WARNING: If you plan on seeing The Manchurian Candidate, skip this post.
Joel writes:
> The 1962 version of The Manchurian Candidate was suppressed under pressure
from the studio owners, politicians, and even the stars who made the film,
especially Frank Sinatra.
The original film was a box office success. It was withdrawn by Sinatra because he thought UA was cheating him of his share of the profits and that it was draining profits from other films of his. He had the power to withdraw it since he owned the rights to the material. That is why his daughter Tina Sinatra is the producer of the current version.
> The 2004 version of this classic film picks up similar conspiracy theory
inspired plot twists and presents a modern day version.
Actually, what Demme does is completely undermine the conspiracy aspect -- he explodes it as a cartoon myth. This is clearest in the sequence where Raymond Shaw is first "activated." Once his "programming" has been activated, he walks down a hallway in his suite, opens a closet door and is ushered into the next room which has been transformed into a surgical lab. In this lab his skull is drilled into and his original implant replaced with a new one.
Demme undermines the realism of the scene with unsourced lighting compositions; he is offering the "conspiracy" plot for those who need/expect it, but challenegs its authenticity through the use of unrealistic technique and action.
Demme reveals the true conditioning with the continual use of inset shots of video images. In addition, the video images are usually accompanied by crawls that mirror the "spontaneous" language being uttered in the images. Demme is opposing the false fiction of the conspiracy theory (which is demanded/expected by the audience/public) with the actual mediated images/words that condition society. (Such an approach does have its roots in MC '62. Frankenheimer has a long tracking shot from right to left (reverse of normal practice to heighten its effect) revealing the action (Sinatra moderating a Senator's press conference) being transmitted/repeated on a series of screens. Demme takes this conceit and multiplies it by the intervening 40+ years.
> Is globalized capitalism, rather than terrorism, our real modern enemy?
Demme is also saying that the business mindset is the problem. After Raymond's mother sends him out to murder Senator Jordan, she is confronted by her financial backers who criticze her action. She snaps back at them: "What was I supposed to do? Call a meeting?" Violent, abrupt action serves to jar (and thus must be avoided) the narcoticized state that economic/political elites seek to induce through sensory assault.
> I suggest that this film asks us to think about the relationships we have
with some of the plot's (and society's) main institutional actors: the
political system we are forced to deal with, globalized capitalism, and our
class.
Demme demonstrates that these relationships are what help to dehumanize people as opposed to conspiracy theorists who posit dehumanization through secret plots in which (as Joel writes) "humans are simply pawns in a struggle they aren't meant to understand, that they have little or no power over their own destinies, and that they are isolated individuals flailing against a system (or a secret cabal) that dominates them."
Relationships with these institutional actors occur most often on the level of preset images and scripts instead of on the ground of a shared sense of (improvisational) humanity.
> The Manchurian Candidate, in my view, bucks that trend. In one crucial
scene, just before the climax of the film, Raymond Shaw and Bennett Marco
meet in one last effort to try to understand what happened to them and what
is going to happen . . . During their final meeting, Shaw asks Marco, "Were
we friends?" . . . "We have a connection."
And Marco says that it is this connection they must tap into in order to combat the enemy. He asserts that the connection is more important than any relationship two people may have. The connection is that both men are human beings and they must recover their shared humanity which has been buried by a continual assualt of images/scripts from political and economic institutions.
> For Marco, that connection, whatever it was in reality, was enough for
both of them to care about each other's lives, about the truth of what is
really happening, and about their destinies.
Demme stages the sequence in a classroom to underscore that both characters must relearn their humanity which has been obscured. The truth does not exist outside themselves in the form of a conspiracy or imposed images/scripts, but within themselves -- the humanity they share with all others.
Demme punctuates this by having Marco and Shaw NOT follow the script as set out in the original. By discovering their humanity they are able to alter the script. They improvise in the moment. Shaw defies the script and doesn't take his mark on the stage as he should. He offers himself to Marco as an alternative victim. For his part, Marco shoots Shaw and his mother instead of the president-elect. With these improvisations Marco and Shaw become the provdiers of images (the dead mother and son lying on the dais) that are not produced by elites, but by human beings taking control of their own lives.
Demme quickly undercuts this, however, by showing the FBI erasing Marco's image on a videotape and replacing it with another man's (who will be promoted as the assassin in the new script that is being written). There is hope, but it is fleeting.
Joseph writes:
> You have also dismissed an important aspect of the Manchurian Candidate,
that of mind control and its significance for the US national security
state.
But Demme himself dismisses that element. When Marco goes to his scientist friend and shows him the implant, the scientist replies: "These are only theoretical." His comment refers not only to the implant, but also to the fiction(s) of conspiracy plots.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister