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| The film, it's incredibly effective, especially in this moment with Joe Biden's inauguration and with like this, you know, the left in the United States being both more active than it's been in decades and also being completely crushed out of any You know, real authority within kind of the structures of power for the foreseeable future. | |
| And it's like, well, you can work outside of the system, in which case you will get nowhere and be crushed immediately. | |
| Or you can work within the system, in which case you may get some marginal response, but overall you are just going to be crushed completely. | |
| And there is no larger answer to any of this, you know. | |
| Yeah, that's kind of... I mean, it's just, I don't know, like, watching it in this moment was a... I mean, it's a real downer. | |
| And, you know, I say this as someone who... | |
| Consumes a lot of material that a lot of people think is a real downer But you know this this film is energizing as it is in terms of its in terms of its quality. | |
| It really it really does not It's really hard to recommend it to somebody kind of looking for like here's here's some here's something that's going to Give you some kind of solution. | |
| It does it does it does I mean the film is almost saying there is no solution to this You know like you're just gonna get crushed. | |
| That's what this that's that's what the film is ultimately saying Yeah, yeah, and I think I think you have to look at the moment of its creation. | |
| I mean, it's from 1971. | |
| It's not from 1967 or 1968. | |
| 1968 is the peak of the post-war moment of struggle and the revolutionary moment. | |
| And it starts to, you know, as Hunter S. Thompson said in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, there's the moment when the wave crashes and then it starts to recede. | |
| You know, the tide starts to roll back. | |
| And I think already by this point, I mean, that revolutionary moment is in recess. | |
| It is entering a process of long, slow defeat. | |
| I mean, this is after, I believe, the murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. | |
| This is in the context of the Chicago 7, Bobby Seale and Abby Hoffman. | |
| I mean, I think Bobby Seale is very directly referenced in this film, to be honest, in One of the African-American defendants is actually bound and gagged because they just cannot tolerate the things he's saying. | |
| They're so scandalized, you know, outraged by the things he's saying that he must be silenced. | |
| And I think Kent State is just around the corner, isn't it? | |
| Kent State is referenced in the film. | |
| Has it already happened by this point? | |
| Yeah, it's already happened. | |
| It happened in 1970, so it would have been, like, depending on how long the scripting process, I don't know what the production process was on this or anything, but, you know, like, uh, it would have been, it would have been, like, almost like an immediate sense memory for the people, like, in production of this film. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| And I think just the election of Nixon in 68, you know, it's just such a crushing... Like, Kent State is probably closer to the production of this film than the murder of George Floyd was to the production of this podcast, if that, you know, tells you anything. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| So I think, I think this is, I mean... | |
| You know, a book I have always been and will always be fascinated by is 1984 by George Orwell, which people listening to this might find a little surprising. | |
| And I know George Orwell is very out of fashion these days on the left, but I continue to be fascinated by that book. | |
| But I think you have to view Orwell in the context of, you know, his writing takes place in an era of historic defeat for the left. | |
| And I think you have to view this in something of a similar vein. | |
| This is obviously very much a product, this is a work of art that's a product of a revolutionary moment. | |
| But I think it is a product of a revolutionary moment that's in crisis and is in the process of fragmenting under heavy demoralizing defeats. | |
| Which feels very, again, very current in 2021. |