September 11, 2003
9/11x03.
For a while there, it looked as if "September 11" would mean one thing and one thing only. It may be a sign of some sort of collective recovery, then, that the US and UK papers this morning are running, besides their 9/11 packages, articles on another grim anniversary, the 30th since General Augusto Pinochet's military coup toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. And the German papers are marking yet another: the 100th birthday of Theodor Adorno.
So, for today, three pieces, none of them "news." A break from the buzz. Starting with what I still consider to be a remarkable article J. Hoberman wrote for the Village Voice just three months after September 11, 2001. If I were compiling some sort of broad 9/11 anthology and could include only one film-related text, I might very well choose "All as It Had Been." Here's how it begins:
For everyone who saw the events on TV, movies offered the only possible analogy - blockbusters are what bring us together, all at once, around the world. The moving image and synchronized sound are how information is transmitted. The blockbuster's lingua franca is violent action, and since the collapse of the Soviet empire, those sounds and images have belonged overwhelmingly to the American-run multinational force conveniently designated "Hollywood." The movies are stamped on our DNA. Thus, the déjŕ vu of crowds fleeing Godzilla through Lower Manhattan canyons, the wondrously exploding skyscrapers and bellicose rhetoric of Independence Day, the romantic pathos of Titanic, the wounded innocence of Pearl Harbor, the cosmic insanity of Deep Impact, the sense of a world directed by Roland Emmerich for the benefit of Rupert Murdoch.On September 11, the dream became reality.
Patricio Guzmán's The Pinochet Case (2001)
It's also in the Voice that Michael Atkinson wrote, almost exactly a year ago: "Possibly the most riveting and vital historical document ever put on celluloid, Patricio Guzmán's three-part 1975-79 guerrilla epic The Battle of Chile is an unforgettable experience." Yes, another DVD we need. It seems to have been in 1998 that Andrea Meyer spoke with Guzmán for indieWIRE:
I made the film because I was passionate about what was going on. It was like opening your window and seeing a whole social movement reveal itself right before your eyes. We were contemplating history right in front of us - Allende talking, fights on one side, struggles on the other, the police... It was a huge spectacle.
[...] Something like this only happens to a country every hundred years. Like in Portugal, Nicaragua, Cuba. In Cuba, the first five years of the revolution were absolutely magical. And then afterwards was a different story... For us, it was romantic. Beautiful. It's as if everyone in your country fell in love.
And finally, Theodor Adorno, who once wrote (with Hanns Eisler), "one cannot see the film as an isolated art form of its own standing; it rather must be understood as the most characteristic medium of our present mass culture which uses the techniques of mechanical reproduction." From "Chaplin Times Two":
There is something about the empirical Chaplin that suggests not that he is a victim but rather, menacingly, that he would seek victims, pounce on them, tear them apart. One can well imagine that Chaplin's cryptic dimension, or precisely that which makes this most perfect clown more than his genus, is connected with the fact that he as it were projects upon the environment his own violence and dominating instinct, and through this projection of his own culpability produces that innocence which endows him with more power than all power possesses. A vegetarian Bengal tiger: comforting, because his goodness, which the children cheer, is itself in a compact with the very evil that in vain seeks to destroy him - in vain, for he had already destroyed that evil in his own image.
I'm confused.
On the one hand you have a brutal, strutting, military dictator in Chile, and that's bad.
But on the other hand you have a brutal, strutting, miltary dictator in Cuba, and that's like love.
I don't get it. Why is Pinochet the only authoritarian thug the Left can't tolerate?
An important part of that Cuba comment is: "And then afterwards was a different story..." This is what I've heard from people I know who are Cuban. I can't speak for "The Left" (whoever or whatever that is, since I don't think they speak collectively) but there are quite a few other authoritarian dictators lefties can't tolerate and/or are critical of. Gen. F. Franco (Spain) was one, Idi Amin, the succession of loonies in Guatamela over the course of 30 years (who were not too far removed from the dictator depicted in Woody Allen's Bananas...) and so on.
But, again, I can't speak for The Left, of which I am an occasional member but sometimes let my subscription lapse.
Posted by: Craig P at September 11, 2003 4:12 PMUm, the difference is that the US personally installed the Chilean brutal, strutting, military dictator.
Just last weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing Chris Marker's "A Grin Without a Cat," which is making furtive appearances here and there across the country. I would definitely add it to the list as an informative record of the times (1967-1977) and specifically, as it touches on the Allende and Pinoche incident in light of global events. And, yes, it's another film we need on DVD.
Posted by: Doug Cummings at September 11, 2003 4:15 PMInteresting. I also watched "A Grin Without a Cat" this weekend and found myself thinking back to it upon reading today's entry and resulting comments.
I wouldn't have thought a film could sum up the conflicts, concerns, highs and lows of "the left" from the latter part of the 20th century but Marker's film comes as close as humanly possible to doing just that.
What a shame that only half of the "Last Bolshevik" screened the following day.
Why aren't all his films on DVD or even VHS? At the least "Sans soleil" should make it to DVD. Who is in charge of these things?
Posted by: Fred at September 11, 2003 4:40 PMgroup reactions to political coups can kind of be explained by looking at three things.
1) form and history of overthrown government
2) immediate behavior of new government
3) ongoing behavior of new government
from a right-wing perspective, all that matters about #1 is/was its submission to elite desires, as with #2 and #3. over and over again, right-wingers engineer the overthrow of elected governments in favor of autocrats who deliver or protect the goods. the list of such overthrows is really long, and it includes cuba, in the 1952 coup.
from the lefty perspective, #1 and #2 are usually assessed by the potential increase of popular political and economic autonomy, which unfortunately means lefties will sometimes ignore #3... joe stalin being a horrible example of this, far worse than castro, but as you said, there are others.
however, by saying "Why is Pinochet the only authoritarian thug the Left can't tolerate," you obviously meant to bring saddam hussein into the argument, which is inappropriate. the ba'ath party was ushered in by the CIA, hussein had the support of the american right for a long time, and the bulk of hussein's crimes that weren't committed in connection with a cold war on iran were committed during the war with the united states that lasted from 1991 to 2003, in a situation we, unquestionably, created: the shi'ite uprising.
to reiterate. if iraq becomes a democracy, my understanding is that that will be the first time in modern history that a right-wing backed coup results in greater popular power.
Posted by: "chirp" at September 11, 2003 5:21 PMFred, you're clearly refering to the disasterous American Cinematheque screening last weekend. I've got "The Last Bolshevik" on VHS, so contact me if you'd like a loaner.
Yes, all of Marker's work should be on DVD. "Sans soleil" and "La Jetée" are available together with both their English and French versions on Region 2. Other than that, it's a sad state of affairs.
Posted by: Doug Cummings at September 11, 2003 6:44 PMI hate to swing by only to drop a URL, but there isn't much more to say in answer to Murphy's question. Just wanted to point out that there's a remarkable remembrance of Salvador Allende by Marc Cooper (who served as his translator) in The Nation.
I'd snip a quote, but really, the piece isn't long and deserves to be read in full.
Posted by: David Hudson at September 12, 2003 10:06 AMuh, to that earlier rant about overthrowing government, a couple friends corrected me on something. panama ended up a democracy. but this is qualified by contractual complications and seems to have been a local accomplishment separate from the US invasion.
Posted by: "chirp" at September 13, 2003 9:43 AM
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