Moore, Remy, & Fortune

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Carrol wrote:
>But, at least at the present time, progressive politics
>has no particular use to make of this particular kind of decision, any
>more than we have any particular use to make of a general
>"anti-corporation" or "anti-boss" sentiments. If such sentiments (at the
>level of an "audience" responding to a particular speech, movie, song,
>etc.) were of any use the revolution would have happened a century or so
>ago.
>
>But for any significant political activity at the present time (and
>increasingly, even for the achievement of relatively trivial but needed
>reforms) what we need is not such "changes of opinion" but protracted
>commitment to struggle, and to struggle often of the most concretely
>unrewarding activities: knocking on doors, running off leaflets,
>attendance at one boring *but unavoidable and essential* meeting after
>another, over months and years.
<snip>
>Now a film, unlike a book or newspaper, reaches a number of persons at
>once, and also, unlike a speech, is in principle indefinitely reusable, a
>spear rather than a cartridge. Others can throw it. So, hypothetically, if
>Moore's films are as impressive as they are said to be, and if they are
>not longer than 20 to 30 minutes, they could be of considerable political
>use (whatever the strengths or weaknesses of Moore's own politics). It
>would require only that videotapes of them be made available to all
>politically active leftists at cost or for free. Then one could invite
>just a few people at a time to one's home for a showing. One might be able
>to persuade some of them to get their own free copy and invite a few
>people *they* knew over to their home. One could prepare brief
>introductions and brief follow-ups for each showing, with perhaps a one
>page memo of the content of the evening. And so on. That is serious
>politics. Impressing an audience in a movie theatre for an hour or two is
>quite fine, as are city parks and homemixed egg milkshakes with Breyer's
>ice cream, but it is not politics, whether the film be comic or an account
>of a miner's strike. (The latter is "political" only in its continuing
>impact on the "converted" for several generations now. Will *The Big One*
>be a continuing energizer and source of inspiration for the converted ( as
>is and as will continue to be *The Salt of the Earth*)  when, in just a
>few years now, no one gives a damn about the particular villains it
>portrays?)

I have been interested in the distinction you make here--films as objects
of consumption and films (especially on video) as springboards for
political discussion and participation.

For the latter purposes, I think it is not even necessary for a film to
embody any kind of left perspectives or politics at all. It might be the
case that the films that clearly and unmistakably express the ruling class
worldviews--with their cynicism, arrogance, etc.--work better, if the
objective is to make people commit to or renew commitment to 'protracted
struggles' you speak of.

Yoshie