second wave and also justifications of female separatism and misandry have become accepted by some (especially radfems/terfs). 2a) the radical justification of misandry (which is a form of prejudice, but not sexism i.e.: systemic, institutionalized discrimination) is not all feminism. The Black Panther Party opposed the Nation of Islam's anti-white doctrine, but both can be described as black power movements. Again, I am an anti-Stalinist communist, but I do not say that Stalinism is not communism, just not a form of communism that I subscribe to. I would like to add this quote from bell hooks and encourage you to read the book that it is from (linked below - pdf).

Most men find it difficult to be patriarchs. Most men are disturbed by hatred and fear of women, by male violence against women, even the men who perpetuate this violence. But they fear letting go of the benefits. They are not certain what will happen to the world they know most intimately if patriarchy changes. So they find it easier to passively support male domination even when they know in their minds and hearts that it is wrong. Again and again men tell me they have no idea what it is feminists want. I believe them. I believe in their capacity to change and grow. And I believe that if they knew more about feminism they would no longer fear it, for they would find in feminist movement the hope of their own release from the bondage of patriarchy.

Also, check this out.

Finally, allow me to give you a personal anecdote as to why feminism is something that I (although I am a man, and although I have endured the occasional (in my mind undeserved) ad homenim attack of "oppressor," "partiarch," "sexist" ad nauseum from self-described feminists) not only subscribe to, but also identify with. When I was a kid I was into poetry, art and music. I was vegetarian at the age of 10. I never played with toy trucks as a kid nor was I interested in the least in sports. In fact, I hated my gym teachers. Not only did I have to face being called a "girl," "faggot," and "pussy" from the other kids in school, but my teachers, those in authority, made the same complaints about me, although in perhaps less vulgar language. I was actually in a fist fight in the locker room once because another boy on my soccer team felt I didn't perform soccer manly enough and that was why we lost the game. I never was really hurt by being called a girl (even though I knew I was not) or gay (which I also knew I was not) because those things were not bad in my eyes. I always enjoyed the company of girls. I often sat with them at lunch. I sometimes felt that I related better to the girls in my class than I did to the boys. Of course, I realized that this must not be something natural. I believed that probably many of the boys in my class felt the same way I did, but just weren't courageous enough to stand up the sexism they were confronted with and instead lived in this fictitious role of the masculine male. Now, there's not necessarily anything wrong with masculinity, per se. Some of us have more aggressive, more utilitarian personalities. I have known many women with these traits. It's not wrong, it's just not inherently male.