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Film
as a Subversive Art
at the Spectacle
Dan Erdman
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| (Image taken from the Spectacle's page for the series) |
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| The Spectacle Theater |
Brooklyn's
Spectacle Theater, an all-video-projection, 25-seat microcinema, has
been running an ongoing series based on Amos Vogel's book Film as a Subversive Art
since the beginning of the year. Each month of screenings
encompasses a different chapter of Vogel's book; in February, the
programmers are concentrating on films from the "International
Left and Revolutionary Cinema" section. This was the first such
showing that I was able to attend - I had only became aware of the
series in the first place a few days previously - so I'm not sure which
or how many of the other films featured in the chapter were shown in
earlier weeks. On February 20, two films from Latin America, The
Hour of the Blast Furnaces
(Fernando Angolans, Argentina, 1967) and The
First Charge of the Machete
(Manuel Octavio Gomez, Cuba, 1969) were projected (each from a
digital copy of uncertain provenance and not terribly outstanding
quality).
The
Hour of the Blast Furnaces
is a plotless, four-and-a-half-hour-long exercise in agitational
montage, with a topical focus, unsurprisingly, on the struggle for
Latin American nations to achieve economic, social and cultural
independence in the shadow of the United States. The First Charge of the Machete,
meanwhile, is a more conventional narrative historical drama,
re-enacting a pivotal military victory of the native Cuban rebels
against their Spanish colonial overlords in the nineteenth century.
Shot faux-documentary style (complete with sit-down "interviews"
with historical personages), the film suggests that the then-new
Cuban communist government had roots in earlier conflicts against
other global superpowers.
The
screening was co-sponsored by The
New Inquiry, a journal
which describes itself as "a space for discussion that aspires
to enrich cultural and public life by putting all available resources
- both digital and material - toward the promotion and exploration of
ideas."1
(The relevant entry on Wikipedia helpfully states that "The
magazine has been deemed to be elitist by some, but not others."2)
Though I am not intimately familiar with this publication, perusing
what contents are available online definitely give the impression is
at the very least in broad sympathy with the political left, although
it seems to be affiliated with no particular party, clique or
tendency.
The
event was hosted by that publication's film editor, Willie Osterweil
(an "unannounced compañero" was also advertised for the
event in addition to Osterweil, but no such person appeared at my
screening, which was the later of two to occur that evening). Only
brief, non-contiguous excerpts from The
Hour of the Blast Furnaces
were to be shown, followed by the whole of The First Charge of the Machete;
Osterweil guided the audience through the scenes from Solanas's
movie, offering some context for the work (which, according to him,
inspired riots when shown in Argentina) and explaining some of the
movie's more arcane historical references. He also offered some
personal reminiscences related to The
Hour of the Blast Furnaces;
having first encountered it in an undergraduate film course, he
claimed to have breathlessly exhorted his classmates during the
subsequent discussion period to leave campus, lay waste to the
downtown and begin the revolution right there. This memory of
youthful intemperance amused the audience as well as the host, who
professed a light embarrassment over the matter. He also added, in
an aside, that little of the political content of The
Hour of the Blast Furnaces
remained as convincing to him as it once had been, though he declined
to elaborate further.
The
remarks for The Hour of
the Blast Furnaces
were reasonably brief and light, devoted mostly to stage-setting and
pointing out certain stylistic features. Likewise with The First Charge of the Machete
- Osterweil provided some background on the real-life historical
events on which the movie was based and removed himself to the back
row of the theater when it began. Although a post-film discussion
had been advertised, this did not occur. Probably this had something
to do with the fact that, by time the last movie finished, it was
midnight, and the audience, aside from Osterweil and a ticket-taker,
consisted of six people (which, admittedly, is enough to fill up a
quarter of the Spectacle's seats).
Vogel's
main argument in the chapter on "International Left and
Revolutionary Cinema" is that truly politically engaged films
exist in order to directly inspire the spectator to immediate
political action, rather than as a means of merely representing an
issue or conflict. In this view, film is "a tool to change the
world, no longer an 'art object' existing 'parallel to the world.
This supreme attempt at subversion - film as act rather than creation
- represents a desperate attempt to bridge the gap between life and
art."3
There
is an irony, then, which was left unexplored in the screening. As
Vogel probably realized in the years before his death in 2012, both
film and the type of new left politics favored by his selections are
almost completely obsolete as a means of producing anything new.
While
various social and political currents make use of media technologies,
film certainly isn't one of them; one is as likely to find someone
wielding a stone tablet and stylus as a Bolex H16. Reading Vogel
less literally, cinema, conceived of as a feature-length,
theatrically-screened finished work, hardly fares any better as a
means of political motivation than does its original medium. Moving
image technology in general is of service to political groups more as
a means of documentation and communication than as agitation. The
notion of a movie winding its audience up to a riot after the fashion
of The Hour of the
Blast Furnaces seems
quaint.
In
addition, the type of new-left politics espoused by the two movies
screened have barely any more life in them than does film. The
films' critiques are nearly half a century old, taking aim at a world
which no longer exists in the same form. In 2013, the only
internationalist movement violently agitating for total political
transformation is run by religious fanatics instead of materialists;
even recent revolts in the Middle East were largely the product of
demands for reform of crooked and sclerotic governments rather than
attempts to establish working-class dictatorship. Occupy Wall Street
withered on the vine; its most notable accomplishment was to have
solidified a mood of general populist resentment which was then
successfully co-opted by a presidential re-election campaign. This
has come about due to a variety of factors and may not necessarily be
a permanent state of affairs, but the general left-wing perspective
cannot find the same type of purchase that it did in 1968.
The
way in which the films have dated made this acutely apparent to me
and, I suspect, to the rest of the audience as well. The
Hour of the Blast Furnaces
provoked laughter from the small crowd with its didacticism, which
even back in 1967 showed the first signs of curdling into theatrical
ultra-leftism - one title card, presumably meant to be read without
irony, reads "All cultural expression is now controlled by the
CIA" (The small crowd took a mildly condescending attitude
toward the films, chuckling indulgently at the hokier parts but
generally giving them respectful attention). In particular, its
unsubtle criticism of popular culture as top-down western cultural
imperialism has aged particularly poorly in light of the way in which
the study of that field has advanced in the intervening five decades.
Vogel himself even had his doubts: "The very sophistication of
its structure and narration...precludes its use with the masses and
stamps it as a work for intellectuals, students, and the already
convinced. To others, its facts resemble allegation, its
revolutionary purity dogmatism and its transformation of images into
polemic through editing, demagogic distortion."4
The
other film, meanwhile, actually felt remarkably current. Given
slightly better production values, The First Charge of the Machete
could stand a chance at popular success in the 21st century. The
faux documentary-style tropes could fit into an episode of The
Office without
disturbing any viewer's good time, let alone his political
prejudices. Furthermore, the decades in between Star
Wars and Avatar
have aptly demonstrated that the story of a plucky band of rebels
taking the fight to an on-paper-superior military force has
commercial legs. That being the case, however, it only proves that
the film now fails on its own terms, or at least on Vogel's. "The
portrayals of decadent upper classes and heroic peasants are sharp
and incisive, and distancing devices - such as characters addressing
the camera - are used to induce attitudes of analysis instead of
involvement."5
What was radical in form and content in 1969 is the stuff of the
most mainstream possible popular entertainments of the early 21st
century.
All
of this might have been worth commenting on in some way. Nothing of
this sort was brought up in Osterweil's comments, nor was I able to
detect any sort of perspective in the pairing of the two movies. The
organizers seem to have ceded curatorial authority to Vogel,
respectfully declining to ask any questions about his selections or
justifications for including the two films in his canon.
Given
the contentious, polemical character of the book (and author) which
is supposed to have inspired this series, this lack of framing on the
part of the programmers strikes me as the wrong approach. Film
as a Subversive Art is
nearly 40 years old and, while indisputably a valuable contribution
to cinema scholarship, it is hardly beyond criticism, or at least
comment. The great strength of the book - the wide net of
"subversion" as a descriptor catches an astonishing breadth
of films, making for intriguing juxtapositions - is also something of
dead end. If everything is subversive, is anything?
It
is possible that lack on comment on Vogel's choices could be read as
simple affirmation; the same might be said for the politics of the
films, irrelevant though they may be (despite Osterweil's demurral).
What is more likely at play is a nostalgia for the period Vogel was
writing and working, when films such as these had far more aesthetic
and political currency than they do now. Given the venue - a
charmingly shabby, DIY microcinema devoted to all manner of moving
image esoterica - this seems like the most likely alternative. It is
a shame that more effort was not made to replicate the spirit of the
original curatorial project it's paying tribute to, rather than
imitation.
All
of that said, it was nice to have access to these films under any
circumstances. I checked Vogel's book out from the University of
Wisconsin's Memorial Library (where it was kept in the mysterious
Locked Case, behind the front desk and out of the hands of casual
browsers) as a freshman in 1994 and pledged to see every single film
listed therein. 20 years on I must admit that I've done a
spectacularly terrible job and so welcome any assistance offered to
me. Most readers of Film
as a Subversive Art
(particularly the ones who spent most of their lives outside of New
York) have only experienced the featured films as 200-word blurbs,
and thus not been able to engage fully with Vogel's text. Each film
that is added to the "have-seen" pile opens up the book
that much more, so I suppose there is a value to simply introducing
them and letting the viewer make of them what he will.
4Vogel,
164
5Vogel,
163
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