Bonnie offers a very different take, one that speaks volumes about her resoluteness, level of engagement and selflessness: “We felt that just because we were parents didn’t mean that we could remove ourselves from responsibility, that that would have been kind of a cop-out. We decided that we weren’t going to be content when we continued to see things that really disturbed us.”
The documentary 1971 (2014) tells the gripping story of a group of peace activists who broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania on March 8, 1971. They called themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI and their aim was to expose abusive, anti-dissent practices by the Bureau. The activists found what they wanted and were never caught. Making off with a trove of office files, they uncovered an immense and illegal government surveillance program of domestic political groups. One of the stolen documents referred to the now notorious COINTELPRO, a political surveillance program that targeted Black, left-wing, Puerto Rican, and women’s rights organizations as well as the anti-Vietnam war movement. Overseen by FBI head, J. Edgar Hoover, it was both unlawful and un-American as it violated First Amendment rights. The group anonymously dispatched photocopies of the damning evidence to national newspapers. The Washington Post published the story and the FBI was later investigated by Congress.
Directed by Johanna Hamilton, 1971 mixes present-day interviews with members of the group who have broken their silence with footage from the period, photographic stills, documents, and dramatic recreations of the event. Interesting and diverse in terms of personality, age, and background, the group included a married couple with three young children, Bonnie and John Raines; anti-war activist and physics professor, Bill Davidon (the leader of the group); and two younger men, cab driver (and lock-picker) Keith Forsyth and social worker Bob Williamson. The interviews give us a clear sense of what motivated and united them. Keith, still visibly moved decades after, explains that it was his revulsion at the Jackson State shootings that drove him to more “confrontational” political action. “I was done talking,” he says. John speaks eloquently of how surveillance, agent infiltration, and the engineering of paranoia and fear impair both political debate and the morale of activists. “It shrinks the discourse, it shrinks the possibility of resistance,” he observes. It was Bill’s intention to expose the FBI’s anti-dissent aims and practices.
Although very much a committed activist, Bonnie recalls how she was, also, expected to perform a traditionally feminine, domestic role at meetings: “I felt a little bit like I was the den mother for the group…I was fixing meatballs and spaghetti but it was expected that I was going to play that role almost exclusively and I was not real happy about being a little bit marginalized in that kind of way.” It’s a telling reminder that chauvinist, patriarchal attitudes persisted even in progressive circles in the so–called sexually liberated early seventies. John, however, does seem very much a partner and recognizes that Bonnie’s determination to carry out the mission was greater than his. She, also, plays a key part in the break-in.
Bonnie and John are an interesting, admirable couple. Family life did not turn them insular and self-absorbed. They remained committed to caring about the world around them. John had been a freedom rider in the South and he explains how his experiences gave him an understanding of how power operates. John and Bonnie’s situation was, of course, unique. Both parents could have been locked away for a long time. They made plans for close relatives to look after the children if the worst happened but I suppose many would judge them irresponsible and selfish. Bonnie offers a very different take, one that speaks volumes about her resoluteness, level of engagement and selflessness: “We felt that just because we were parents didn’t mean that we could remove ourselves from responsibility, that that would have been kind of a cop-out. We decided that we weren’t going to be content when we continued to see things that really disturbed us.”
Hamilton’s dramatic recreations of the extraordinary event bring to life this real-life political thriller. They are evocative and quite nail-biting, a good deal less phony than most recreations. We follow the group’s preparations and witness the break-in itself, which took place during the night of the Madison Square Garden Ali-Frazier fight of March 8, 1971.
1971 conveys an understanding of the oppressive nature of the FBI’s power as well as an acute awareness of the nastiness of its methods. For many years, the Bureau dedicated itself to stifling freedom of thought and expression through the spread of fear and paranoia, invaded the private space of American citizens and destroyed personal lives. Their schemes were plain evil. The viewer is reminded of that anonymous letter send by the Bureau to Martin Luther King encouraging him to commit suicide.
1971’s depiction of one of the most politically fascinating eras in modern U.S. history is vibrant and characterful but it doesn’t romanticize its subjects. It doesn’t have to. The activists come across as principled, courageous people. Their transgressive act of daring exposed extraordinary abuses of state power. It is a troublesome truth for conservatives and historical amnesiacs but injustice is not always uncovered by strictly lawful means. Hamilton recognizes the story’s historical parallels with Snowden and Wikileaks (Laura Poitras, interestingly, is one of the film’s co-executive producers) as she underscores its importance in the history of American anti-surveillance activism. 1971 is an informative, exciting documentary that needs to be seen.
The collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh on the April 24, 2013 is one of the tragedies of our time. More than 1,100 garment workers lost their lives and many more were injured. The majority of them were young women. It was, in fact, nothing less than industrial murder.
The collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh on the April 24, 2013 is one of the tragedies of our time. More than 1,100 garment workers lost their lives and many more were injured. The majority of them were young women. It was, in fact, nothing less than industrial murder. The factory bosses were warned about the cracks in the shoddily constructed building, yet the workers were forced to come to work that day. In June this year, the owner of the factory and 40 others were charged with murder. Multinational retailers could also, of course, be said to have blood on their hands. The poorly-paid workers made clothes for well-known global brands like Primark, Mango and Benetton. Some companies predictably took their time but the compensation fund for victims was also secured in June of this year.
The Rana Plaza tragedy inspired director Andrew Morgan to make The True Cost (2015), an ambitious, wide-ranging documentary about the globalized garment industry. We journey with him to world fashion centres and places where most of our clothes are made- Cambodia, India, China and Bangladesh- to meet garment workers, activists, academics and Free Trade representatives. Global brand bosses are conspicuous by their absence.
The True Cost tackles the exploitation of garment workers and the horrendous impact that the clothing industry has on the health of working communities and the environment. Morgan specifically targets the contemporary fast fashion model- the quick-response manufacturing of affordable clothes inspired by high-cost fashion trends. He explains that High Street fashion brands find Bangladesh a particularly attractive place to do business because of cheap labor and interviews a local factory owner who says that he is pressured by retailers to keep costs low. Reflecting on the exploitative, get-out-of-jail-free part played by global brands should make you quietly seethe. Most of Bangladesh’s garment workers are young women and they earn less than three US dollars a day. Workers are abused, even killed, for demanding better pay and conditions. We see footage of garment workers in Cambodia being shot at as they demonstrate for an increase in the minimum wage. Morgan rightly describes the low-cost, exploitative system of poverty wages and dangerous working conditions as “a perfectly engineered nightmare for the workers trapped inside of it.”
In an effort to personalize and make accessible this complex, multifaceted global story, Morgan spotlights the struggles of 23-year-old Shima Akhter, a Bangladeshi garment worker and union organizer who says she was beaten for trying to improve her and her co-workers’ lot. Her personal situation is tough too as she is forced to leave her young daughter Nadia in the countryside with relatives for long periods at a time while she works in the city. Shima is a strong, gracious woman who wants the best for the daughter she adores. She loves her parents and always sports a warm smile. The shots of Shima and her family in the countryside are beautifully observed but it is her words that haunt you: “I don’t want anyone wearing anything which is produced by our blood.”
Morgan equally addresses the industry’s ruinous impact on the environment and health of people living and working in communities serving the industry. He explains, “Fashion today is the number two most polluting industry on earth, second only to the oil industry.” I doubt most of us are aware of this fact and it underlines the obscene enormity of the problem posed by fast fashion. We see landfills overflowing with textile waste- a strange, disturbing sight- and learn of the appalling effect pesticide and fertilizer use has had on physical and mental health in communities in the Punjab region of India.
Clearly intended as a wake-up call, The True Cost looks at alternative ways of doing business and gives voice to those questioning the existing economic system. We meet London-based Safia Minney, founder and CEO of Fair Trade People Tree and LaRhea Pepper, an organic cotton farmer from Texas. Both advocate ethical and sustainable solutions. The most powerful comments, however, come from economist Richard Woolf. He observes, “So America became a peculiar country. You could criticize the education system…you could criticize the transportation system….but you couldn’t criticize the economic system. That got a free pass…Capitalism couldn’t be questioned.” Morgan, further, takes aim at the consumerist mentality that fuels fast fashion but I’m not sure we learn anything new regarding materialism in the Millenium. I had, however, never seen the nauseating You Tube clothes haul videos Morgan features. They, indeed, denote an epic, soulless low.
The True Cost has moments of power but it is not without its flaws. While Morgan clearly supports their struggle, more garment workers and union representatives should have been interviewed. The documentary, further, does not give an in-depth, gender-aware analysis of the lives of female garment workers. The arguments and images employed to critique consumerism are not, it must be said, particularly striking or original. Morgan should, nevertheless be commended for raising awareness of the acute human suffering behind the production of fast clothes. It prompts serious reflection about the vulturism of the industry and our response to economic violence. While it was widely reported, Rana Plaza did not become a social media cause in the same way as other recent tragedies. We know why, of course. Consumer capitalism reigns and the media, even culturally progressive sites, do not seem all that interested in workers’ rights. Hopefully, documentaries like The True Cost will encourage more to break the shameful silence.
Ali was not, it seems, an uneasy, distant patriarchal figure. His masculinity was characterized by deep emotional expressiveness. Lewins’s employment of beautiful family photos, home movies and those engaging recordings serve to reinforce the impression.
Only children should have heroes and heroines, but if there is a hero worthy of worship it is Muhammad Ali. Ali was not only a supreme boxer; his extraordinary charisma granted him enormous celebrity outside the ring and he transcended his profession to become one of the most important cultural figures of the ’60s and ’70s. Ali was, and remains, a symbol of Black pride and consciousness in both the United States and abroad. Even today, young people from Cuba to Ghana are familiar with his name and achievements. Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in the early ’80s but it has not prevented him having an active public life. He became an advocate for those with the condition and devoted himself to humanitarian work. Ali is now a revered figure in the United States but this was not always the case. Many in the white establishment and mainstream media hated him. They saw Ali’s conversion to Islam as a threat and despised him for refusing to fight in the monstrosity that was the Vietnam War. The boxer was punished for refusing military service: his heavyweight title was taken away from him and he was banned from boxing for four years from 1967 to 1971. On the sorrowful day Ali leaves us, hypocrites who reviled him will, no doubt, express condolences and the mainstream media will try to depoliticize and deradicalize him like they did with Mandela.
With daughter Maryum
There have been numerous narrative and documentary films devoted to Muhammad Ali. The most well-known biopic of this century is probably Michael Mann’s Ali (2001) starring Will Smith in the title role. There have also been several excellent documentaries on the boxer. The recently released documentary, The Trials of Muhammad Ali (Bill Siegel, 2013) examines the political fight Ali had outside the ring when he refused to fight in Vietnam. Note that the television film Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, also released in 2013, deals with the legal battle. Many documentaries have studied his legendary fights inside the ring. When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996) examines Ali’s celebrated 1974 fight against George Foreman in the Central African nation then called Zaire (the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo) although it does so much more than anatomize the bout. It is a stirring portrait of an epoch-defining cultural and political event. Although it also examines the public, political Ali, Claire Lewins’s I Am Ali (2014) focuses on the boxer’s private self.
With Veronica
I Am Ali features interviews with people close to Ali, among them his former manager, Gene Kilroy, trainer, Angelo Dundee (who died in 2012), brother, Rahaman Ali and son, Muhammad Ali Jr. Crucially, the documentary gives voice to Ali’s ex-wife, Veronica Porsche, and daughters Hana and Maryum. There are not many profiles of male boxers that feature female public and/or private voices. Lewins has also greatly benefited from access to taped recordings of conversations Ali had with his children. Intended as childhood audio journals, they lend an incalculable poignancy to the film. I Am Ali is, in fact, extremely moving. Hearing the boxer singing Mamas and the Papas songs with 3-year-old Hana makes you cry. Commentary by his daughters indicate that Ali was a great father despite his hectic travelling schedule. Maryum and Hana describe a playful, loving personality. Ali was an inspirational man to his loved ones too. We hear him asking Maryum when she was little: “If everyone’s born for a purpose, what do think you were born for?” Ali was not, it seems, an uneasy, distant patriarchal figure. His masculinity was characterized by deep emotional expressiveness. Lewins’s employment of beautiful family photos, home movies and those engaging recordings serve to reinforce the impression.
With Veronica and Hana
As a husband, the younger Ali was, reportedly, more complicated. Although an intimate portrait of the man, the documentary does not examine his marital and romantic life in depth. Lewins, however, rightly allows a tearful Veronica to describe her “fairy tale days” with Ali and more painful ones: “He’s a really good-hearted person, very sensitive, and I guess I’m crying because of his situation now. You know, and I’ll always love him, I mean not like ‘in love’…we’ve always been friends. It became hard to live with him because, everyone knows, the whole world knows, he wasn’t faithful as a husband. There’s a story to that too, but I think but he’s an incredible human being. He has a beautiful heart…” Is I Am Ali hagiography? Perhaps. What is clear, though, is that Ali was, and is, much loved by people close to him.
Daughters Hana and Maryum
Clare Lewins not only incorporates private, female voices in her documentary; I Am Ali also features an interview with a boxing fan, Russ Routledge, from Newcastle in the North East of England who once stayed with Ali in his home in the States. In doing so, she exhibits both a feminist and populist consciousness in her portrait of the boxer. The British director, further, examines Ali’s warm relationship with the United Kingdom. Lewins tells the improbable tale of his visit to South Shields (also in the North East of England) where his marriage to Veronica was blessed in the local mosque. This is of personal interest to me as it is the town where I was born.
Brother Rahaman Ali
Although it focuses on the private Ali, the documentary also addresses the public and political aspects of the man. I Am Ali is graced with fantastic iconic shots of the boxer and remarkable archival footage of powerful old interviews and speeches. Ali spoke out against racial injustice and the documentary features a potent, witty speech on white supremacist indoctrination by the boxer. It examines his growing political awareness and chronicles his conversion to Islam as well as his refusal to fight in Vietnam. Ali’s refusal to fight, in my mind, remains the most courageous thing he has ever done in his courageous, wonderful life. I Am Ali features the boxer’s memorable statement about his decision: “Why should me and other so-called negroes go ten thousand miles away from home here in America to drop bombs and bullets on other innocent brown people who’s never bothered us and I will say directly no I will not go ten thousand miles to help kill innocent people.”
Clare Lewins with Maryum and Hana
I Am Ali is, perhaps, not the finest documentary about the legendary boxer. The fascinating and thrilling When We Were Kings remains a personal favourite. It is is, nevertheless, an insightful and tender exploration of both the public and private Ali. Giving voice to the man himself and those closest to him, it is a deeply emotional ode to both family love and noble ideals.
The movie also, however, offers ideological and anthropological readings of masculinity which are, arguably, a little more complicated.
Bigelow appears to have a deep interest in, and respect for, martial masculinity.
Poster for The Hurt Locker
Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Masculinity.
A well-crafted tale about a U.S. bomb deactivation unit in Iraq, The Hurt Locker (2009) marks a continuation of Kathryn Bigelow’s interest in martial masculinity as well as an evolution of her directorial style. The 2010 Academy Award winner’s documentary look and feel effectively immerses the viewer in the hazardous lives of its warrior protagonists. Hand-held cameras, multiple cameras, zooms, and close-ups serve to create a charged atmosphere as they generate a marked intimacy and terrifying immediacy.
The Hurt Locker not only represents a revival of Bigelow’s interest in men in the military but also exemplifies her abiding fascination with those who seek to shatter the limits of human experience by dancing with death. Risk-takers, typified by the surfers of Point Break (1991), populate Bigelow’s films. The work of bomb technicians constitutes, of course, an especially intimate form of engagement with death. For the protagonist of the Hurt Locker, a certain Sgt. William James, these potentially fatal encounters are to be embraced–even enjoyed. Played by Jeremy Renner, James is a risk-taking maverick more at home in a war-zone than in his family home. He is made of very different stuff from the other men in his unit. His comrades include Sgt J.T. Sandborn (Anthony Mackie) a sensible team-player dedicated to protecting the men around him, and Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), an anxious young specialist. Employing an episodic narrative structure, The Hurt Locker depicts the every day, death-defying activities of the warrior technicians as well as their downtime pursuits.
Bigelow shooting The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker is primarily a character study of a man at war but its setting is Iraq and the audience should never forget this. Bizarrely, the movie itself, scripted by Mark Boal who was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, seems to want the viewer to do so. Indeed, there is an apparent absence of ideological discourse about the conflict throughout the entire film. As I have said before, there is, however, no such thing as apolitical cinema. The Iraq war was an illegal war and it is nothing less than a monumental stain on the conscience of the US and UK. There is no mention in The Hurt Locker that the unit is occupying a country and there is no critique of the Iraq War.
The Hurt Locker does depict the impact on civilian lives war has–we see civilians converted into human bombs–but the film only focuses on the deeds of the enemy other. Unlike Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha (2007) or Brian de Palma’s Redacted (2007), The Hurt Locker does not address and examine American atrocities. Instead, the American soldier is uniformly portrayed as skillful, resilient, charismatic, and compassionate. The Hurt Locker does not offer an Iraqi perspective on the conflict. The enemy remains a constant silent, staring threat.
James (Jeremy Renner)
What of the views of The Hurt Locker’s director? Bigelow has stated simply: “This is a film told from the specific point of view of the US soldiers” (David Jenkins interview, Time Out, London). She also asks the viewer to strip away his or her particular political perspective and focus on the particular experiences of her protagonists. The Hurt Locker, she says, offers a sensorial take on the Iraq war: “This conflict has been so politicized. I thought this would be a way for people to meet at the point where one man in a 100-pound bomb suit is walking toward a suspicious amount of wires in a rubble pile and trying to operate very quickly to avoid his coordinates being called in for a sniper attack” (“Kathryn Bigelow and the Making of The Hurt Locker” Glen Whipp, L.A. Times, Dec 23. 2009). I recognize that filmmaking is a physical experience for Bigelow but this is a quite maddening, insular statement. Who is the director addressing? Who’s the audience? The choice to just tell the story purely from the perspective of American soldiers is plainly political (as is the choice to not point out the war itself was illegal or mention American atrocities). But let’s move on and analyze The Hurt Locker as an American story about a trio of US soldiers. If the film is intended to represent the American experience, it is instructive from an ideological perspective; it’s interesting work analyzing how American cultural products reflect and construct their national identity.
Sanborn (Anthony Mackie)
If we accept The Hurt Locker as a primarily American story, we also need to ask if it is an authentic expression of that. The audience is, it’s true, given an acrid taste of the characters’ feelings of alienation as they experience the daily threat of death, an indication of what it is like to be a member of an occupying army. The Hurt Locker does not sugarcoat the feelings and attitudes of its characters. “I hate this place,” an exhausted Sandborn announces with brutal simplicity. His comment rings true: Iraq is a dusty, dirty hell-hole for these men. The problem remains though that we are asked to sympathize solely with Sanborn and his comrades. The Hurt Locker can, thus, easily be read as a work of American narcissism and neo-imperialism. The movie also, however, offers ideological and anthropological readings of masculinity which are, arguably, a little more complicated.
Bigelow appears to have a deep interest in, and respect for, martial masculinity. In both The Hurt Locker and K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), she exhibits a respect for men willing to sacrifice their lives for others. Both the Russian navy of K-19 and American soldiers of The Hurt Locker are seen as heroic. In countless interviews for The Hurt Locker, Bigelow expressed a conventional respect for US troops in Iraq as well as admiration for the skills of bomb disposal experts. Does The Hurt Locker propagate the masculinist, militarist belief that martial masculinity is the most heroic form of masculinity? The characterization of James suggests that the picture is, perhaps, more inconsistent or complex.
The drug of war
Finishing his tour of duty with Sanborn and Eldridge, James returns to a damp America, to an ordinary, beautiful wife (Evangeline Lilly, it must be said, in an unrewarding, supporting role) and happy baby son. But it is not enough and James soon returns to Iraq. His commitment to the military is absolute. He puts war before romantic, marital, and paternal love. “War’s dirty little secret is that some men enjoy it,” Bigelow has contended (Kathryn Bigelow Interviews, Martin Keough ed.). It’s an anthropological and philosophical assertion rather than a political one. Considering the fact that (mostly) human males have been at it for thousands of years, there may be some truth to it. The Hurt Locker also opens with a quote by Chris Hedges expanding on the same theme: “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction for war is a drug.” Choosing to cite the left-wing writer and journalist Chris Hedges is a curious thing in itself, of course, in light of the movie’s refusal to confront the neo-con adventure that was the Iraq War.
Bored with suburbia
Interestingly, Sgt. James is not wounded or scarred by war. It is Sandborn and Eldridge who suffer psychological and physical pain. James is not psychotic. Nor does he have post-traumatic stress disorder. He is, equally, not portrayed as a psychopath. Indeed, he is shown to be compassionate. He is willing to risk his life for others and loves his infant son. Perhaps he still loves his wife. James, however, needs to be in a war zone. He doesn’t know why or how he does it and it rings true that he doesn’t know: James has no inner life. His excessiveness masks nothingness. He also does not grow or change. His masculinity is fundamentally characterized as solipsistic. Although goal-oriented, he is a sterile being. Are Bigelow and Boal effectively normalizing the need for physically brave, unfinished human beings in their portrait of James? Whatever the case, they have created a zombie, a man for whom war is a necessity and pleasure. The Hurt Locker could, therefore, be said to invite more interesting, exploratory interpretations of martial masculinity.
Bigelow empathetically depicts the close camaraderie of male soldiers. She also, however, foregrounds their masculinity–their black humor and sexual jesting made up of dick jokes and mock play fighting and fucking–and her highlighting of their ways indicates that she is also commenting on their masculinity. At one point, a tear-streaked Sanborn admits, “I want a little boy.” What to make of this statement? Although it’s uttered after a traumatic incident, it’s such a schmaltzy, macho thing to say that you wonder if the character’s desire for a boy-child is being mocked as an example of narcissistic masculinity.
Oscar winner
The Hurt Locker is a well-paced, visually and technically impressive film. Bigelow’s command of the camera is formidable. Its apolitical stance is, however, utterly fraudulent. I do believe Bigelow is genuinely more interested in anthropological interpretations of war and war as a sensory experience, but her experiential take on one of the defining historical events of our time is ultimately as ideologically charged as any other cultural product. Like many American war movies, it exhibits an insular, neo-imperialist world view. Its representation of martial masculinity is, perhaps, more ambiguous and ambivalent, and it invites more complex readings. The radical nothingness of the movie’s warrior protagonist’s inner core is revealed when his creators peel back his skin. The Hurt Locker, thus, offers an interesting, potentially subversive portrait of martial masculinity and masculinity per se with Sgt. William James.
The tools Varda employs are modest and made for the road. The handheld digital video camera she uses allows for both freedom and intimacy. She puts herself in front of the camera, filming, for example, her aged hands and thinning hair in candid close-up. Can you imagine a Hollywood director doing so? Varda rejects vanity and embraces vulnerability.
Belgian-born French filmmaker Agnès Varda is nothing less than a cinematic treasure. Her career spans decades and she has gained critical acclaim for both her fiction and documentary films. Varda was, of course, a pioneering figure of the New Wave and Left Bank. In 1962, she directed the ground-breaking, feminist classic Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7). In 1985, her powerful, lyrical film about a young homeless woman, Sans Toi, Ni Loi (Vagabond), won the Golden Lion in Venice. This year Varda was awarded an honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes. She was the first woman to receive the tribute. At the beginning of the Millenium, Varda also directed the documentary Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I, 2000). It is one of the most fascinating ever made.
Poster for The Gleaners and I
Varda begins her documentary by providing the historical, aesthetic and linguistic context of gleaning. We are given the Larousse dictionary definition: “To glean is to gather after the harvest.” The director tells us that it was a mostly female, collective activity in the old days. Today, both men and women glean, more often than not on their own. François Millet’s painting of les glaneuses provides the stimulating starting point for Varda’s creative, humanist journey. Marrying the past and the present, the documentary features interviews with men and women of rural and urban France in the new Millenium who practice various forms of gleaning. People gather everything from vegetables, fruit, and oysters to old dolls, fridges, and TVs. We encounter an impoverished single mother picking potatoes, and homeless young people dumpster-diving outside a supermarket. We also meet a chef scavenging for fruit because he prefers to know where his food comes from, as well as artist gleaners who scavenge for junk to use in their pieces. One of the most interesting people Varda meets is a man with a master’s degree who picks discarded fruit and bread from city markets in the morning and teaches French to immigrants from Mali and Senegal at night.
Recreating the act
The Gleaners and I is not directly political but rather a thought-provoking, humanist study of people on the margins as well as those with reject capitalist norms of production and consumption. Issues of waste and sustainable development have become more and more critical, of course, since the film was made. Interestingly, in an effort to combat waste and food poverty, France introduced new laws this year banning supermarkets from dumping and destroying unsold food. They are now encouraged to give edible food to charities.
Millet’s Les Glaneuses
The tools Varda employs are modest and made for the road. The handheld digital video camera she uses allows for both freedom and intimacy. She puts herself in front of the camera, filming, for example, her aged hands and thinning hair in candid close-up. Can you imagine a Hollywood director doing so? Varda rejects vanity and embraces vulnerability. Her presence is, also often playful. At the beginning of the film, she recreates the actions of the wheat-carrying glaneuse in Jules Breton’s painting of a solitary female gleaner, all the while fixing her eyes on the camera. Varda has the inquiring mind of all great artists. Her humanity and inventiveness are consistently on display in The Gleaners and I. The director seems entirely invested in the subject as well as entirely empathetic towards the people she meets. Varda indeed identifies herself as a glaneuse. She gleans both memories and images in her life and art. In truth, the documentary is not only a study of gleaning but also a beguiling self-portait of an artist as well as an imaginative self-reflexive study of the art and craft of filmmaking.
Villagers being interviewed about the tradition
At once poetic and politically aware, The Gleaners and I offers a captivating portrait of the practice of scavenging. Both very French and very human, it’s a life-affirming film about how people survive and create. There are no subjects more important. The documentary is one of Varda’s essential works, as well as one of the most interesting and finest of all time.
It likes to think of itself as a progressive, meritocratic industry, but I don’t think any thoughtful person would dispute the fact that Hollywood remains a racist cultural institution. It continues to produce racist films, and it continues to shut out talented people of color. In fact, even those of us who have not bought the myth that Hollywood’s a liberal place full of cool, open-minded individuals have not fully recognized how deeply ingrained its racism really is. Here are just a few sobering reminders from history and the recent past.
It likes to think of itself as a progressive, meritocratic industry, but I don’t think any thoughtful person would dispute the fact that Hollywood remains a racist cultural institution. It continues to produce racist films, and it continues to shut out talented people of color. In fact, even those of us who have not bought the myth that Hollywood’s a liberal place full of cool, open-minded individuals have not fully recognized how deeply ingrained its racism really is. Here are just a few sobering reminders from history and the recent past.
Poster of Birth of a Nation
Promoting a White Supremacist Ideology
The two most repellent films I have ever seen are Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) and D.W. Griffith’s TheBirth of a Nation (1915). Both films have been long recognized by film critics and scholars as technically innovative and both prompt feelings of overpowering nausea. Triumph of the Will is a German propaganda film that (re)produces Nazi discourse. Experiencing the terrifying soullessness of Nazi ceremony on display is a simultaneously sickening and numbing experience. Praised by generations of film scholars as a masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation is the most rabidly racist movie ever made in the United States. Set in the Civil War and Reconstruction era, it is, in fact, a revisionist, white supremacist movie that portrays the Klan as the good guys. The story of the The Birth of a Nation’s reception is also astonishing. One of the first films to be screened at the White House, it reportedly received this response from President Woodrow Wilson: “It was like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is so terribly true.” The racism in The Birth of a Nation is of the vilest kind: Black men are portrayed as rapacious creatures fixated with white women while the Klan are celebrated as gallant saviors. Promoting a Fascist racist ideology, the film seeks to normalize ideas of white superiority. Its poisonous impact cannot be overstated. The Birth of a Nation was a huge commercial success and hugely influential. In fact, it was used as a recruiting tool by the Klan. Think about this: this was one of America’s first “great films.”
Tippi Hedren
Propagating Racist Norms and Ideals of Feminine Beauty and Sexuality
Alfred Hitchcock is one of the accomplished directors in cinema history but he has also played a dominant role in constructing and reinforcing Anglocentric norms and ideals of female beauty and sexuality. It is well known that Hitchcock preferred blonde actresses to play his leading ladies–they were part of his sadomasochistic aesthetic vision and the object, it is said, of a quite pathological obsession in his personal life–but I have yet to read any film scholar or critic underscore the director’s essential racism. In an interview with fellow director Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock explained, “You know why I favour sophisticated blondes in my films? We’re after the drawing room type, the real ladies who become whores once they’re in the bedroom.” There is, you can see, a strong linkage between Hitchcock’s racism, sexism, and classism. The director, moreover, espouses a very specific white self-love. Consider the following statement: “I think the most interesting women sexually are the Englishwomen. I feel that the Englishwoman, the Swedes, the northern Germans, and the Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the Latin, the Italian, and the French woman. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you, and to your surprise, she’ll probably pull a man’s pants open.” His take on Anglo-Saxon and Nordic women is an expression of his own fantasies but he also advocates here the chauvinistic, Anglo notion that non-WASP European women are sexually vulgar. Women of color are noticeably absent from his misogynistic erotic musings, as they were from his films. Hitchcock’s blonde, WASP female characters–slender blonde women, I should add–typified by Tippi Hedren in The Birds should not solely be seen as fetishistic products of his imagination. They are a product of a racist, sexist, and classist mindset. It could be argued that Hitchcock played a key role in Hollywood in propagating narrow, racist ideals of feminine beauty. The attitudes he propagated have had a toxic, long-lasting influence on the American cultural imagination.
John Wayne
Romanticizing Racist Stars
John Wayne was not only one of the most popular movie stars of his time; he also represented a romanticized kind of robust, individualistic American masculinity. Wayne, indeed, personified the country itself for both compatriots and viewers internationally. Behind the mythic America the star was intended to embody, are, however, the historical truths of genocide and slavery. The icon himself never recognized these truths. In a 1971 Playboy interview, John Wayne stated, “I don’t think we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. Our so-called stealing of this country from them (Native Americans) was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.” This mind-blowing comment is worth breaking down. Wayne employs a Darwinian justification for the atrocities of his ancestors, an ideology devoid of morality and humanity. It is also, quite simply, as perverse as siding with a rapist calling his rape victim the aggressor. In the interview, he also shifts attention away from contemporary American atrocities in Vietnam, namely the My Lai massacre. On the civil rights struggles of Black Americans, he ever so vaguely acknowledges the anger of his fellow citizens before making this statement: “I believe in white supremacy until blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.” Here we have a Hollywood icon clearly articulating white supremacist thinking as late as 1971.
Black Hawk Down
The Utter Indifference to the Deaths of Enemies and Civilians of Color in Hollywood War Movies
You can find numerous illustrations of American exceptionalism and selective empathy in Hollywood movies. The wildly popular, revisionist American Sniper (2014) is only the most recent dangerous example. From The Deer Hunter (1978) to The Hurt Locker (2008), there are many unsettling cases but there is one that I would like to presently highlight–the racism informing Black Hawk Down (2001). Directed by Ridley Scott, Black Hawk Down concerns the 1993 raid on Mogadishu. Like the vast majority of American war movies, Black Hawk Down never attempts to explore war from the perspective of the enemy soldier or civilian. It is solely dedicated to glorifying the sacrifice of American blood. The close of the film perfectly sums up white Hollywood’s absolute indifference to the deaths of enemies and civilians of color. We are told, “During the raid over 1,000 Somalis died and 19 American soldiers lost their lives.” Black African Somali Muslim deaths are solely an afterthought.
Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman
Erasing Interracial Relationships
Over the years, Hollywood has done an effective job in erasing interracial relationships from mainstream American culture. The lack of interracial relationships in Hollywood movies not only shows shameful cowardice on the part of the studios; it also reinforces racist norms and denies an increasing demographic reality. Every kind of relationship–sexual, romantic, and marital–has been deliberately obscured. With movies like 5 Flights Up (2015) and Focus (2015), there are indications that this may be changing but current depictions only serve to highlight the shortage. Certainly TV programs such as Grey’s Anatomy have depicted interracial relationships with greater regularity but Hollywood still has a long way to go. At the moment, they are not fully representing intimate human relationships in America.
Hollywood is, as you can see, an industry that has, from its very infancy, regurgitated racist cultural products, as it has shamelessly sought to provide narcissistic identification for white people. If there was ever an industry that needs to face its past and recognize its essentially backward, intolerant nature, it is America’s dream factory.
It does not rejoice in the freedom of the open road. There are no cool, seductive lovers or beautiful cars. Wanda is not a charismatic counter-culture heroine or anti-heroine. She’s not a heroic working-class figure either. Loden’s portrait, however, aims to shed light on the psychological condition of young, working-class women disconnected from societal demands and expectations.
Set in coal-mining Pennsylvania, Wanda (1970) is the story of a directionless working-class woman who leaves her husband and young children for a life on the road. Barbara Loden (1932-1980) not only plays the title role of Wanda, she also wrote and directed the film. Although it would, sadly, be the only feature she would make, it remains one of the most culturally significant portraits of American womanhood of its era, as well as one of the greatest independent films of all time.
We see Wanda at the beginning of the film sleeping on her married sister’s couch, but she soon embarks on a journey to nowhere. Unable to secure and maintain a job, her situation becomes increasingly precarious. She is ditched by a man at a rest stop outside of town following a one-night stand, and robbed of her money when she falls asleep alone in a movie theater. She meets a small-time, hopeless crook, Mr. Dennis (Michael Higgins) and develops a relationship of sorts with him. He’s an aggressive, charmless man but he offers a kind of security. Initially hesitant, she becomes Mr. Dennis’s accomplice in a bank robbery. It all ends disastrously, and at the close of the film we see her surrounded by strangers in a bar, as isolated and aimless as she was at the start of her journey.
Wanda
Some may find Wanda’s inertness and passivity baffling, even exasperating. We are not given much insight into her former life. We only have her husband’s testimony in court that she was a poor homemaker and neglectful mother. Was she bullied and belittled by her husband? Why does she not fight for custody of her kids? In the courtroom, she instructs the judge to give her husband the divorce he wants and states that the children “will be better off with him.” Although it is what society dictated for women, perhaps Wanda never even wanted a family.
Loden’s description of Wanda in a 1972 interview on the Mike Douglas Show is quite instructive:
“She’s really running away from everything…She doesn’t know what she wants but she knows what she doesn’t want, and she’s trying to get out of this very ugly type of existence but she doesn’t have the equipment that a person that has been exposed to more different kind of people that would help her… She can’t cope with life..”
It is, indeed, evident that no one was there for Wanda growing up–no loving, supportive parent/s, inspirational teacher or mentor. Loden, interestingly, got the inspiration for the film from a newspaper article telling the curious tale of a female accomplice to a bankrobber who thanked the judge for sentencing her to twenty years in jail but it is also semi-autobiographical. A native of North Carolina, Loden did not come from a privileged home. Brought up by strictly religious grandparents following her parents’ divorce, she endured a hard childhood. Loden equally understands Wanda’s psyche. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times (1971) she explained, “I used to be a lot like that… I had no identity of my own. I just became what I thought people wanted me to become.”
Numbing the pain
Crucially, the director seems to recognize that countless working-class American women of her background and generation were never taught to develop their very identity and assert themselves. Although Hollywood tries to propagate the myth, not everyone survives shitty childhoods through self-education and force of will. There are, also, indications that Wanda was abused and/or neglected as a child. To say she has poor sense of self-worth is an understatement. Unlike mainstream American movies, Wanda, moreover, recognizes that human beings of all backgrounds repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Loden does not judge her protagonist and nor should we. Judging Wanda does not help us understand her. In fact, it reflects a position of privilege.
Barbara Loden’s own journey was remarkable and successful though ultimately tragic. Unlike her heroine, she was graced with opportunity and talent, as well as encouraged to realize her creative ambitions. Loden was a dancer and model before becoming a screen and theatre actress. She was married to director Elia Kazan and starred in his films Wild River (1960) and Splendor in The Grass (1961). As said, Wanda was her first and last film. Other projects remained unrealized up until her death. No doubt misogyny played an ugly, starring part in keeping her out of the film business. She tragically died of breast cancer in 1980 at the age of 48.
With Mr. Dennis
Wanda was critically acclaimed when it was first released- it won the International Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1970- but in the years that followed, it fell into relative obscurity in the United States (Loden and Wanda have always been more appreciated in France).
Shot on a small budget, Wanda is a stark film devoid of sentiment. Nicolas Proferes was the cinematographer and editor, and in terms of its look and form, it’s a grainy, unpolished film that reeks of the real. It is, in fact, a road movie but without the usual romantic qualities of the genre. It does not rejoice in the freedom of the open road. There are no cool, seductive lovers or beautiful cars. Wanda is not a charismatic counter-culture heroine or anti-heroine. She’s not a heroic working-class figure either. Loden’s portrait, however, aims to shed light on the psychological condition of young, working-class women disconnected from societal demands and expectations. Some may find her portrait of female identity lack and alienation a tough viewing experience but it is a rewarding one. Loden’s low key performance, it should be noted, is, also, entirely persuasive.
A lost woman
Although the film is beginning to be rediscovered and revisited, Wanda needs to be even more appreciated. Loden’s story too should also be more widely known. As we are only now beginning to fully realize, the history of women in film has, criminally, been one of forgetting. We need to remember and honor Barbara Loden as a director of one of the most grittiest and unconventional American films of the 20th century.
We need more documentaries and movies about the lives of pilgrims and activists of non-violence. We also need to be reminded of their power and diversity.
Countless movies have been made about the military but very few about peace activists. Yes, there have been exceptions, such as Gandhi (1982) and Selma (2014), but the stories of soldiers- mostly white and male, of course- and their experiences of war have always been considered more worthy and thrilling than those of people struggling for peace. This has been a constant throughout the history of American cinema. From Wings (1927), the first movie to win a Best Picture Oscar, to American Sniper (2014), Hollywood filmmakers have demonstrated an abiding interest in telling and selling war tales. There is the dramatic, aesthetic argument, of course: cinematic story-tellers are naturally drawn to conflict and war is the ultimate expression of human conflict. War is, also, understood as an historical fact and war stories aim to address this unbroken feature of humanity. Obviously, human conflict should be explored by filmmakers but it must be understood that there is no such thing as an apolitical war story.
Although there have been American anti-war movies, most have been either confused in their messages, ideologically fraudulent, or downright militarist. It’s not just the obviously right-wing, propagandist products that promote a militarist culture and ethos. The lives of soldiers at war are generally understood as dramatically appealing and full of meaning, while military men are commonly portrayed as fascinating, charismatic figures. American mainstream cinema has not only provided a mirror to U.S. militarism; it has also reinforced it. Hollywood, it must be said, has never found peacemakers very interesting. Generally speaking, you have to go to independent and documentary films to learn about advocates of non-violence and pacificist philosophy.
Peace Pilgrim
The documentary Peace Pilgrim: An American Sage Who Walked Her Talk (2002) celebrates Mildred Norman (1908-1981), a remarkable woman who walked for peace for nearly 30 years. Calling herself Peace Pilgrim, New Jersey-born Norman travelled the United States from 1953 to 1981. Mahatma Gandhi said, “My Life is my message.” For Mildred Norman, her journey was her message. She was motivated by faith, namely a belief in “universal spirituality” and the “divine law of love.” In an old interview, Norman describes a spiritual awakening she had some years some years before her peace pilgrimage. Walking alone in the woods at night, she experienced, she says, a desire to surrender herself, and a calling “to give my life to something beyond myself.” Her life before had not been particularly unusual–she had been a fashionable young woman and had married. But she and her husband, Stanley Ryder, divorced after 13 years. Ryder says in an interview that she did not visit him when he was in the service and showed little interest in being a homemaker. Mildred Norman’s pacifist principles and independent spirit were already challenging convention. She was destined for another life.
It would be a while before she could realize her purpose, but in 1953, during the Korean War, Peace Pilgrim finally began her extraordinary journey. She took no money with her and carried only a comb, toothbrush, map, and pen. Peace Pilgrim says she experienced generosity and hospitality on her travels but on occasions when she did not get shelter and food from others, she fasted and slept outdoors. She spoke of both inner peace and peace for humankind. Her observations are often powerful. Consider the following statement: “What we basically suffer from in the world is immaturity. If we were a mature people, peace would be assured.” Many–on the left as well as the right–mock pacifists as strange, romantic creatures but whether you are a pacifist or not, there is no denying Peace Pilgrim’s strength of commitment to peace. Although she tragically died in a car crash in 1981, her message was kept alive by Friends of Peace Pilgrim who brought together her writings in Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words.
Young Mildred Norman
Mildred Norman’s pilgrimage can be read as both politically and culturally subversive. To forsake money and possessions, and advocate peace in a militarist, materialistic society is a profoundly non-conformist act. Further, her pilgrimage denotes a rejection of social norms of post-war American femininity. Although she did not have a child and husband, Norman’s pilgrimage still represents a refusal of the domestic space and personal relationships for the life of the road. There persists a belief that women are more conservative in their lifestyle than the average man but Mildred Norman’s story is a reminder of the long, rich tradition of female radicalism and non-conformism.
Peace Pilgrim features period news footage, stills of newspaper clippings and old photos, as well as deeply felt commentary by cultural and religious figures inspired by her example. Maya Angelou, the Dalai Lama and actor Dennis Weaver all underscore that Norman literally embodied her message of peace. But the film aims, above all, to give voice to the woman herself and honor her pacifist teaching. We see Peace Pilgrim walking through the countryside and towns of America, lecturing in schools as well as being interviewed by reporters around the country. Produced by the Friends of Peace Pilgrim, and scripted and edited by Sharon Janis of Night Lotus Productions, Peace Pilgrim is a modestly made but valuable film.
Being interviewed on the road
We need more documentaries and movies about the lives of pilgrims and activists of non-violence. We also need to be reminded of their power and diversity. Incidentally, isn’t it time someone somewhere made a big, bold documentary about Code Pink, the colorful, dynamic, in-your-face American peace activists of today? Watching them disrupt the meetings of war criminals like Henry Kissinger is surely the stuff of great drama.
Politically active, working-class American women are a clear threat to Yarborough’s natural order and must, therefore, be branded unfeminine and un-American. Women also play a celebrated cultural role in the community. They are a vital part of the musical and political history of the place.
“Truth is on the side of the oppressed.” –Malcolm X
Directed with great spirit and empathy by Barbara Kopple, the documentary, Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) is the story of an eventful strike in eastern Kentucky. The 13-month-long Brookside Strike (1973-4), as it was called, involved 180 miners from the Duke Power-owned Eastover Mining Company’s Brookside Mine in Harlan County. The film chronicles the miners’ fight to join the United Mine Workers of America, a move prohibited by the mining company when they refuse to sign the contract. Their hard struggle for representation, better wages and working conditions is lived and portrayed as a collective one. The men are joined on the picket lines by their wives who play a central role in the story. Their dramatic journey is understood and depicted as a deeply personal and political one.
In the first few minutes of Harlan County, U.S.A, the viewer is transported into the mines. We watch the men labor, and even have a bite to eat, in the grimy, confined spaces before emerging into the light once more. This is proper political film-making. Kopple takes us into the working men’s world. She sides with the miners and we are encouraged to do so too. She gives us a strong sense of how dangerous the job is. The men’s working conditions are appalling. The miners have had black lung for generations and suffer injuries for which they receive no compensation. The living conditions the workers endure are shameful too. Their houses don’t have indoor plumbing and running water. We see one miner’s wife wash her child in a tin bucket. Kopple’s documentation of these inexcusable living conditions may shock both American and non-American audiences watching today- as they, no doubt, must have done in 1976. U.S. popular culture- particularly Hollywood- does such a good job concealing American poverty that when audiences see it, it always comes as a jolt. This is, perhaps, even the case for people who have few illusions about the American Dream. There are, of course, reminders now and again. The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, for example, revealed to the world disturbing truths about US economic inequality.
Lois Scott
Numbers cited in Harlan County, U.S.A. tell an outrageous tale: coal company profits in 1975 rose 170 percent while workers’ wages rose only 4 percent. As U.M.W. organizer Houston Elmore explains, the miners are victims of a “feudal system.” The story of Harlan County, U.S.A. is one of struggle and resistance to power. The strike rejuvenates and organizes them. It is gruelling, perilous fight too. When they are not being arrested and jailed, they are being intimidated, assaulted and shot at by mining company thugs. Kopple is always with them recording their struggle. At one frightening night-time picket, her camera is attacked. The workers begin to arm themselves too. Tragedy finally strikes when a young miner is murdered. The company soon concedes and the strike ends. While the story of the strike may be a stirring one, and the workers secure their right to unionize, there is neither a neat nor fairytale ending. Some workers are happy with their pay but others express disappointment about their contract. Union compromises like the no-strike clause indicate that the struggle for miners’ rights will continue.
Into the Mines
The women of the community play an essential, dynamic role during the strike. As with the men, the struggle strengthens and politicizes them. They join the picket lines too, and block the roads with their bodies to prevent the scabs from getting through to the mines. The women are fully aware of what they are up against. One addresses a judge at court: “You say the laws were made for us. The laws are not made for the working people in this country…The law was made for people like Carl Horn.” Carl Horn was the president of Duke Power at the time. Although the women are not entirely immune from letting personal crap get in the way, they are focused and determined. They are, in fact, incredibly strong. An older lady encourages them to not back down as backing down would mean a return to the dark, hungry days of the 30s. “If I get shot, they can’t shoot the union out of me,” she says. The women are also intimated, assaulted and shot at. The film rightly focuses on the collective but the community does have its characters. The most charismatic woman among them is perhaps organizer Lois Scott. Both an inspiration and a badass, Lois seems frightened of very little in life.
The Women of Harlan County
What Norman Yarborough, President of the Eastover Mining Company, says about the miners’ wives at a press conference is extremely revealing. When asked about their role, Yarborough smiles in a patronizing, good-old-boy fashion before conceding that they have played “a big role.” He goes on to say that their activities disturb him: “I would hate to think that my wife had played this kind of role….there’s been some conduct that I don’t think that our American women have to revert to.” Politically active, working-class American women are a clear threat to Yarborough’s natural order and must, therefore, be branded unfeminine and un-American. Women also play a celebrated cultural role in the community. They are a vital part of the musical and political history of the place.
The numerous songs featured in the documentary illustrate the central role music plays in their lives of the mining community. They chronicle the history of Harlan as they rouse and unify its people. The most memorable is “Which Side Are You On?.” Widely recognised as one of the great protest songs of the 20th century, this anthem to worker’s rights was penned by activist, folk song writer, and poet, Florence Reece. A daughter and wife of miners, Reese penned “Which Side Are You On?” during the Harlan strike of 1931. The great woman herself is featured in Harlan County, U.S.A. singing her iconic song at a strike rally.
A Company Thug
The documentary focuses on the 1973 strike in Bloody Harlan but it also manifests an understanding of labor history. The miners, like any other exploited group, remember what was done to them decades before. Kopple connects the past to the present through powerful interviews with older residents, film footage and stills. Remembering is essential work, especially in a country where the silencing of historic abuses has always been routine. As writer Milan Kundera once said, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Harlan County, U.S.A. is an extremely detailed, multi-layered film. The documentation of other labor-related events and struggles deepen our understanding of the time. Kopple documents leadership challenges and reforms in the union in the early seventies, the extraordinary story of the Mafia-style hit of United Mine Workers President Joseph Yablonski and his wife and daughter by President W.A. Boyle in 1969, as well as the 1968 Farmington, West Virginia mine explosion, a tragedy which killed 78 men.
Harlan County U.S.A.
Kopple gives an in-depth portrait of the men and women of the mining community of Harlan County as well as a gripping account of the strike that transforms them. She never patronizes the people of Harlan and she can never be accused of exploitative class voyeurism. From the very start, she plunges the viewer into the life of the community, and we are with them every step of the way.
Florence Reece
Harlan County, U.S.A. is a stirring tribute to working-class kinship and activism. Although it is a story specifically rooted in the history of Harlan, as well as a very American story, the struggle for economic justice it documents is one that transcends regional and national borders. Koppel’s gutsy film-making was rewarded. Harlan County, U.S.A. won Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards that year. It is, without a doubt, one of the greatest documentaries ever made, and it should be shown in every school in the United States.
But ‘All That Heaven Allows’ is not just a good-looking, affecting melodrama. It can be enjoyed on many different levels. In both indirect and observable ways, Sirk’s weepie targets oppressive aspects of post-war America. For some time now, both film critics and scholars have, understandably, foregrounded the socio-political uses of Sirk’s powerful, immoderate film-making style, as well as the subversive elements in his melodramas. They, in fact, invite socially and gender-aware readings.
Directed by Douglas Sirk, All That Heaven Allows (1955) tells the romantic tale of Carrie Scott (Jane Wyman), an attractive, wealthy middle-aged widow who falls in love with a young landscape gardener. The object of her affection, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), is a handsome, brawny man in his late 20s or early 30s. He is the very opposite of Harvey (Conrad Nagel), a dull, older suitor Carrie politely tolerates. Carrie, in fact, spends a lot of her time alone although she has two grown children, Ned and Kay. Kay (Gloria Talbott) is a geeky, pretty social work student who loves to share her interest in psychoanalysis with others, even with her dim, sporty boyfriend. As with most ’50s American films, her intelligence is indicated by spectacles. Her brother, immaculately attired, handsome Ned (William Reynolds), loves to make martinis and control people. The other important person in Carrie’s life is her best friend Sara (Agnes Moorehead). She is a bit of a snob but comparatively nicer than the rest of the country club types who populate Carrie’s social life.
Ron Kirby comes from a very different world. He leads a natural, comparatively free, non-consumerist life in the woods. His friends are bohemian types and they too have renounced the reigning materialistic ethos of their place and time. When Carrie is introduced to them, she revels in their warm, unaffected ways. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t turn out too well when Carrie presents Ron to her friends, after announcing their plans to marry. When they’re not disparaging his tan or calling him “Nature Boy” behind his back, they’re mocking his socioeconomic status, and lack of materialistic ambition. It is the children, however, who will force Carrie to give up Ron, for the sake of family, propriety and property. She sacrifices her love for him for her children and convention but soon comes to regret it. Kay becomes engaged and Ned, hoping to study in Paris and work overseas, thinks it would be better to sell the house as it would be too big for his mother. As Carrie acknowledges, “The whole thing’s been so pointless.” A near-tragedy, however, thankfully brings the lovers back together in the end.
The country club world
All That Heaven Allows is a deeply involving, and satisfying love story. Love stories are always, of course, more powerful when the lovers are faced with barriers to love, and when the romantic and erotic ache is painfully but pleasurably acute. Sirk provides a potent emotional and sensorial experience with All That Heaven Allows. Filmed in Technicolor, the hues of both the natural and human-made objects on the screen have a gorgeous, Expressionist intensity. Some of the film’s images are both over-the-top and wondrous. There is even a Disneysque deer that Ron feeds in winter. True to melodramatic form, he falls off a cliff, and suffers a concussion just when you think the lovers are on the verge of a reunion. All That Heaven Allows has, also, more subtle moments and images, in terms of narrative and style. Sirk’s mastery of shot composition is, equally, always evident.
But All That Heaven Allows is not just a good-looking, affecting melodrama. It can be enjoyed on many different levels. In both indirect and observable ways, Sirk’s weepie targets oppressive aspects of post-war America. For some time now, both film critics and scholars have, understandably, foregrounded the socio-political uses of Sirk’s powerful, immoderate film-making style, as well as the subversive elements in his melodramas. They, in fact, invite socially and gender-aware readings. Filmmakers too, like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Haynes have also found Sirk’s work stimulating and inspiring. Far From Heaven (2002) and Ali:Fear Eats The Soul (1974) both draw from All That Heaven Allows.
With Harvey and the children
All That Heaven Allows can be interpreted, and enjoyed, as an empathetic critique of female alienation in post-war America. Carrie is presented as the ideal, upper middle-class WASP woman of the ’50s–elegant, gracious, attractive, but not too sexual, as well as, of course, loving and maternal. But there is something missing. Carrie feels empty and trapped. Lifeless even. The metaphor that describes her state is first used by her daughter earlier on in the movie when she marvels at the stylish, comparatively sexy red dress her mother puts on for a date with Harvey. Her mother should enjoy herself, she asserts, before elaborating: “Personally I’ve never subscribed to that old Egyptian custom of walling up the widow alive in the funeral chamber of her dead husband along with his other possessions.” Kay will, of course, contribute to her mother’s metaphorical walling-up later on. It’s an Orientalist image, of course, but it’s used here to criticize post-war American patriarchy, particularly its puritan need to control female sexuality. When Kay adds that the custom does not exist anymore, her mother quietly replies, “Well perhaps not in Egypt.”
People–both men and women–make deeply personal, gendered assumptions about Carrie. In fact, they’re constantly telling her what she feels and what she wants. Men try to control her sexuality. Even harmless, old Harvey feels he has the right to tell her that she doesn’t really want romance at this stage. “I’m sure you feel as I do that companionship and affection are the important things,” he says. Her own son tries to regulate her sexuality. When Ned first sees that red dress, he tellingly remarks that it’s “cut kind of low.” More on him later. As the sexual target of a sleazy, married man, Carrie is also the object of more demonstratively misogynist control.
Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson)
All That Heaven Allows takes aim at the nuclear family too. The grown-up kids are appalling. Her daughter thinks she’s hip but she’s as cowardly and conventional as the rest of Carrie’s loved ones. Ned’s a controlling, priggish prick. Kay does apologize for her behavior in the end but even so. In fact, the more you reflect on their efforts to shape their mother’s fate, the more sinister they seem. Her love for Ron represents a new start, a new life, new experiences, but they want her to give up her happiness and surrender her very self. The nuclear family–trumpeted in the ’50s (and even today)–as the be-all-and-end-all of human social units–is shown to be a sick little institution. Her son wants to the kill the love and desire his mother has for this tall, handsome, younger man. Kay playfully alludes to her brother’s Oedipal complex but he’s the real deal. Ned is outraged that his mother’s mate, and potential step-father, is “a good-looking set of muscles.” Ned buys a big-screen TV for Carrie. The television means safe, comfy company, of course. The message is clear: Get your slippers on, Mom, and watch The Ed Sullivan Show. No more pleasure, no more drama, no more love for you. Sit back and sacrifice your life. Watch other people living theirs. He may be young but he’s a true blue patriarchal asshole in the making. He’s also a zealot of the dominant consumerist, classist order.
All That Heaven Allows does address and critique American materialism and classism in a considerably direct fashion. The United States was fast becoming an unapologetically consumerist society in the ’50s. It is what drives nearly everyone around Carrie–apart from Ron and his happy lot. His lack of interest in money is the subject of conversation of the country club set. In his world, Carrie learns about another way of living. The materialist, consumerist life is clearly understood here as a conformist trap. Their spiritual guide is Thoreau. Carrie’s situation is particularly interesting, of course. She is the embodiment of privilege and the ideal consumer, but something is not right. Her alienation is spiritual as well as gender-specific. She is attracted to a different way of being. She does not just fall in love with Ron; she falls in love with his world too.
A new way of living
It’s a pleasurable sport analysing the socially subversive elements in All That Heaven Allows. What’s equally interesting, and gratifying, is spotting, and reflecting on, the historical setting, what is obscured and what is unsaid. The first time I watched it, my thoughts drifted, now and again, to what was going on in America and the world in the mid-fifties. The decade is generally described as a period of confidence and prosperity for America. For White America that is. For Black Americans, it was another story, of course. All That Heaven Allows was released in 1955. It was the year that 14-year-old Emmett Hill was murdered and mutilated in Mississippi and the year that Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks protested bus segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama. Carrie’s peers do not speak of race. They are not only complacent, narrow-minded products of their age and class; they are also profoundly insular and provincial. There is no talk of Russia and the Cold War either. They are blind to their own nation’s troubles and seem ignorant of the U.S. government’s neo-imperialist involvements in other lands. It is an interesting, yet unsurprising, thing that Ned plans to take up a post in Iran following his Paris scholarship. The American government had already, in fact, paved the way for him. In 1953, the CIA, and the British, got the democratically-elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, ousted in an engineered coup. (He had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian oil company). The CIA finally admitted to its involvement in 2013. You just know Ned’s real-life version would go on to do very well for himself in the latter part of the 20th century. The unthinking, self-interested corporate type Ned represents is the future.
Lovers torn
There is so much else to contemplate and admire in All That Heaven Allows. Jane Wyman gives an exquisite performance as Carrie. It’s a deeply sensitive, insightful portrayal, and we empathise entirely with our heroine’s situation. Wyman conveys her joys and fears beautifully, both the stabs of jealousy Carrie suffers when she fears Ron desires another woman, as well as the feelings of excitement she has when experiencing another way of life for the first time. Rock Hudson is less interesting but charming, and handsome all the same. Most crucially, he represents the promise of something new. The lovers are both good and gracious people, and the actors effectively capture their nobility and kindness as well as the gentle, tender nature of their love. Wyman and Hudson have considerable chemistry. Incidentally, All That Heaven Allows wasn’t the first time the actors had worked together in a Sirk movie. They had been successfully paired the previous year in Magnificent Obsession (1954).
A new home
All That Heaven Allows is also ravishing to look at. Visually, it is both intense and inventive. There are some pretty arresting images. Perhaps the most striking, and disturbing is that television Carrie’s kids buys for her. It may be the ultimate symbol of American consumerism and modernity in the mid-fifties but it quite horrifically embodies materialism, conformity, and alienation in All That Heaven Allows. It’s no exaggeration to say that for Carrie it represents a death-in-life existence. It is no less a symbol of oppression and mortality than the Egyptian widow’s tomb Kay talks about earlier in the movie. Although she has to surmount obstacles of convention and chance, Carrie will, thankfully, in the end, resist its darkness. For In All That Heaven Allows, female romantic love is a form of light, liberation, and resistance.
The film’s primary aim is to raise awareness. “Of all developed nations today, the United States has the most unequal distribution of income and wealth–by far–and we’re surging towards an even greater inequality,” warns Reich. The figures are astonishing: 400 Americans are richer than half the population of the United States. Reich is not a socialist. He does not want to jettison American capitalism but reform it.
Inequality for All (2013) is not only one of the most important American documentaries made in the last few years; it is also–surprisingly, in light of its bleak subject matter–one of the most enjoyable. This is due, in great part, to its likeable presenter, political economist and academic Robert Reich. Inequality for All addresses the most burning issue facing the United States in the second decade of the 21st century–wealth disparity and the wage gap. It is a subject that has absorbed Reich for many years. Currently professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, Reich served as Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton in the early nineties. Inequality for All is based upon Reich’s book Aftershock (2010) and structured around a wealth and poverty class he teaches at his university. The documentary features archival footage and moving commentary by middle-class Americans affected by the 2008 economic crisis as well as revealing interviews with members of the 1 percent. Directed by Jacob Kornbluth, it looks good, moves fast, and delivers its message plainly.
The film’s primary aim is to raise awareness. “Of all developed nations today, the United States has the most unequal distribution of income and wealth–by far–and we’re surging towards an even greater inequality,” warns Reich. The figures are astonishing: 400 Americans are richer than half the population of the United States. Reich is not a socialist. He does not want to jettison American capitalism but reform it. Although it is clear that he is morally driven, Reich underscores that the unfair state of things does not make economic sense: “What makes an economy stable is a strong middle class…The most important thing to understand is that consumer spending is 70 percent of the United States economy and the middle class is the heart of that consumer spending.” He also reminds us that extreme economic inequality endangers democracy.
Robert Reich lecturing
Expertly steering the viewer through modern US economic history, Reich chronicles the decline of its middle class. In fact, he argues for a return to the post-war past. The average American middle-class worker in the prosperous decades following World War II enjoyed good wages, and income disparity was not extreme. The income and wealth gap between those at the top and the average middle-class worker began to widen, however, with deregulation and union-breaking Reagan. Technology and globalization were other contributing factors. The American middle class, Reich explains, coped with their decline in three ways: Women began working in the late seventies in great numbers, workers worked longer hours and borrowing increased. Reich describes the entrance of young mothers into work a “social revolution” but asserts that the majority went to work out of sheer financial necessity, to bolster their household income, not because they were granted new professional opportunities. The coping mechanisms employed by the middle class masked an insecure economic system. An image of a suspension bridge and graph is used to illustrate two major peaks in wealth disparity–pre-crash 1928 and 2007. Crucially, the much-trumpeted trickle-down effect is exposed as a myth and the taxation system revealed as insanely unfair.
Robert Reich
Through interviews with ordinary men and women affected by the 2008 financial crisis, we see the human face of this modern tragedy. They include Erika Vaclav, a married woman with two children forced to live with friends of her husband after they lost their condo and he was laid off. A Costco employee, she earns $21.50 an hour and has $25 in the bank. Another woman interviewed, a litigation assistant who cannot save–although she and her partner work- speaks of single mothers she knows who work three jobs just to pay the rent. Incidentally, it would have been helpful if Reich had also addressed the criminal gender wage gap in the United States.
An interviewee at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum is venture capitalist Nick Hanauer. Hanauer is a refreshingly honest member of the 1 percent. He confesses that he makes a stupid amount of money and observes that fewer members of the majority middle class are buying his product. As Reich notes, this is a serious problem as a healthy economy relies on middle class spending power. Hanauer further makes the extraordinarily truthful statement that the wealthy are not, fundamentally, the job creators: “When somebody calls themselves a job creator, they’re not describing the economy…What they’re really doing is making a claim on status, privileges and power.” For both Hanauer and Reich, it is the middle class who are “the center of the economic universe.” A well-educated, unionized, well-paid labor force, Reich suggests, is the key to a just, prosperous society.
The peaks of disparity
There is not a dull moment in Inequality for All. The illustrative infographics employed are understandable and attractive while Reich, like all great teachers, communicates his ideas in a clear, dynamic fashion. He comes across as a charming man. From the start, he refers to his diminutive size (Reich has a condition called Fairbanks disease). Of the Mini Cooper he drives, he notes, “we are in proportion…together…facing the rest of the world”. Reich makes for a witty, erudite presenter but personally I would have liked more anger- and a call for accountability. The empathy is abundantly evident though. Reich explains that a Freedom Rider friend from childhood inspired him to stand up for those less privileged. The documentary ends with the professor celebrating his last class with his understandably admiring students. Some may find it a little too upbeat and cheesy when we see Reich do a little dance to Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5. He’s an encouraging rather than narcissistic teacher, however, and the end does fit with his populist message. It’s an invitation to dance and get involved.
Inequality For All is an absorbing, entertaining documentary as well as a valuable educational tool. Remember this insane truth: 400 Americans are wealthier than half the population of the United States.
The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.
Poster for To Die For
Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.
Spoilers galore.
You’ve got to give it to Nicole Kidman. For an archetype of Hollywood movie stardom, she has–for many years now–been quite unafraid of taking on edgy, unsympathetic roles. Her impressive turn in Gus Van Sant’s mockumentary black comedy, To Die For (1995), could, arguably, be considered Kidman’s first truly risky part. In it, she plays a murderously self-interested, fame-obsessed small-town TV personality with the perfectly fitting name of Suzanne Stone. “You’re not anybody in America unless you’re on TV,” Suzanne sermonizes at the start. “On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what’s the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody’s watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person.” The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.
Surfaces seduce and deceive in Van Sant’s satire on American ambition. Suzanne is a vision of beauty and purity for her future husband, Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon), when he first encounters her, and the crimes she commits take place in an ordinary, pretty town in New Hampshire called Little Hope. It’s love at first sight when the laddish, none-too-bright Larry catches her eye while playing with his band at his father’s restaurant. Janice, Larry’s savvy, ice-skating sister (Illeana Douglas), immediately sees through Suzanne but he ignores the ice-maiden cracks and commits to the “the golden girl of my dreams.” The young man surprises everyone by ditching his drums and rock star ambitions for marriage and home-buying. Janice acerbically observes, “he went from Van Halen to Jimmy Vale overnight.” Larry is not only taken by Suzanne’s beauty; he’s also in awe of her go-getting personality. “She’s going places. She’s got goals,” he tells his father, Joe (Dan Hedaya). Larry, by the by, comes from a fiercely loving, old-fashioned Italian-American family; Suzanne’s parents are portraits of smug, airy WASPness.
At her mercy (Suzanne and Larry)
Suzanne soon gets a job at the local cable TV station as a weather presenter. Her co-workers baptise her “Gangbusters” and she becomes a workaholic member of their tiny outfit. Fancying herself as a future Barbara Walters, she understands that she must start somewhere. Tensions, however, surface on the first anniversary of her marriage. Larry wants a child and more time together but this doesn’t figure in his wife’s plans. She explains to her puzzled mother-in-law, Angela (Maria Tucci), that a baby would prevent her from covering a revolution–or royal wedding. Feeling trapped by his expectations of her, Suzanne determines to bump Larry off. But she does not do the dirty deed herself. She befriends a trio of daft teenagers, subjects of a documentary she’s working on, to set it up and do her bidding. The ultimate plan, of course, is to pin the murder on them. They comprise vulgar Russell (Casey Affleck), impressionable, insecure Lydia (Alison Folland) and sensitive Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), who seems permanently stoned. Both Lydia and Jimmy adore Suzanne. She sexually targets Jimmy, all the while him telling tales of marital abuse, and promises Lydia that she will employ her as her secretary when she becomes famous. The besotted Jimmy soon becomes the designated shooter.
But things don’t go to plan for Suzanne when the three luckless teenagers are arrested. Lydia chooses to cooperate with the police, and wears a tape to record a confession by Suzanne but she is acquitted as the authorities took the entrapment route. When Suzanne publicly suggests Larry’s murder was drug-related–her husband, she says, was a coke addict–his family finally crack, and take matters into their own hands. Suzanne just can’t help herself when she is lured to a remote location by the promise of telling and selling her story. Lydia does not see jail and becomes a kind of celebrity but the boys get life.
Joaquin Phoenix as Jimmy
There are other targets of Van Sant’s satire in To Die For. Suzanne’s family are characterized as unthinking, self-regarding snobs. Her father Earl (Kurtword Smith) thinks his daughter, a junior college graduate with a degree in electronic journalism, is too good for high school Larry. There is even an unsympathetic side to the loving Italian-American in-laws. Apart from arranging a hit on her at the end (!), it’s clear that they want Suzanne to conform to their traditional ideals of womanhood. Even Larry’s cool sister encourages him to “knock her up.” We only really empathize with the teenagers, particularly Jimmy and Lydia. They backgrounds are troubled, and both come from unprivileged homes, but Suzanne mercilessly exploits them. In fact, she not only violates Jimmy’s youth; she also destroys his future. It’s disquieting subject matter. Scripted by Buck Henry, To Die For is actually based on Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book of the same name, a novel inspired by the similar, real-life 1990 Pamela Smart case. Telling the dark, outlandish tabloid tale in blackly amusing faux-documentary style, however, Van Sant maintains a markedly satirical tone. The uniformly pitch-perfect performances serve his vision. Phoenix, incidentally, is superb as the tragic-comic teenager.
Suzanne Stone is a mediagenic monster in pastels. She’s both a perverse creature and a nightmarishly pure ideological product. Entirely indoctrinated by televisual ideals, she’s a kind of Frankenstein of fame. In a more general sense, she is also a wickedly amusing portrait of American ambition, a workaholic who will do anything to get ahead. Suzanne Stone is, what’s more, a thoroughly unoriginal person. Her ideas are pilfered from others as well as, of course, television. To Die For not only sends up the hollowness of fame; it also attacks the manufactured personality. Suzanne believes that the human mind can be fashioned and cultivated by self-motivation books, and, again, television.
Suzanne and Janice
There is also that charming personality. The world revolves around Suzanne and she’s entirely indifferent to the feelings of others. A psychopath really. This is amusingly demonstrated at her husband’s funeral when she stands by his grave and slams on “All By Myself” on a tape-recorder. There’s a socio-economic aspect to all of this too. Suzanne Stone is entitled and knows it. She’s, indeed, an extreme product of white, bourgeois privilege. She warns Lydia when threatened with exposure, “I’m a professional person, for Christ’s sake. I come from a good home. Who do you think a jury would believe?”
An obsession with looks is also integral to her ideological make-up. Some of her comments are quite memorable–such as her suggestion that Gorbachev’s political career would have been more successful if he had had his birthmark removed. To Die For targets television and tabloid culture’s role in stimulating and nourishing human narcissism. The movie takes place, of course, in the pre-internet era–TV’s one of many communication platforms now–but the fundamental message about human vanity endures. As everyone reading this knows, social media has proved to be an extremely indulgent parent of self-love.
The weather presenter
To Die For does not solely savage celebrity culture; it also takes aim at culturally constructed American femininity. Suzanne Stone has been entirely radicalised by televisual ideals of cosmetic beauty. Although naturally beautiful, she is paranoid about her own appearance and shamelessly advises the attractive Janice to get plastic surgery. Physical descriptions of Suzanne point to a distinct lack of humanity. Janice calls her an unfeeling doll, Lydia considers her a “goddess” while Jimmy is in awe of how clean she is. Suzanne Stone is not a sensual woman. Her very sexuality, it is suggested, is inauthentic. Sex seems to be primarily an exhibitionist or strategic move bound up with the manipulation of others.
Ultimately, Suzanne Stone is not only a uniquely unlikeable protagonist. Representative of much that is wrong with her place and time- the self-interest, addiction to fame, lookism and classism–she is a skillfully drawn object of satire. Kidman cleverly captures her insane single-mindedness and narcissism. With her purple eyeshadow, short skirts, and little dog Walter–named, of course, after Walter Cronkite–her Suzanne Stone deserves a place in cinematic history’s gallery of dazzling grotesques.
