How 'X-Men: First Class' Fails as a Film and as an Origin Story

It’s not easy being different.

Well, maybe some have it easier than others.

There are those with Aspergers, others, an ephemeral charisma. Some have permanently blue skin and fur, others, the ability to read minds. And somewhere in the middle are the “forever-aspiring” who write bitter, unsolicited reviews in the dark of their room on the weekend.

But so it is. More than any other comic book franchise, X-Men celebrated that difference and made superheroes out of that shame. It also put “being different” in a larger context: the politics and power of prejudice and mankind’s endless flirtation with fear and oppression. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963, the heroes and villains of the X-Men universe have taken up the cause of civil rights, women’s rights, and with the Bryan Singer-era, LGBT rights and the “War on Terror”. The characters’ ability to stand in for the oppressed at any time in history and always have something to say made them the most important comic book property and personally, my favorite.

And so as fan who was let down by the last two flicks (I’d put X-Men Origins: Wolverine just a notch above the worst movie ever made: Garden State), the anticipation and expectation I had for X-Men: First Class were high. So far, the praise has been unanimous from critics and friends alike. I was waiting to love this movie. I was waiting to feel that tingle, a feeling that pinches a nerve in my otherwise despondent self, when I know that there’s a film out there reaching a mass audience that’s both disgusted with what I’m disgusted with and that appeals to our better selves.

But when the credits rolled, I sat in my seat speechless and sad. For two hours I watched them, someone, a lot of someone(s), grossly mishandle my favorite X-Men story: the split between Xavier and Magneto. I came home and saw the RottenTomatoes rating still high—those who didn’t like the film scoffed at the idea that a comic book should take up serious issues. On Facebook, everyone who saw it was ecstatic—even those who I thought felt the same way about X-Men that I did. And I have to tell you, last night I felt really alone.

I felt like a mutant.

It’s often said that Professor Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto) relationship is modeled after the philosophies of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, particularly nonviolence/integration on the one hand and self-defense/and separatism on the other. Now a true student of the civil rights movement knows that the politics of both individuals was much more complex (King championed a “democratic socialist” revolution for all workers and Malcolm embraced a global struggle, black, brown, yellow, and white, against imperialism). But what was great about Charles and Erik was that their differences had nuances too.

Erik Lehnsherr survived the single most monstrous act in human history, the Holocaust. But as horrible as that was, it was not the first barbarous act of the human species and hardly its last. The Magneto persona is a tragic figure, born of the trauma of genocide and the defective and destructive aspect of human nature. I never saw him as a villain motivated by a reactionary “Social Darwinism”. To me, he was a character trying to protect his kind from the next genocide and the ends, inevitably, justified the means.

Charles Xavier was born wealthy, bearing a mutation that made him practically omniscious. His brilliance was only matched by his humanism, dedicating his life to promote peaceful co-existence. He had a different conception of human nature. It was not one hardened and narrowed by experience (Erik), but one nourished by privilege and idealism.

To the film’s credit, X-Men: First Class attempts (though in rather clunky fashion) to establish this in the first twenty minutes. In fact, the film tries to establish a lot things in the right way, but ends up being too afraid to satisfy its own set ups.

The best place to start is with Sebastian Shaw and the odd, revisionist relationship with Magneto. I’m always open to reinvention, and if filmmakers can find ways to make a story fresh and narratively sound, all the better. But by introducing Shaw as a Nazi doctor fishing for mutants to recruit, you are undermining the entire context of Magneto and the philosophical struggle with Xavier. Here, you have a mutant (Shaw) involved (and from his character, we can assume heavily involved) in the human-orchestrated genocide that is supposed to serve as the backbone as to why mutants can’t co-exist with humans. It felt like the screenwriters believed that going through the Holocaust wasn’t enough to motivate Magneto—that they had to connect the individual death of his mother to the main villain in the story. This is derivative action-movie structure at its core, but worse it eliminates any meaning or consistency to Magneto’s worldview.

I wish I had more time to get into the illogic of that scene in general. But quickly, even if we let pass the fact that young Erik couldn’t muster enough anger at the fact that a gun is pointed at his mother, his father is probably dead, and everyone he’s ever known is being murdered—why doesn’t he go at Shaw afterwards? He has no problem killing two guards or leveling an entire room, but he can’t toss a knife (or a coin) at his mother’s killer? Little Erik didn’t know that Shaw could absorb power—the kid didn’t even try. In fact, he let Shaw put a hand on his shoulder. (WHAT)

The entire plot with Shaw is baffling. Initially, I felt placing the film during the Cuban Missile Crisis was smart because it once again demonstrated how close the human race was to destroying itself. But little did we know that behind the scenes a genocidal mutant involved in the Holocaust was manipulating both superpowers into mutual self-destruction! If that wasn’t ridiculous enough, the way Shaw goes about this is by bullying a U.S. Army Colonel and a single Soviet general into advocating aggressive missile sites. That’s it? The idea that intimidating a few men on the inside is enough to change national security policy is a) stupid and b) again undermining the real philosophical conflict between Charles and Erik.

The bastardization of Magneto is summed up toward the end. Erik finally confronts Shaw and gets into the obligatory speech and no, I’m not kidding he says, “Funny thing is, I agree with everything you said. But you killed my mother.” Instead of saying: “Funny thing is, I agree with everything you said (about humans),” takes out the Nazi coin, “but this, this shows you’re just one of them.” Something like that would’ve rounded it all back to the core and perhaps cover the gaping plot hole of a mutant puppeteering the worst of human excesses and absolving them of guilt. Magneto as a character becomes unrecognizable.

Essentially, the studio made another Wolverine-story, where a lone, loose cannon looking to reconcile his past, is taught to re-focus his anger and find balance from a wise Charles Xavier. You really don't get a sense from this film that Charles and Erik were colleagues, that they built the school together, and that it was the escalating demands of the mutant agenda that drove them apart. If you were to lay out his journey in dramatic terms, it would look like this:

1) hell-bent on revenge
2) meets a group of people who could be useful in obtaining that revenge
3) emotional walls are (literally) pried open by Xavier's telepathic invasions
4) he uses the team to get exactly what he wanted: revenge, the only difference: he wants Xavier to join him. (Oh and he can lift submarines now too).

Not much of a character arc, is it? The relationship between Charles and Erik was one built over years, not one built and broken in a few weeks. X-Men: First Class robs us of this.

One element that had promise was the relationship between Charles and Raven/Mystique. I saw where the screenwriters were going with this: dramatically, Charles had to have a flaw (he’s not totally proud of being a mutant) and because of this he had to lose something to Magneto, something close to him. Unfortunately, they butcher this too. Nowhere during the time that there is a tug for Mystique’s allegiance is it ever clear that Charles actually cares about her. He dismisses her as a child, he doesn’t help her out of a crashed plane, and he doesn’t fight for her at the end. He tells her to join Magneto, even though he knows what Erik has planned. Raven just wanted to feel beautiful, but more than that she wanted Charles to think she was. Regardless of how much she may have agreed with Erik’s “mutant and proud” mantra, she would’ve stayed if Charles said so. She would’ve wanted to. And Charles knew that.

If the filmmakers were trying to set up some kind of “love triangle” then combined, they must have had as little experience with love as me. We’re supposed to assume an attraction between Charles and Moira from a drunken flirtation and Erik saying, “I know how you look at her”. It’s lazy and ultimately I felt nothing when Raven left Charles to the care of Ms. MacTaggert, other than “What do you mean ‘take care of him?’ He just got shot in the spine!” and “Why is Charles still talking? He just got shot in the spine!”

Well, I guess the screenwriters wanted to make sure you "got it." The script routinely relies on telling the audience dramatic beats rather than showing. Let's take the scene where Hank offers Raven a "cure" for her looks. Instead of a talky call back scene (mutant and proud..again), she could've morphed into blue form and came on to him. Hank, thrown aback, would reject her--articulating the turning point for both characters through action. The droning use of line "call backs" never have resonance because the characters never really earn them.

This film should never be in the conversation of X2: X-Men United. Anyone who says different knows nothing about X-Men. X2 was true to who the characters were. That’s why Magneto decides to fight with the X-Men, that’s why Mystique (as Senator Kelly) tries to defend Xavier’s school –they are not villains. They will defend their own kind first, even if it’s the X-Men. X2 had something real and timely to say about the politics of fear and militarism. It had a villain whose plot showed how hatred is manufactured by the powerful, while also having a deep personal vendetta against Xavier. It had a truly aching love triangle where you empathized with each of them and felt the loss of Jean Grey at the end.

X-Men: First Class is derivative, not different. It gives lip service to the rhetoric and spirit of the X-Men, but you don’t feel it and you don’t believe it. For a film that was supposed to take us back to the beginning, back to the 60’s, where concurrently the mutant rights movement began, we get a film so tone-deaf that it’s only nod to the civil rights movement is hearing the word “enslaved” and cutting to the one black character who gets killed not soon after.

Isle of Flowers (1989)

Part I


Part II



To explain in brief the obscenity of capitalism, one must only have to quote the old socialist Fourier when he described the system as one where “abundance becomes the source of distress and want.” This is a very curious feature. Human crises up to this point could be attributed mainly to scarcity. But capitalism’s periodic “booms and busts” resulting in recession or depression are very much as Marx described when he said, “Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.” Though the U.N. estimates that the world produces enough food every year to feed double the current human population, we live in a world where two billion live with chronic malnutrition and where six million children die every year from hunger-related diseases. We live in a world where scientific advancement has led to effective AIDS treatment, while Africa dies because it’s too poor to afford it. We live in a world where we can send satellites to the corners of our solar system, yet can’t seem to find a way to provide safe drinking water for everyone. The facts are so recognizable that its shock value has been seriously compromised. With numerous ideologies competing to justify the way the world is today, it is hard to step back and see it for what it is. We are led to believe that the issues are far “too complicated.” The truth however, is that inequality today is an absurdity reinforced by those who own capital. While documentaries like Harvest of Shame tackle the issue seriously, it can easily be corralled into the “policy debate.” On the other hand, films like Isle of Flowers are much more interested in getting beyond that—making it a much more devastating critique.

Isle of Flowers is told as if it were a National Geographic piece. It examines humans, their habitat, and organization as if it were foreign and animal-like. This detachment allows the film to rise above “policy debate” and posture as if it were a neutral observer, interested only in the human species for educational purposes. Our ways of life are stripped of its normalcy and are examined as if by a civilization from another planet. The narrator continually defines our species with our biology—our highly developed telencephalon and opposable thumbs. This definition works on two levels: it reminds us that in spite of our self-importance we remain animals, yet we are also distinguished from animals in a very significant way. We therefore should hold ourselves to a higher standard. With that said, the film show us coldly how we are not. Shocking images of humanity at its worst—the holocaust and Hiroshima/Nagasaki—are juxtaposed with the narrator’s “matter of fact” description of our way of life. Whenever the narrator reminds us that, “Mr. Suzuki is a Japanese, and therefore a human being,” it is a cleverly subversive tool to demonstrate our relationship to power. Some human beings labor and other human beings own. Yet since we are all human beings, why do we accept the distinction? That device is used again to differentiate between the owner of pigs and the women and children. Because the women and children “have no owner” they are left to dig through the leftovers of pigs! Yet we are reminded that women and children are too, human beings, defined also by their highly developed telencephalon and opposable thumbs. But then why are human beings deciding that others, particularly poor women and children, are beneath that category? Why are some human beings lower than pigs?

Isle of Flowers follows and condenses the history of human civilization and all its creations. Emphasizing the fact that they are creations. Money was developed as a way to exchange products. However, money has taken on a fantastical form where it is now valued over those who created it. It is imbued with a sense of importance not at all intrinsic to its physical properties. And in that process, humanity has become entirely alienated from itself. This is fundamental thesis of the film. Whenever private property (or rather the private ownership of the means of production—differentiated from personal property) is defended, it is the acknowledgement of the extent of said alienation. The creation of wealth is a social process, involving many workers sometimes spread out over the globe. Yet the private ownership of the means of production denies this, and instead takes this social creation and puts it under the ownership of a few individuals. To socialize property is to acknowledge the real role labor plays in the production of wealth. The film is a devastating look at capitalism, stripped away from all its illusions. Its fundamental characteristics are laid out for all to see. It is a system that puts profits and sometimes pigs, before people. And despite what its many apologists will argue, such absurdity can no longer be justified.

Best Films of 2008*

I've compiled a list of my favorites and reasons why you should love them too.



The Dark Knight-The Dark Knight is ultimately about the limitations of the "hero." His/her existence is a reflection of a problem they can never truly solve. No matter how sacrificing, no matter how incorruptible, the inequality that allows Bruce Wayne to stay ahead of the criminal element is what guarantees that criminal element's survival. Though the Joker is presented as an unstoppable force, free from motivation and explanation, he still must make alliances with those whose criminality DO have social causes. Batman is forever locked into a fight that will never end for him. This is the tragedy of the Dark Knight, but also our opportunity to present an alternative to a system that can only go so far.

The Wrestler-"With its grown men bellowing like comic book heroes and villains, pro wrestling has always been a cartoon, and that's the appeal to performers and fans alike: It absolves life's complexities with a turnbuckle to the skull. "The Wrestler" is about the seductions of superficiality and the dull ache of living beyond one's moment. It stares with compassion at the man pinned on the mat and wonders how he'll ever get out of this one." TY BURR Boston Globe

Revolutionary Road-a film not only about life and love never meeting expectations, but more importantly a film that meticulously demonstrates how sexism shapes our relationships. The film reminds us of a time when abortion was not a right, and the heavy consequences of it. Not only do we feel April's suffocation and the slow defeat of her soul, but we see how sexist gender roles trap men as well. It was Frank's insecurity every time his "manhood" was challenged that turned him into everything he never wanted to be.

Synecdoche, New York-"To say that Charlie Kaufman’s 'Synecdoche, New York' is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now. That at least would be an appropriate response to a film about failure, about the struggle to make your mark in a world filled with people who are more gifted, beautiful, glamorous and desirable than the rest of us — we who are crippled by narcissistic inadequacy, yes, of course, but also by real horror, by zits, flab and the cancer that we know (we know!) is eating away at us and leaving us no choice but to lie down and die." MANOHLA DARGIS New York Times

Milk-"In a scene reminiscent of the recent California initiative battle over Proposition 8 in which gay marriage rights were overturned, the audience is treated to a glimpse of a timely debate. Milk effectively challenges gay magazine magnate David Goodstein who insists on circulating fliers against the Briggs Initiative that never mention the word "gay" or explicitly argue what the battle is really about.
If only an unapologetic and openly gay civil rights movement had been organized this time around, perhaps Prop 8 would have had a similar fate." SHERRY WOLF Socialist Worker

Rachel Getting Married- "While battles between the sisters will continue throughout the film, there is a beautiful moment of reconciliation and tenderness between the two which comes much later in the work and doesn't feel cheated or forced. How permanently the peace will last is another question. One can be thankful that a neat, happy ending is avoided for the most part. The film is too honest for that."- HIRAM LEE wsws.org

Slumdog Millionaire-"Like all good fairy tales, this outsize celebration of perseverance and moral triumph contains within it a deeper idea -- in this case, the relative nature of what we think we know, and what's worth knowing at all." ANN HORNADAY Washington Post

CHE- "That helps explain another peculiarity of the film. Surprising attention is given to Che meeting the volunteers who join his guerrilla bands. Names, embraces. But little effort is made to single them out as individuals, to develop complex relationships. Che enforces an inviolable rule: He will leave no wounded man behind. But there is no sense that he is personally emotionally involved with his men. It is a man he will not leave behind, not this man. It is the idea."- ROGER EBERT Chicago Sun Times

Most Overrated
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button-The premise opens the film up for some interesting insights on living and dying, seen from the perspective of a life lived backwards. However the film doesn't say much at all, settling for such banal phrases as "...and some of us are dancers." The oddness of the story is blunted by its tired structure (the old woman telling the story through a diary).

Why are we afraid and what does it mean? a critical look at the horror genre

There are a couple approaches one could take in assessing how certain celluloid creations have been able to frighten the collective imagination. Similarly, techniques well known to be conventions continue to succeed in getting under our skin, and into our nightmares, even if the outcome is always known ahead of time. One attempt at an explanation ignores historical specificity in favor of taking broad swipes at the “human condition,” hopefully arriving at someplace “universal.” This inevitably leads to shallow insight about our fear of death, of the dark, and of the unknown. Geiger’s Alien design becomes frightening only because it lurks in places we can’t see, leaving us helpless and hunted. But there has to be something about its look, its shape, its excretions that make it so repulsive and threatening. And if that is the case, why does it bother us so much? Robin Wood’s seminal contribution to the topic argues that fear is ultimately an expression of what is repressed in a historically specific social order. That which challenges the dominant ideology established by the possessing class is projected outward onto the Other for public repression. The Horror genre succeeds precisely because it plays on the anxieties and insecurities that threaten pre-defined “normality,” and therefore plays a reactionary role in allowing the social order to punish what undermines it. However, two films in particular work to turn the concept of the Other on its head, Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997) and Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend (2007).

First it is necessary to establish what exactly threatens the current social order. The contradictions of bourgeois society have always been this: to break the constraints of divine right the bourgeoisie declared inalienable rights for all, yet presided over a social system that is inherently unequal. There had to be justifications for why some men were plantation owners and others were slaves, why some men had enough capital to take the “risk” of starting a business, while others could only sell their labor power, and why women, now part of the labor force, still must privately bear the responsibility of childcare. Dominant ideology is what justifies and normalizes these social relations, and as Wood notes, “is the process whereby people are conditioned from earliest infancy to take on predetermined roles within that culture,” that being productive members of the nuclear family. Horror’s obsession and repression of what is female comes from the fact that women’s oppression is inextricably tied to society’s predetermined roles.

Marx’s essential insight into ideology was this: before we can have ideas, we have to eat. As society organizes itself to produce its survival, ideas emerge to justify and normalize its way of doing things. From there, ideology develops with a life of its own, but still within the parameters of society’s particular property relations. Freudian theory has provided a fascinating look at how ideology has played itself out in the bourgeois epoch, with its emphasis on all things male, and the perceived inadequacies and fears of all things female. What frightens us about Geiger’s Alien has much more to do with its sexual ambiguity (both male and female parts) and nods to the specifically female act of childbirth. The eggs, the fluids, the Queen—we can’t help but be disgusted. Julia Kristeva’s concept of the Abject locates a particular disgust with “bodily fluids and waste,” qualities most commonly associated with female sexuality (menstruation, birth/reproduction), that must be expelled. The Alien is especially horrific because of the way it reproduces (face huggers force its way into the victim, waiting until a mature embryo can break out of the victim’s chest). If the threat to the bourgeois/male social order causes such anxiety, the audience demands catharsis, the restoration of the dominant ideology. The Queen and her lair of eggs bring to mind everything we hate about this creature, and the audience only finds relief when Ripley sets it all on fire. Attempts made at undermining the role of the Other often makes the audience uncomfortable, as it fails to resolve societal anxieties in favor of provoking and challenging them. One obvious example is the original ending of 2007’s I Am Legend, an ending that found test audiences unsatisfied, forcing the studio to go a more conventional route for the sake of box office success.

I Am Legend begins in standard form as we follow Neville’s attempts at restoring order to a world overrun by the Infected. Neville is seemingly the only one immune to the virus, the only person able to maintain his boundaries from infiltration. The virus stands in for various societal fears (AIDS/homosexuality, the racist propaganda about disease “coming over the border”), and so it’s no wonder Neville’s search for a cure echoes attempts at “curing” homosexuality, or that his home is rigged in ways that racists fantasize about building along the border. The Infected, or the Other, act out their role as Legend—those who threaten “normalcy.” Though Neville concludes in his medical diary that the Infected no longer retain any semblance of humanity (they act in ways that go against their basic survival), the film tries to say something else. As it’s revealed that the Alpha male was after the woman Neville captured, it becomes clear that their humanity is indeed intact. That what distinguishes humans are concepts of courage and sacrifice, of living for something more than basic survival. Neville then looks at the photos of the Infected he has killed and “realizes that he is the monster of their legends; the infected think of him as someone who hunts down and kills their people.” Neville realizes that he has become the Other. Much like the ending of the novel, “Neville realizes that the standard of normalcy is a majority concept: in the new world, he is the abnomal one, the lone monster who comes without warning to destroy loved ones without mercy. He is Legend.” This reversal of the Other didn’t sit comfortably with test audiences and so another ending was put together, turning Neville into a sacrificial figure, as the war on the Infected continues.

While the theatrical version of I Am Legend failed to challenge the social order by deviating from its source material, Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers works to undermine the concept of the Other by mocking its source. As JP Telotte noted, Heinlein’s work “emphasizes the sort of dictatorial, authoritarian figures he saw as necessary for survival,” leading those like Barton Levinson to conclude, “in the clearest sense of the word, his political and ethical beliefs were fascist.” Verhoeven strips the story of militaristic fetishism by farcical exaggeration. Instead of being a story about courage and service, it is a story of ignorance and obedience. Verhoeven breaks up the narrative into hyperactive news reports and recruitment videos which as Tolotte makes clear, “offer no pretense at argument. Instead, they provide us with exaggerations, sloaganeering, and cheerleading, as if the audience were much like the fans we see earlier rooting for Johnny Rico’s football team. “ The opening recruitment video tells of the threat of “invading” bugs from Klendathu, though the video clearly shows it’s the humans who are invading. The newsreels demonstrate how the Other is constructed and sold to a population through fear and dehumanization (the value of a bug’s life). A great example is the:

…footage of a cow being slaughtered by a captured bug to demonstrate the species’ capabilities and its ferocity; interestingly, much of the slaughter occurs behind a “censored” patch across the screen. In turn, another feed shows a bug, perhaps the same one, being blasted to bits by soldiers who are instructed how to hit its central nervous system in order to make a quicker kill—and here nothing is censored.

It is a telling illustration of just what this culture sees as obscene, as censorable reality, and a clear indication of how it has set about sanctioning a most horrific violent response to the bug foe.

Once the final bug is captured (a giant brain/the Abject), Carl, a telepath, is asked what the giant brain is thinking. He reads the bug and finds out that “It’s afraid! It’s afraid!” As the soldiers cheer, we’re again asked to question who is the Other. Who is the monster in this film? Verhoeven calls attention to process of constructing the Other, and then shows how far from reality it is. The bugs are thinking, feeling creatures that are defending Klendathu from the actual invaders. Both I Am Legend and Starship Troopers begin with the Abject/Other archetype, only to show that it’s the social order itself that is monstrous.

Sunshine (2007) and the rejection of dystopia

Since science fiction’s inception, its themes have always expressed both an awe of technology and fear of it. The Scientific Revolution first broke open the contradictions of a world increasingly dependent on its discoveries while desperately clinging to its superstitions. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often credited as the first of its form, and the slew of 19th century works that followed captured the Romantic anxieties toward an Industrial Revolution that was re-making the world in often cold and destructive ways. The theme of alienation did indeed carry on into the 20th century, however its use has not remained static. Reflecting the historical upheavals of its time, the Romantic period molded its parables around Industrialization, while the later Dystopian trend expressed suspicion of the movements for global emancipation. Its cynicism is a precursor to the postmodernist rejection of emancipatory ideologies, and its fear of imposing a rational (read: egalitarian) society on human beings. Its present historical role therefore serves to justify inequality, while under the guise of opposing “totalitarianism.”

If we begin with Frtiz Lang’s Metropolis we must first establish its historical context. As Chris Harman noted:

Yet of all the upheavals after the First World War, it was the events in Germany that prompted British Prime Minister Lloyd George to write:
‘The whole existing order, in its political, social and economic aspects, is questioned by the masses from one end of Europe to another.’
Here was a great revolutionary upheaval in an advanced industrial country--in the heart of Europe. Without an understanding of this defeat, the great barbarisms that swept Europe in the 1930s cannot be understood. The swastika first entered modern history in the uniforms of the German counter-revolutionary troops of 1918 to 1923--and because of the defeat in Germany, Russia fell into the isolation that gave Stalin his road to power.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the political forces in Germany began to fight over its future following the abdication of the Emperor. The defeat of the socialists emboldened the nationalist militias in what culminated with the Beer Hall Putsch by the Nazi Party in 1923. Lang’s 1926 film is arguably sympathetic to the coup, as it’s filled with “strong fears of economic collapse and Communist revolution.” David Desser goes on to argue in his essay that the film carries “the ideological motifs central to Nazism: anti-urbanism, anti-modernism, anti-communism, and anti-Semitism.” While it is acknowledged that the working class is subjugated, as a whole they’re portrayed as ignorant and easily manipulated into mob violence. Its solution to German anxiety is a handshake of reconciliation. With the head (rational) and the hands (mindless workers) needing to be mediated by the heart (a call to spiritualism). The Nazis too, wanted to reign in big business, while crushing the working class. As Isaac Deutscher described, the fascist:

looked up with envy and hatred to big business, to which he so often helplessly succumbed in competition; and he looked down upon the workers, jealous of their capacity for political and trade union organization and for collective self-defense… At big business the small man shook his fists as if he were a socialist; against the worker he shrilled his bourgeois respectability, his horror of class struggle, his rabid nationalist pride, and his detestation of Marxist internationalism.

American dystopianism was also a reaction against the international socialist movement. In both literature and film, future societies are described as cold and sterile, where decisions are made through calculation, not emotion. While considered “subversive” (which they are, but only in limited ways), the dystopian genre is reactionary liberalism. Because the liberal buys into the idea the competition over resources accurately plays to our true nature, the act of eliminating that through a "rational" society only leads to conformity, numbness, and totalitarianism. What underpins Brave New World is the belief that society will only accept equality if its drugged. On the surface, these stories extol the virtues of “individuality,” but opposed to what? In Huxley’s Revisited we get the tired caricature of communists and conformity, “Throughout the Communist world tens of thousands of these disciplined and devoted young men are being turned out every year from hundreds of conditioning centers.” In STNG, the Borg epitomize McCarthyite stereotypes. Julia Witwer describes the Borg function as “a hive full of pure white ‘worker bodies.’” The Borg Cube is commanded by a “collective” consciousness, as opposed to the regimented command on the Enterprise. The Borg are mindless, efficient, and rational—all supposed “characteristics” of socialism. We are asked to root for Picard’s immense individualism that overcomes the Borg reprogramming. Political cynicism is encouraged every time the Borg pronounce their culture’s superiority by the fact that they’re “equal.” The message is clear: instead of saying that people, free of the constraints imposed by the State, would never accept inequality, they are out to prove the opposite: it would require the deadening of human nature for humans to accept equality. However, Christopher Hitchens nails the hypocrisy:

The enemies of socialism never ceased to sneer about its supposed attachment to regimentation and uniformity, whereas its real history is full of great moments when it actually broke open the “barracks” system of factories and slums, places where humans are actually treated like machines—to say nothing of its opposition to militarism and imperialism, two other features of the old world which involved regimenting and conscripting people while using them as property, or as subjects in grand experiments.

The socialist movement enabled universal suffrage, the imposition of limits upon exploitation, and the independence of colonial and subject populations. Where it succeeded, one can be proud of it. Where it failed—as in the attempt to stop the First World War and later to arrest the growth of fascism—one can honorably regret its failure.

While the 50’s paranoia films were much more blatant examples, its political agenda made it much easier to dismiss. Their reactionary implications do not allow them to stand the test of time. The films are now novelty, their message anachronistic at best. On the other hand, the dystopian stories are continually held up as human nature, its passages readily called upon in times of distress. While their intentions were unmistakably humanitarian, liberalism accepts that economic and social equality go against human nature. And the more we attempt to fight against this “truth,” the more inevitable totalitarianism becomes. For them, what it means to be human is the individual struggle in spite of a solution. It is the compulsion to resist tyranny, but not the possibility. Every attempt at revolution, instead, leads only to conformity and terror.

The main criticism levelled at Danny Boyle's under appreciated film was how much it borrowed from Kubrick's 2001 and Ridley Scott's Alien. However, I'll argue that what sets Sunshine a part from its peers and predecessors, is its decisive break with genre conventions.

Screenwriter Alex Garland made it clear that his story was about atheism. Rather than the Icarus system, or some other technological "Other," it was in fact Man's superstitions made out to be monstrous.

The question the film poses is this: Does mankind deserve to survive, in spite of the wishes of God (or nature)?

In the reality of the film, the universe made its decision. The earth no longer needs to survive, and its power source begins to die off. But because of our technological advances, we've theoretically come up with a way to preserve ourselves for a little while longer. Is it arrogant of us? Are we going against some sort of "plan?"

Icarus 1 huddles together in humility and sacrifices themselves to the Sun, while Pinbacker bides his time, ensuring that God's plan goes through without our meddling. Here, it is human irrationality being posed as the problem, and our ability to understand and act on nature presented as a virtue.

No other visual fleshes this theme out better than Capa's reach for the bomb. Here is Man, caught in between its past and its future, fighting desperately to survive.

While other stories answer the question of what it means to be human with appeals to pre-history, Sunshine answers it this way: what makes us human is our will to survive.


Science fiction is a genre that lends itself to allegory most easily. Its fantastical exaggerations allow enough detachment to see through the purposefully confusing present. But that’s not to say that its conclusions are free from the politics of its time. Capitalism tore down the intellectual authority and dependency on the Church, but because it could not deliver a classes society, illusions were still necessary. The fear of “rationality” is really a fear of human audacity. It dismisses those who believe that it is possible to reign in all of society’s technology and wealth and use it to transform our own nature. There can be no declaration that is universal to the human condition other than change. As Antonio Gramsci put it:

We can see that in putting the question "what is man?" what we mean is: what can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he "make himself," can he create his own life? We maintain therefore that man is a process and, more exactly, the process of his actions. If you think about it, the question itself "what is man?" is not an abstract or "objective" question. It is born of our reflection about ourselves and about others, and we want to know, in relation to what we have thought and seen, what we are and what we can become; whether we really are, and if so to what extent, "makers of our own selves," of our life and of our destiny. And we want to know this "today," in the given conditions of today, the conditions of our daily life, not of any life or any man

Capitalist ideology has created a very interesting contradiction—arguing on the one hand that the individual chooses whether he/she succeeds or fails in life, while fervently denying our capacity to collectively choose our future. Everywhere we are urged to buy into the American Dream, and deny the world we actually dream of.

If I were one of the celestial bodies, I would look with complete detachment upon this miserable ball of dust and dirt. I would shine upon the good and the evil alike. But I am a man. World history which to you, dispassionate gobbler of science, to you, book-keeper of eternity, seems only a negligible moment in the balance of time, is to me everything! As long as I breathe, I shall fight for the future
-Leon Trotsky

Rejoinder to Paul D'amato's attack on The Dark Knight

Paul's response to "Batman's Never-Ending Fight"
http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/28/views-brief

If the SW insists on maintaining a petty ultra left approach to the superhero genre, its opinion will remain useless, for it refuses on principle to glean any deeper readings from the material.

But of course, the SW wants to have it both ways. They want to deride Bruce Wayne for being a billionaire who fights "crime," while they praise to the sky a billionaire weapons manufacturer who fights "terrorists" in Afghanistan.

Paul D'amato's attempt to engage in amateur film criticism was pathetic. After declaring "theses" as if he were Lenin, Paul stumbles on to the novel concept that "the Batman story inherently glorifies conservative vigilantism--it is the whole premise of the story."

The whole premise of the superhero genre is vigilantism. Paul pretends to make a point, but doesn't.

Go down the line, from Spider-Man to Superman, even the most progressive of the bunch, the X-Men, are vigilantes who work within the logic of present day class society. They all inherently buy into the logic. The fact that they have powers means they inevitably over step their bounds.

If the SW decides to retroactively review the "Superman Returns" film, will it insist that it's giving a pass to Bush because he can hear (meaning spy) on every living voice on the planet? Is he a representation of some sort of satellite system we want to install? Or maybe that's reading into it too much. Knowing Paul's depth, we'd have a whole digression on the imperialist colors of his uniform.

It is a shame that Paul wants to downplay the scene in the ferries. First, the criminals are the heroes. They decide to throw out the detonator. Sure Nolan plays on current fears of the "black" inmate, but he does so only to challenge those ideas. Did Paul expect the passengers on the ferry to be conscious of how ideology plays on their "common sense"?

It requires real life to challenge those assumptions. So you have civilians arguing that those men "made their choice" and deserve the consequences. But as the clock ticks, the people realize the prisoners have made another choice--not to kill them in spite of the consequences.

And it's entirely petty to argue the fact that the social makeup of the ferries was a cross class one. Did millionaire Sean Penn not go into the flood waters of Katrina? DId millionaire Kanye West not call out Bush, while appealing to the better of our nature? Sure most of us don't live the "good life," but don't tell me that the only message to be drawn from that scene is a patriotic, reactionary one.

Human nature is not as corrupt as common sense tells us. People won't just turn on each other when things get tough. The Joker should not be seen as a real criminal, or "terrorist," but as the counter posed argument. The misanthropic nihilist, whose ideas predominate too much amongst the intellectuals in the movement.

On the other end of the spectrum however, is ultra leftism. An infantile disorder that finds nothing worthwhile about a story that the rest of the country has been captivated by--missing an opportunity to battle for ideas.

"Batman's Never-Ending Fight" Jeff and I respond to Joe Allen's review of The Dark Knight in the Socialist Worker

Joe Allen's original review
http://socialistworker.org/2008/07/31/batmans-war-of-terror

It’s unfortunate that critics of The Dark Knight on the right and on the left have alleged the film props up George W. Bush’s “war on terror.” It seems unlikely in this political climate, in which the majority of the country has turned hostile to Bush’s imperial hubris, that any successful pop culture phenomenon would go against this current. Joe Allen’s review is fraught with petty ultra-left criticisms, unnecessarily pointing out Harvey Dent’s blond hair and his political characterization as a “white knight” (white emphasized). The significance of Dent’s character in the film must have been lost on Allen. Dent symbolized a movement within Gotham that represented the people’s hope for change in the city, that it could kick the criminal and the corrupt from power. So, like Allen, I’ll ask the readers: does that sound familiar? His review could have easily focused the film as an allegory for the current election.

We could have a discussion about Batman’s methods. Yes, we see intense interrogation, but nothing is ever resolved in these particular scenes. The plot plays out for the audience to see that these acts of torture by Dent and Batman didn’t stop the Joker’s killings. The film doesn’t take the problem raised by the cell-phone spying lightly either. Lucius Fox is a moral center for Bruce Wayne, and he explicitly warns Batman it is unethical and dangerous. Is Fox guilty because he went through with it anyway? Yes, but that doesn’t serve to promote Bush’s policies. Rather, it highlights the limitations a comic book crime fighter faces when forced to make unethical decisions to carry out the hero’s mission.

“Chaos” in the film isn’t meant to represent the same thing as the war on terror’s fear-mongering of “Islamic terrorism.” The fight between the Joker and Batman is over human nature, not a racist clash of civilizations. The Joker aims to prove the whole arrangement of human beings living in society is a fraud, that when the chips are down, they’ll commit unspeakable acts of depravation. The plot progresses to refute this nihilistic thesis of human nature by the conclusion of the ferries scene. The civilian boat initially argues that the convicts on the other ship deserve death because of their crimes. However, they didn’t allow themselves to have that blood on their hands. Are we going to call attention the point the film makes about the death penalty? Perhaps this is what Allen is referring to as one of the film’s “liberal pangs.”

This development actually happened independently of Batman’s direct actions; yet he is consistent in his own faith in human goodness, which is in fact progressive because without it, not only would the city’s salvation not be worth the effort, but a better society isn’t possible if human beings are by their nature corrupt.

The Dark Knight is ultimately about the limitations of the "hero." His/her existence is a reflection of a problem they can never truly solve. No matter how sacrificing, no matter how incorruptible, the inequality that allows Bruce Wayne to stay ahead of the criminal element is what guarantees that criminal element's survival. Though the Joker is presented as an unstoppable force, free from motivation and explanation, he still must make alliances with those whose criminality DO have social causes. Batman is forever locked into a fight that will never end for him. This is the tragedy of the Dark Knight, but also our opportunity to present an alternative to a system that can only go so far.

Bamboozled (2000)

It just burns me up that we're always stuck in these asinine sitcoms. And it's funny. Why is it in the opening credits of all these shows that black folks always gotta be dancing?
-Spike Lee, Washington Post 1998



For Spike Lee, the contempt had been brewing. In the interview, he described the state of black films as “coonish, clownish type work.” His widely acclaimed documentary had lost the Academy Award, and a feud between wunderkind Quentin Tarantino had erupted over Spike’s criticism of the filmmaker’s gratuitous use of the N word. Lee wanted to remind him that some still don’t find the word “trendy or slick.” Tarantino reportedly shot back at Spike, telling him, “No black people watch your films.” Samuel L. Jackson’s defense of Tarantino and jab at Lee, only served to make the polarizing filmmaker’s point more clearly. But if you didn’t get it, there at least would be Bamboozled (2000). In the film, Lee takes aim at the entertainment industry and the artists willing to prostitute themselves for a buck.

Words and stereotypes are not only painful reminders of the past, but remain essential components to reinforcing oppression. Segregation was written out of the law, however segregated schools and communities remain. The average income for black Americans in relation to their white counterparts has remained roughly the same since 1880 (black Americans make 61 percent less than the average white income). Our “Justice” system penalizes crack cocaine offenses 100 times more severely than for powder cocaine (5,000 grams of powder cocaine is equivalent to 50 grams of crack under the law). The double standard is simple: crack cocaine is the drug of choice for the predominately poor and black, while powder cocaine is the drug of recreation for the rich. With media hysteria about “crime” rising, while the actual numbers of crime was decreasing, there is no wonder why “Three Strikes Laws” were passed, filling our prisons disproportionally with poor black men. And rather than having to say the N word (unless you’re in a Tarantino movie), the media now has an arsenal of coded words to provoke fear and distrust. The historical role of racial epithets and stereotypes is to dehumanize the subject, leading to fear, hate, or paternalism. With the average black male made out to be such a threat to society, black entertainers have to be “acceptable” (i.e. bourgeois) or harmless buffoons to be successful. The result is minstrel-like entertainment, serving up essentially the same stereotypes without the black face. For Lee to make his satirical point, it seems only obvious to put the black face back on to expose what has been underneath.

For the film to expose stereotypes, the main characters are stereotypes. Dunwitty is both the corporate shark and Quentin Tarantino. He’s a white man who “knows black culture.” He’s married to a black woman (like Tarantino’s character Jimmy in Pulp Fiction), and so it’s okay for him to use racist language. Pierre Delacroix is the middle class, highly educated black man filled with self-hate, yet repressed anger. His unexpressed contempt for the industry and particularly, Dunwitty, sets the film into motion. His passive aggressive response to the racism at CNS is to create the most racist show possible in an effort to both make a satirical point and to get out of his contract. To his surprise, the show is a hit. Man Ray, standing in for the “artist” (given that his name is an obvious reference to the artist Man Ray), allows himself to be degraded by the industry and turned into Man Tan (another reference, but this time to Mantan Moreland). After a brief moral dilemma, Pierre too, begins to accept his role by accepting the racist show he created. However Lee’s broad finger pointing becomes problematic. He criticizes both gangsta rap and expressions of black anger. Mos Def’s Big Black Africa has a moment criticizing the shallowness of industry portrayals of black artists, however he is portrayed as an ignorant opportunist. The only character to bring up systemic issues on race is considered crazy and uneducated. When asked what he is rebelling against, all Big Black Africa can muster is the “system” and seemingly recycle black paranoia with “the USA is the KKK.” This demeaning look at militant black youth comes from Lee’s own class position. The voice of reason in the film is Jada Pinkett Smith’s Sloan. She’s ambitious and well educated and confidently speaks out against Dunwitty’s racism. She calmly criticizes her brother’s militancy, however she offers no solution and no systemic critique. She is the middle class liberal. In essence, she is Spike Lee (or at least, who he sees himself to be). And because of this, there is a conscious distance that needs to be made between himself/herself and the young radical.
Lee’s class position offers no way forward for seriously combating racism. The best that the liberal analysis can muster is “awareness,” reminding people that these images still hurt. This is essentially due to, as Ahmed Shawki writes in his book Black Liberation and Socialism:


Liberal acknowledgement of the problems of racism, of urban ghettos, and of Black poverty and unemployment only went so far. Because, at the heart, liberalism believes that American society and economy is not fundamentally unjust or unequal. Rather, it believes that ‘social problems’ like poverty and racism can be ameliorated with social programs that aim to fix problems on the margins of the system. So on the one hand, this led to a proliferation of programs intended to address the discrete elements of inequality, while on the other hand, this led to a series of theories seeking to blame Blacks themselves, rather than the government or structural racism, for their conditions.



There is no surprise then, that besides the entertainment and advertizing industries, the film also blames the black community for not taking enough “responsibility” in the way they present themselves. The legacy of Jim Crow meant that the black community as a whole could not amass enough wealth to pass down to future generations. The opportunities and the training were denied. Enduring institutional racism keeps schools underfunded, jobs low paying, and opportunities still out of reach. Ditching artistic integrity for a better life seems like an obvious choice. The image that sells is the one that will bring your family out of poverty. Personal responsibility has its place, but what invoking that phrase is really meant to do is distract our attention from the real question. Who decides what gets played? Who benefits from circulating stereotypes of violent, hyper sexualized, and apolitical people? The black community? The artists? Or the industry power structure? Violence and sexism in popular culture are not the products of the artists themselves, but rather are reflections of a society that is inherently violent and sexist.

Grizzly Man (2005)

Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain. Taking a close look at what's around us there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.

-Werner Herzog in Burden of Dreams

The same sentiment of contempt that was expressed in Les Blank’s 1982 documentary is carried through in Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005). The film is a character study on Timothy Treadwell, self-proclaimed “kind warrior” and self-appointed defender of the bear habitat in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. To those familiar with Treadwell’s story, it would seem as if the film was meant to ridicule. The film introduces Treadwell as a sort of absurd figure, and undoubtedly his statements are meant to rouse laughter. However, Herzog reveals much more about Timothy Treadwell and ultimately points to the barbarity and irrationality of nature, as it brutally ended the life of its own protector.


Common amongst the Green movement is a rather conscious or unconscious spiritualism. While virulently condemning anthropocentrism, many in the Green movement base their politics on anthropomorphizing nature. As if the earth had a spirit or an agenda. As if the earth had a consciousness or some sort of quality that could be "liberated." As if animals were conscious of their own extinction and that their mortality presented them with an existential dilemma. The universe is indifferent to life and the survival of this planet. Our sun will eventually obliterate the earth in its own self destruction. To say that the earth has an intrinsic interest that humanity is getting in the way of, is a spiritual one. Treadwell was a part of that romantic spiritualism, dedicating his life to protect a group of bears that only in the simplest sense knew of his presence, let alone of his agenda. At first, the verdict can only be that Treadwell was crazy, but the tragedy that Herzog’s documentary is able to reveal is why was so attracted to that particular life. Not all of Treadwell’s footage were meant to be seen. Alone in the forest, Treadwell began to use the camera as a personal testimonial: letting out his loneliness, his anger, his paranoia, and his past. We find out that Treadwell was a recovering addict, and that his newfound love of the bears was what saved him. Treadwell jumped from one addiction to another, projecting his redemption onto beings that could not speak, and therefore could never reject him. To get out of the hole he dug for himself, he needed to live for something beyond him. He needed his cause and he found it. This is a particularly human trait, one that the rest of nature is unaware of and indifferent to. After Treadwell’s death, Herzog shows two bears attacking each other. Unmercifully violent, the two bears go at each other so fiercely they defecate all over themselves. This is nature, Herzog wants to remind us. Treadwell on the other hand, goes to scene of the fight and can’t understand it. He talks to the bear as if it should’ve known better. Herzog’s documentary is both effective at providing insight to Timothy Treadwell, beyond the surface antics, while also being polemic against spiritualistic nature-worshipping.