>>Carl, is it actuallly your view that intelligent people cannot disagree
>>about fundamentals? That smart people cannot be right wing?
>
>Bingo, that is exactly my view. I think right-wing philosophies are
>inherently not only cruel but stupid -- ideas that will keep all
>humankind mired in needless misery so long as they are taken
>seriously.
***** 111 PREFECT'S OFFICE. PRESS HALL. INSIDE. DAY. FEBRUARY 25.
Ben M'Hidi is standing in front of the journalists with handcuffs on his wrists and ankles. He is without a tie. He is smiling a little, his glance ironical. There are two paras behind him with machine guns ready. The picture is still for an instant; Ben M'Hidi's smile is steady, so too his eyes, his entire face. Flashes, clicking of cameras.
1ST JOURNALIST Mr. Ben M'Hidi ... Don't you think it is a bit cowardly to use your women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?
Ben M'Hidi shrugs his shoulders in his usual manner and smiles a little.
BEN M'HIDI And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on unarmed villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.
2ND JOURNALIST Mr. Ben M'Hidi ... in your opinion, has the NLF any chance to beat the French army?
BEN M'HIDI In my opinion, the NLF has more chances of beating the French army than the French have to stop history.
The press hall in the prefect's office is crowded with journalists of every nationality. At the side and central aisles there are photographers and cameramen.
Ben M'Hidi is opposite them, standing on a low wooden platform. Mathieu is next to him, seated behind a small desk. Mathieu now gets up, and signals to two paratroopers. Another journalist simultaneously has asked another question:
3RD JOURNALIST Mr. Ben M'Hidi, Colonel Mathieu has said that you have been arrested by accident, practically by mistake. In fact, it seems that the paratroopers were looking for someone much less important than yourself. Can you tell us why you were in that apartment at rue Debussy last night?
The two paras have moved forward and they take Ben M'Hidi by the arms. At the same time, he answers.
BEN M'HIDI I can only tell you that it would have been better if I had never been there ...
MATHIEU (intervening) That's enough, gentlemen. It's late, and we all have a lot of work ...
Ben M'Hidi glances at him ironically.
BEN M'HIDI Is the show already over?
MATHIEU (smiling) Yes, it's over ... before it becomes self-defeating.
The paras lead Ben M'Hidi away. He moves away with short steps, as much as he can with the irons that are tightened around his ankles. Mathieu has turned to the journalists and smiles again.
112 PREFECT'S OFFICE. PRESS HALL. INSIDE. DAY. MARCH 4.
Colonel Mathieu is standing. On his face is a brief smile, motionless, his eyes attentive, but half-closed somewhat, due to the camera flashes.
1ST JOURNALIST Colonel Mathieu ... the spokesman for the residing minister, Mr. Gorlin, has stated that "Larbi Ben M'Hidi committed suicide in his own cell, hanging himself with pieces of his shirt, that he had used to make a rope, and then attached to the bars of his cell window." In a preceding statement, the same spokesman had specified that: "... due to the intention already expressed by the prisoner Ben M'Hidi to escape at the first opportunity, it has been necessary to keep his hands and feet bound continually." In your opinion, colonel, in such conditions, is a man capable of tearing his shirt, making a rope from it, and attaching it to a bar of the window to hang himself?
MATHIEU You should address that question to the minister's spokesman. I'm not the one who made those statements ... On my part, I will say that I had the opportunity to admire the moral strength, intelligence, and unwavering idealism demonstrated by Ben M'Hidi. For these reasons, although remembering the danger he represented, I do not hesitate to pay homage to his memory.
2ND JOURNALIST Colonel Mathieu ... Much has been said lately not only of the successes obtained by the paratroopers, but also of the methods that they have employed ... Can you tell us something about this?
MATHIEU The successes obtained are the results of those methods. One presupposes the other and vice versa.
3RD JOURNALIST Excuse me, colonel. I have the impression that perhaps due to excessive prudence ... my colleagues continue to ask the same allusive questions, to which you can only respond in an allusive manner. I think it would be better to call things by their right names; if one means torture, then one should call it torture.
MATHIEU I understand. What's your question?
3RD JOURNALIST The questions have already been asked. I would only like some precise answers, that's all ...
MATHIEU Let's try to be precise then. The word "torture" does not appear in our orders. We have always spoken of interrogation as the only valid method in a police operation directed against unknown enemies. As for the NLF, they request that their members, in the event of capture, should maintain silence for twenty-four hours, and then, they may talk. Thus, the organization has already had the time necessary to render useless any information furnished ... What type of interrogation should we choose? ... the one the courts use for a crime of homicide which drags on for months?
3RD JOURNALIST The law is often inconvenient, colonel ...
MATHIEU And those who explode bombs in public places, do they perhaps respect the law? When you asked that question to Ben M'Hidi, remember what he said? No, gentlemen, believe me, it is a vicious circle. And we could discuss the problem for hours without reaching any conclusions. Because the problem does not lie here. The problem is: the NLF wants us to leave Algeria and we want to remain. Now, it seems to me that, despite varying shades of opinion, you all agree that we must remain. When the rebellion first began, there were not even shades of opinion. All the newspapers, even the left-wing ones wanted the rebellion suppressed. And we were sent here for this very reason. And we are neither madmen nor sadists, gentlemen. Those who call us fascists today, forget the contribution that many of us made to the Resistance. Those who call us Nazis, do not know that among us there are survivors of Dachau and Buchenwald. We are soldiers and our only duty is to win. Therefore, to be precise, I would now like to ask you a question: Should France remain in Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary consequences.
<http://blake.prohosting.com/awsm/script/boa.html> *****
A while ago, we discussed Brecht, _Mother Courage_, die Verfremdungseffekt, etc. Die Verfremdungseffekt is commonly translated as "the alienation effect," but a better translation would be estrangement, as Jameson says. The device of estrangement, however, is not to make the audience's identification with characters impossible but to make strange what is so familiar as to seem "natural" -- by bringing out what is, in a perfectly everyday event, "remarkable, particular and demanding inquiry" ("Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting," _Brecht on Theatre_, p. 97). Commodity fetishism makes what is historical -- i.e., unique to the capitalist mode of production -- appear "natural" and "eternal"; the objective of the epic theatre is to historicize the capitalist present:
***** In the New York Yiddish Theatre, a highly progressive theatre, I saw a play by S. Ornitz showing the rise of an East Side boy to be a big crooked attorney. The theatre could not perform the play. And yet there were scenes like this in it: the young attorney sits in the street outside his house giving cheap legal advice. A young woman arrives and complains that her leg has been hurt in a traffic accident. But the case has been bungled and her compensation has not yet been paid. In desperation she points to her leg and says: 'It's started to heal up.' Working without the A-effect, the theatre was unable to make use of this exceptional scene to show the horror of a bloody epoch. Few people in the audience noticed it; hardly anyone who reads this will remember that cry. The actress spoke the cry as if it were something perfectly natural. But it is exactly this -- the fact that this poor creature finds such a complaint natural -- that she should have reported to the public like a horrified messenger returning from the lowest of all hells. To that end she would of course have needed a special technique which would have allowed her to underline the historical aspect of a specific social condition.
("Alienation Effects," p. 98) *****
As Brecht himself wrote in his notes, however, his formal innovations (borrowed from silent cinema, traditional Chinese acting, etc.) did not necessarily have the effect he desired upon the audience: "Acceptance or rejection of their [characters'] actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience's subconscious" ("Alienation Effects," p. 91). For instance, many theatergoers merely pitied Mother Courage's predicament or admired her indomitable will to survival, accepting the problem _Mother Courage_ presents as if it were an unchangeable human condition to which all humans must forever submit.
In contrast, _The Battle of Algiers_ and _Burn!_ by Pontecorvo, in my opinion, achieve what the epic theatre was designed to achieve -- to historicize the present, to make the audience consciously weigh what they are prepared to accept or reject, to lead them to analyze social conditions that impose such "hard choices" rather than naturalizing and eternalizing them, etc. -- with few formal innovations.
_The Battle_ and _Burn!_ do not present their main characters as "heroes" and "villains," not even as "protagonists" and "antagonists." Both present the main characters as dialectical opposites -- both intelligent, principled, and clear-sighted -- whose ruthless employment of all means available to them (including terrors) is not only not hidden from the audience but in fact highlighted. In a sense, only "antagonists" exist in the films.
The intelligence of Pontecorvo's characters -- in _Burn!_ the intelligence of even minor characters with few or even _no_ lines to speak is fully given its due -- prevents the audience from feeling superior to them (as they probably do to Mother Courage). Pontecorvo's audience do not know more than his main characters, nor are they morally better. Moreover, the characters who stand on the side of social forces to whom Pontecorvo is politically opposed -- Colonel Mathieu in _The Battle_, Sir William Walker in _Burn!_ -- are given more and better lines than anti-colonial rebels with whom he stands in solidarity, as well as played by gifted professional actors (in contrast to the non-professional actors who play Ali La Pointe in _The Battle_ and Jose Dolores in _Burn!_). Colonel Mathieu and Sir William Walker "win" in the double sense: they defeat the rebels (including Ali La Pointe and Jose Dolores), and their charismatic presence dominate much of the screen. They "win" their respective battles, and yet, they "lose," the social order that they defend without illusions either swept away by the masses (as in _The Battle_) or menaced by their inevitable future eruptions (as in _Burn!_), just as, at the level of form, focus on named individuals in traditional narrative cinema gives way, in the end, to that on nameless masses whose actions make history, and to whom the future belongs.
As exemplified by Pontecorvo's work, dialectical imagination works most effectively when it presents the defenders of the social order that it seeks to make obsolete at their very best. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>