One+One: Filmmakers Journal

New issue of One+One Filmmakers Journal OUT NOW.  Special themed issue on Pornography.  http://oneplusonejournal.co.uk/2013/02/25/issue-10-february-2013/

Includes an interview with trans pornographer Buck Angel, feminist pornographer Erika Lust, a report on the Berlin Porn Film Festival, panel discussion at the London Underground Film Festival, and articles on Curt McDowell, Larry Clarke’s Impaled and Deep Throat’s troubled Norway screening.

bradleightuque:

Another (Communist) Planet

The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project

James Marcus Tucker

(See http://filmmakersjournal.co.uk/article.php?id=56)

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In the Reagan era play, Other People’s Money by Jerry Sterner, a soulless banker destroys the livelihoods of thousands of men by buying up an ageing wire and cable manufacturing company on Long Island.  Where the struggling, but determined company founder and owner sees history, tradition, family and livelihoods, the banker sees dollar bills.  It is a timely (late 1980’s) warning about the social consequences of heartless capitalism.  Or more to the point, the inhuman cost of the immoral monetary system.  The banker, Lawrence “Larry the Liquidator” Garfield, even proudly states as much – claiming that he loves money, partly due to the fact that it doesn’t care what you do.  Capitalism is a game, and if a few thousand people have to lose, then so be it. In a last ditch effort to save his own skin, the periled company’s manager goes behind the back of the company owner and tries to do a deal with Larry that would help him win the support of the shareholders and in return, secure himself a nice lump sum when the company collapses and he ultimately loses his job.   He tells the audience guiltily, “everybody has to look after themselves”.  Larry has no such guilt, he is a true Marxian style commodity fetishist.  His mantra is “Make as much as you can. For as long as you can. Whoever has the most when he dies, WINS.” The big lesson however is that whilst Larry the Liquidator’s actions are morally dubious at best, it doesn’t mean of course, that he is acting illegally. Larry is acting within the system - albeit pushing it to its logical conclusion: human suffering.

It is easy to view Larry as a two-dimensional “bad guy” – a kind of pantomime villain.  He is certainly portrayed as such. Yet, when we look to our recent financial crisis, and the current unpopularity of bankers on Wall Street and in the City, we can see that for many, such pantomime villains really do exist.  It is easy to cry “wankers” at the men in suits, shuffling numbers around, producing nothing whilst making money off of money.  It makes us feel better.  They are, in Slavoj Žižek’sterm, a “toxic subject” to be scapegoated for society’s ills – you know, like immigrants, teenage mothers or anyone else the Daily Mail wishes to hate that particular day.  But then, we must recognise, as we do with Larry the Liquidator that the bankers were simply working within a system and taking it to its logical conclusion.  When money no longer represents true value and is no longer linked to resources, it can be made out of thin air and huge profits can be made from nothing.  To keep the system safe, “state socialism-in-reverse” is administered in the form of a bail-out when the over inflated bubble bursts; a safety-net that the poorest in society could only dream about and the system creaks along, altered, bruised, but ultimately unchanged.

Beyond the paradigm?

Between 2007 and 2011, a series of films emerged on the internet which sought to envision a world that existed beyond the economic and social reality we find ourselves in.  The documentary films, each produced by Peter Joseph, Zeitgeist(2007), Zeitgeist: Addendum (2008) and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward (2011) have spawned an internet based “activist movement” known as the Zeitgeist Movement and become internet phenomenons.  The first film in particular for its controversial and much criticised (and debunked by counter arguments on YouTube videos) views on the historical validity of Christianity, its claim (made by many others also) that 9/11 was perpetrated not by radical Islamists, but by the US government, and it’s argument that the monetary system (particularly as seen in the US and it’s Federal Reserve) was a fraudulent system designed, like religion, to keep people separate, afraid and slavish.  The sequels continue its investigation into the brokenness of the monetary system and offer a vision of an alternative system it calls a “resource based economy” focussed upon sustainability (something unimaginable in a profit driven, necessarily waste producing economy).  The films draw on an American based organisation known as the Venus Project for its ideas of an alternative society.  The Venus Project can best be described by quoting its Wikipedia page:

According to (Futurist Jacque Fresco), poverty, crime, corruption and war are the result of scarcity created by the present world’s profit-based economic system. He theorizes that the profit motive also stifles the progress of socially beneficial technology. Fresco claims that the progression of technology, if it were carried on independently of its profitability, would make more resources available to more people by producing an abundance of products and materials. This new-found abundance of resources would, according to Fresco, reduce the human tendency toward individualism, corruption, and greed, and instead rely on people helping each other.[i]

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward was released in January this year on DVD, in selected theatres and on the internet for free streaming and it is this film I wish to focus upon primarily in this essay.  But it is important to at least consider the first filmZeitgeist in more detailbecause it is with this film that the movement became widespread and caught the attention of the world at large.  It is perhaps a shame that Peter Joseph decided to create his first documentary in such an expository, propagandistic and agitprop manner.  For the movement’s ultimate aim – that of persuading the world to rid itself of its unsustainable, unfair and poverty inducing system, is at risk of being forever tarnished by the first film’s questionable standards and practices of production.  The film makes absolutely no recourse to even-handedness in its attack on the validity of Jesus’ existence.  Instead of crafting an argument from scholarly sources or expert interviews, we hear Peter Joseph’s voice-over set to cartoon imagery illustrating the point he makes.  The dots it tries to join are often strained in the extreme – for example, in trying to persuade us that the ancient worship of the Sun morphed itself into the worship of Jesus the “Son of God”, it tries to draw a homophonic link between “Son” and “Sun”. Yet this fails to take into account that this link could not be drawn in the original language of the Greeks or Hebrews.  The very real questions which can, and should be raised about the validity to Biblical “truth” are washed away in sensational  and easily attested claims, swift editing, pacey music and flashing graphics.  As much as one may wish to agree with Peter Joseph, and find the film’s desire to make the viewer question assumed truths worthy of applause, it is impossible not to regret his methods and questionable source material.  The claims it makes about 9/11 – primarily that international bankers were behind the terrorist attacks in New York to create fear and a social climate amenable to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are nothing new - the internet documentary film Loose Change and its reedits/sequels have made the same (watered down with each edit) claims since 2005.  Again, the very real problems, mysteries and political scandals surrounding the events that day and in the following “War on Terror” years are ignored for sensational fear mongering about the hidden illuminate supposedly hell-bent on creating a one-world government. 

A full blown dedication to conspiracy theory seems to be the first film’s prime intent.  As with all conspiracy theories, it ultimately relies on the viewers desire to feel as if they are being let in on a secret – and is found in good company along with moon landings, JFK and aliens amongst us.   For me, it is a shame because what Zeitgeist ends up being is so much more worthy than its conspiracy roots.  Perhaps Peter Joseph was unaware at first that his film would be followed by more traditional forms of documentary story-telling in less conspiratorial sequels that would be more focussed on the monetary system and the Venus Project’s concepts. Or perhaps he was making his bold statements in the hope that people would be moved to anger by a general “man behind the curtain” threat, and thus more open to the idea that society was sick and needed to change.  His thinking would seem to be: Destroy everything they think they know about the world (or at least major cultural parts of it), then they can be prepared to entertain an alternative. 

By its third instalment, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, Peter Joseph utilises a more interactive documentary approach – interviewing notable and accredited thinkers, including scientists (such as Robert Sapolsky from Stanford University), physicians, university professors and philosophers. His ultimate desire is yet again to persuade the viewer of something they may not have considered.  But unlike the near impossible to verify claims found in the first film -  such as Jesus’ twelve disciples not being human but representing the twelve signs of the zodiac - here Joseph has hard evidence and real examples to back up his claims.  Right from the beginning, the system as we know it begins to crumble under Joseph’s findings. 

Products of our environment

In an effort to show how human beings are not innately predetermined by their genes the film begins with scientist Robert Sapolsky describing the nature vs. nurture debate as a “false dichotomy.” He states that “it is virtually impossible to understand how biology works, outside the context of environment.”  We are shown that it is neither nature nor nurture that shapes human behaviour but both are linked contributory factors. The interviewees’ state that even with genetic predispositions to diseases, the expression and manifestation of disease is largely determined by environmental stressors.  One study discussed, showed that newly born babies are more likely to die if they are not touched and another posits that if babies are not subjected to light within the first few years of birth, their eyes will not develop the ability to see.  Humans, it seems, are products of their environment.  Environmentally, certain things must happen, and certain things shouldn’t, if a child is to develop healthily (physically and emotionally).  If we develop within a world where resources are scarce, where inequality is high and our human dignity is not assumed – then criminal behaviour as a means to survive is endemic, social levels of health are lower and the standard of living as a whole is negatively affected.

To add more stress to this point (and to show these findings are not exclusive to handpicked scientists for the film), in a recent BBC TV lecture entitled Justice: Fairness and the Big Society, Harvard University Professor Michael Sandel highlighted how in countries such as Denmark and Germany, social mobility was higher than in countries such as the UK and in the USA that have less equal societies.  It seemed as if higher levels of inequality within the system meant it was harder and less likely for people to move up and out of their lower income group (so much for the American Dream!)  In similar findings, a section of Zeitgeist: Moving Forwardproduces graphs with a mean average line highlighting how in less equal societies, the health socioeconomic gradient becomes steeper – even in countries with universal healthcare.  How can this be so?  The simple and everyday reality of stress associated with poverty it seems, plays a large part in the health determination of an individual.  But for society as a whole too, the findings presented from equalitytrust.org.uk are striking  – graphs present steep gradients representing how in less equal societies, life expectancy decreases, drug abuse is higher, mental illness is more common, social capital (the ability of people to trust each other) is lower, average educational scores are lower, homicide rates are higher, rates of imprisonment are higher – the list of negatively affected symptoms goes on and on in less equal societies, including obesity and infant mortality.

The monetary system

Human inequality across the globe is seen as a product of the monetary system.   Naomi Klein has already done some wonderful work exposing the hidden out-of-sight consequence of our branded consumer culture: slave-labour. But inZeitgeist: Moving Forward the human consequences of this inequality is highlighted by referencing the plight of AIDS victims in Africa and contrasting it with the relative wellness of people with HIV in the west who have a virtually normal life expectancy thanks to access to new anti-retroviral drugs.  The problems are not born from the lack of available drugs, but by the system which demands a certain level of income to afford them.  The film makes a stark claim, but one I agree with.  It is not HIV that is killing over 1 million people a year in Africa – it is the socio-economic system which denies them treatment - plain and simple. 

The idea that capitalism creates a balance through an “invisible hand of God” – in the words of philosopher and economist Adam Smith - is shown to be unrealistic. This idea that the market somehow, religiously causes equilibrium in fact makes the system, in effect, God itself.   Joseph explains that the beginning of this system was at least based upon tangible goods - the supply and demand of desired material objects. From the film: “Adam Smith never fathomed that the most profitable economic sector on the planet would eventually be in the arena of financial trading – or so called ‘investment’ – where money itself is simply gained by the movement of other money, in an arbitrary game which holds zero productive merit to society”.  In our society money is treated as a commodity in and of itself!  Just ask Larry the Liquidator.  This profit interest has separated from any form of life value.  We use GDP as an indicator of health – but GDP is just a money sequence, an economic extraction – and has no connection to the reality of human happiness or need fulfilment.    For example, in the USA, health care spending was 17.3% of GDP in 2009 ($2.5 trillion spent), creating a positive effect upon this economic measure – i.e. lots of services offered / money spent = higher GDP.  But of course, what does spending on health care really represent but the money being spent on illness treatment? The USA’s GDP (market value of its entire goods and services) being so highly saturated with products to treat illness could not be seen, surely, as the sign of a healthy society. 

Much time is spent discussing the flawed and arbitrary logic of the money supply, debt, inflation and interest. We are shown how there is no profit without problem solving – hence, no profit without problems.  Crime (the private prison system), war (weapons trade) and sickness (health care) keep our economic system going along with consumption which is fundamentally wasteful and unsustainable. We are told that to make the most sustainable, efficient products would be mathematically impossible if the manufacturer is to be competitive. This reality can be seen by simply visiting the mountains of landfills spreading across the world.  This wastefulness is not necessary however – most of the discarded material is primarily due to the breakdown of smaller parts within larger goods.  For example, a chip inside your computer, a LED panel behind your TV etc.  In an efficient conservative society where the world’s finite resources are considered, these parts could be fixed to extend the life of the good.  However, Zeitgeist tells us that efficiency, sustainability and preservation are enemies of our economic system.

Along with this unsustainability, we are reminded how 18,000 children a day die from starvation, how global poverty rates have doubled since the 1970s and that the top 1% own more than 40% of the planet’s wealth.

A solution?

Simply, the Venus Project.  Unfortunately, Zeitgeist offers us no idea on how we can attain this new earth. We are told that a moneyless society built with sustainability, technology and human equality in mind could rise from the ground up, if we were beginning anew.  But as to how we create it after thousands of years of civilization, we are left clueless.  What this new earth looks like, however, is quite specific – from the types of technology we use to the methods of power production, farming and the shape and layout of the city.  The computer created designs show sci-fi looking buildings surrounded by acres of green space, all neatly and cleanly laid – there is not a hair out of place, a dish left to be washed! 

In the Venus Project’s civilization, such social problems created by money and inequality do not materialise.  In answer to the cynics concern over jobs – well, as most jobs would be obsolete as technology overtakes, most people will not need jobs.  The jobs that remain necessary will be filled by volunteers because such jobs will be essential to the continuation of a society that works so well for all people.  It does sound a little unrealistic, goes the objection. What about simply lazy people?  Again, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward informs us, laziness is environmental – not innate.  Just like inequality, it is a product of our current system, and it is easy to understand this point.  In a system that leaves people behind, and one finds oneself with scarce options (for example, sitting on the couch or working at McDonald’s 12 hours a day for minimum wage), laziness becomes a very real, very appealing option.  The motivation to do something does not reside with profit alone.  To anchor this point, Joseph reminds us that children are probably the most active and inquisitive of humans. They are not motivated by money, greedy or lazy. The need to make money as adults takes over from this desire to create, and we become slaves to the profit drive.

In regards to profit motive, some interesting information has become available from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.  A study held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave a group of students a set of challenges – memorising, word puzzles, spatial puzzles etc.  Students were incentivised with different rewards - being offered low, through medium, to high monetary amounts for success.  Contrary to all expected outcomes, where the task demanded even the smallest amount of cognitive skill, the promise of a larger reward led to poorer performance.  The research was funded by the Federal Reserve Bank, so could not have been expected (by cynics) to be biased towards an anti-profit outcome.  This test has been duplicated numerous times using higher levels of rewards – such as with workers in rural India – with the same outcome. Money, it seems, is not the incentive we have so easily assumed it is.  But even more, when a task requires complicated and creative conceptual thinking, large monetary incentives actually reduce the capacity for people to succeed. When money is taken out of the equation, so that people are concentrating on the work itself, and not on the money they will achieve from the task, challenge and mastery, along with the desire to make a contribution are the reasons people seem to continually behave outside of economic expectations of human behaviour.[ii]

The point Zeitgeist: Moving Forward makes, and makes incredibly well is that everything we think we know about humans is because as humans, we exist in THIS system. Every problem thrown up against the idea that we can work together for a common good relies on examples from human behaviour in THIS system. If a totally reworked system was to magically appear when we wake up tomorrow, I have every confidence that so many of the worlds ills could be wiped away, that human laziness could be replaced with a moneyless and profit exempt desire to work.  But how do we get there? What physical and social revolution needs to happen, and who do we have to persuade in order to change it? 

The subtitle of the final film “Moving Forward” is perhaps misinforming.  The second film in the trilogy Zeitgeist: Addendum, like its successor, detailed the catastrophic and unsustainable monetary system, and highlighted the merits of the Venus Project.  I saw it at a screening in Brighton not long after its release.  The experience was enlightening primarily because of the arguments it raised in the post-screening discussion.  It seemed the (largely academic and left-leaning) audience were onside with the films general premise and sharing in the anger from its attack on the monetary system, its revelation about the USA’s economically driven involvement in South American coups and calls for certain product boycotts, but were at odds over the merits and realities of the Venus Project. So it was with excitement I viewed the very promising “Moving Forward” finale.  I was expecting, perhaps, a how-to approach for transformation.  Instead, we get more information on the ills of the current system, and the perceived merits of the Venus Project - notably, to the exclusion of other ideas or projects.  The Venus Project’s own website does go into more detail, however, about how such a society can be realised, and the steps they are taking already to experiment with their ideas.

I did appreciate the second film’s commitment to the concept of interdependence.  The film perceived the Earth as a singular living organism and, like the first film, played to the audience’s emotions by asking us to consider the human being as a part of the whole, distracted by dimensional distinctions (religion, politics, race, wealth etc.) above our common, universal concerns as humans.  This idea was beautifully highlighted for me in a segment of the Canadian documentary film Examined Life (2008) by Astra Taylor.  Philosopher Judith Butler walks through the streets of San Francisco with disability activist and painter Sunaura Taylor discussing disability. They decide to go into a clothing store where Taylor, physically handicapped, navigates her way through the physical actions of trying on and buying a sweater.  Afterwards, Butler raises the very point that “help” – often looked down upon in our individualistic society – is something we all need, considered disabled or not.  We are an interdependent species that cannot exist without the “help” or abilities of others.  Butler asks rhetorically “Do we or do we not live in a world where we help each other…assist each other with basic needs?”  Zeitgeist would argue the case that under the current system, the answer is no – or at least not if it’s to the detriment of that system. 

 

Rebranded Future

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward takes great pains to argue that it exists beyond the current political paradigm.  They say the future it proposes goes beyond left or right.  But here is Karl Marx in The German Ideology (1845):

“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

If the paradigm it aims to raise beyond is the historically dominant polarity, then its claim is technically correct.  Yet one feels that Joseph does protest too much.  Zeitgeist, perhaps unknowingly, is waving the little red book for pure Communism – a stateless, classless society where people exist free from alienations and inequality.  To quote from Alain Badiou’sCommunist Hypothesis:

“‘Communist’ means, first, that the logic of class…is not inevitable; it can be overcome…a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away.” [iii]

Perhaps in Joseph’s desire to escape the trappings of the (incorrect) label “socialist” (nothing less than an insult in his homeland) he denies the roots of his film’s ideology. These roots can be found neither in the realm of totalitarian Statism in any of its various historical guises (Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism etc), nor socialism, which, to quote Negri, is “nothing other than one of the forms taken by capitalist management of the economy and of power”[iv].  It is however a form of (arguably) unrealised Communism as Marx envisaged, whether Joseph likes it or not.  It was the idea of Communism after all, that saw the withering away of the State.  The role the State has to play in the transition towards such a society from the standpoint of capitalism has been, of course, contestedand fought over by thinkers engaged in emancipatory politics since Marx, and this battle ground is probably not one thatZeitgeist wishes to engage its populist audience with.  With such “leftist” associations, the historical roots of the Venus Project and Zeitgeist movement could never be admitted if the ideas that drive them are to be palatable for a western (and specifically American) audience.  The Venus Project andZeitgeist do indeed reach for an alternative to so much of our ancestors (and our own) lived social experience – but it does so mostly by repackaging and rebranding an old, failed to (yet) materialise idea for the 21^st Century.

Whether successful in fermenting a realised revolution or not, we can at least be thankful for The Venus Project, this movement and its documentaries’ existence.  They remain, for now, as ideas and possibilities.  As we have seen with the revolutions and civil unrest in the Arab world recently, the internet as a tool for social consciousness, awareness and activism is enabling information and ideas to be shared at a rate impossible to have comprehended even 10 years ago. Zeitgeist rests, for the moment within this sphere – consciousness-raising. 

I was discussing The Venus Project with my boyfriend in public yesterday, and somebody nearby looked up and said “The Venus Project?  Oh yes I saw it on Zeitgeist…but it wouldn’t work. Without prisons or laws, what do you do with bad people?”  It was interesting to recognise how such views on human nature and defeatist attitudes on the path to human emancipation can stop people before they even begin to dream.  So in response I wish to quote Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the aforementioned RSA.  In his speech entitled21^st Century Enlightenment, he says “Creative people who want to make a difference have a million and one opportunities and distractions.  To engage them means an ethic that is intolerant to negativity, rigid thinking and self promotion, and instead keeps them constantly in touch with the words of the anthropologist Margaret Mead – never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

 

For more information on the Zeitgeist Movement and the three films, see www.zeitgeistmovie.com

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 _{[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project, Sourced 16-03-2011}

_{[ii] Findings from the The RSA.org See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&sns=tw}

_{[iii] Badiou, A., The Communist Hypothesis, http://newleftreview.org/?view=2705}

_{[iv] Negri, A., and Guattari, F., Communists like Us, Autonomedia, 1985, Page 167}

Just a Spoonful of Sugar…

Dialectics of Work and Play in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins.

(see http://filmmakersjournal.co.uk/article.php?id=55)

Bradley Tuck

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Hike! Ugh! Hike! Ugh! Hike! Ugh! Hike!

When other folks have gone to bed

We slave until we’re almost dead

We’re happy-hearted roustabouts

The Roustabout Song in Dumbo

Just whistle while you work

Whistle While you Work in Snow White

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig in a mine the whole day through

To dig dig dig dig dig dig dig is what we like to do

Heigh Ho in Snow White

In every job that must be done

There is an element of fun

You find the fun and snap!

The job’s a game

A Spoonful of Sugar in Mary Poppins

Now, as the ladder of life ‘as been strung

You might think a sweep’s on the bottommost rung

Though I spends me time in the ashes and smoke

In this ‘ole wide world there’s no ‘appier bloke

Chim chiminey

Chim chiminey

Chim chim cher-ee!

A sweep is as lucky

As lucky can be

Chim chim cher-ee! in Mary Poppins

In Disney’s anti-Nazi propaganda cartoon, Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943), Donald Duck wakes up in Nazi Germany where he is forced to continually salute the fuehrer, even while he works 48 hours a day on an assembly line. There is no let up for poor Donald, work dominates and alienates him. Overworked Donald is driven crazy; his world becomes a surreal cacophony of Nazi iconography. Donald wakes up to discover that he is in America; he runs over and embraces the miniature statue of liberty on his windowsill. Nazi Germany pushes the protestant work ethic to its extreme. There is no room to whistle while you work here; work is nothing but a tiring, alienating experience. The lines “Arbeit macht frei” or “work will set you free” is entirely perverse in Nazi Germany. Whatever truth resides in the formula, the Nazi reality is quite the contrary.

How about over the other side of the Atlantic? What sort of alternative would Donald face under the dominance of his rich Uncle Scrooge? Throughout the early Disney films the theme of work is continually addressed. Disney films constantly explore the possibility of transforming work into play. Work must be transformed, as if by magic, into a game. Pleasure in work can be found in a host of Disney characters (as exemplified in the quotes above). Here, work is largely a positive thing; provided you know how to do it well, it can be spiffing good fun-diddily-fun fun!

It would be wrong, however, to assume that all Disney films have a single message: they don’t! If Snow White and Mary Poppins seem to promote finding pleasure in work, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia (1940)and The Sword in the Stone (1963) are exceptions to this rule. In The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Micky Mouse attempts to seize the production process itself, transforming his miserable alienating servitude into a magical enchanting spectacle, but he fails and must face the wrath of the sorcerer when he returns. Maybe Micky had failed to learn the transformative power of the whistle; instead he had attempted to harness the power of magic (as if it were technology) in order to overcome work itself[i]. In a parallel vain, yet contrary conclusion, Merlin in The Sword in the Stone uses magic to overcome work. When Walt is expected to wash huge amount of dishes, Merlin sets his magic to work and the plates leap into the air. “But I am supposed to do it…” exclaims Walt. “No one will know the difference son, who cares as long as the work gets done” says Merlin paving the way for work free ethics of beatnik bears (The Jungle Book, 1967) and carefree cats (The Aristocats, 1970). Work is not so much transformed into play, but eliminated altogether. If there is not necessarily one clear message that runs throughout these films, there is however a theme: the relationship between work and play. It is with this revelation that we should pay a visit to number 17, Cherry Tree Lane…

Tension and Unrest in the Banks Household.

It is 1910 and a storm is brewing in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Banks. Tension and unrest is bubbling away under the surface of the Banks family, although they are far too uptight to notice it. For this bourgeois family is run in accordance with the principles of “Tradition, discipline and rule”, they have no time to show how they really feel. At least that is how Mr. Banks would like it. Mr. Banks, a banker by trade, believes in banking so much that he wishes to run his home in the exact same way (with precision, consistency and as little emotion as possible.) Mrs. Banks is a defender of woman’s rights and has a somewhat more relaxed attitude. Yet in both characters there is a kind of bourgeois solipsism, or in Mary Poppins’ words, an inability to “see past the end of their nose.” George Banks is the prime example of this; his consciousness is conditioned almost completely by the ideology of banking and he appears unable to comprehend any perspective outside his own. His family is therefore treated in a formal and emotionless manner. When the admiral comments on the weather saying, “Bit chancy, I’d say. The wind’s coming up and the glass is falling.” Banks simply replies “Good, good, good”. Banks only has ears for banking and is unable to register any threat of impending crises outside of finance. His consciousness is merely directed to the forward march of capital. Slavoj Žižek seems to encapsulate this capitalist consciousness.

“All one has to do here is to compare the reaction to the financial meltdown of September 2008 with the Copenhagen conference of 2009: save the planet from global warming (alternatively: save the AIDS patients, save those dying for lack of funds for expensive treatments and operations, save the starving children, and so on) –all this can wait a little bit, but the call “Save the banks!” is an unconditional imperative which demands and receives immediate action.”[ii]

In Mr. Banks’ outlook, everything else can wait (even, maybe, if the threat is the entire destruction of life on earth); all that matters is the practical, level-headedness of capital!

Mrs. Banks, however, fairs only a little better. A defender of women’s rights she may be, but her feminism is also shortsighted. Keeping ‘The cause’ out of the sight of Mr. Banks (knowing how much it infuriates him) she relies upon female nannies and servants to look after the children. She is so dedicated to the cause that she is unable to perceive her own complicity in the subjugation of the women who work for her, not to mention the children who invariably go unnoticed by both parents. The limitation to their approach is reflected in their criteria for nannies. After the most recent nanny has lost the children and quit, Mrs. Banks says to Mr. Banks “I’m sorry, dear, but when I chose Katie Nanna I thought she would be firm with the children. She looked so solemn and cross.” George banks replies “Winifred, never confuse efficiency with a liver complaint” What both parents seem to have failed to notice is that rather than it being the case that the nannies have not been strict enough, instead they have been too strict, never really getting the children on their side or thinking on the children’s level. What is needed it a kind, tolerant, nanny with a cheery disposition. Enter Mary Poppins.[iii]

Mary Poppins (or How to Tidy the Nursery)

Mary Poppins, practically perfect in everyway, descends from the heavens to preach the message of work as play. She becomes a nanny for the Banks family and is introduced to Jane and Michael Banks (the children).  She sets to work getting the children to tidy the nursery. This is not a mere task, but a lesson. Here, Mary Poppins teaches the child how to transform work into a game. It is a strikingly different work ethic to the stern formalities of their prudent father. For Mary Poppins “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” One should learn to enjoy work, to transform it into fun via the power of imagination. Of course, it is hard here not to think of Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark in which Selma, a Czech immigrant in America, is rapidly going blind and working as many hours a day as she can to pay for an operation for her son as the blindness is hereditary and he is likely to suffer the same fate. Yet the factory work itself is incredibly alienating and in order to get through, she makes a Disneyan move; she imagines she is in a musical. Here the work ethic of Mary Poppins is put into practice: Don’t just accept the drudgery of your working condition, instead turn it into a game! Thus the clatter, crash and clack of heavy machinery become the soundtrack for a work-time fantasy.

A Trip to the Bank

In Balzac, an artist tries to marry into a bourgeois family; he carelessly remarks that money is there to be spent—since it is round, it must roll. The father of the family, reacting with the deepest mistrust, replies: ‘If it is round for prodigals, it is flat for economical people who pile it up.’ The opposite approaches of the bohemian and the rentier (by the end of the tale they have comfortably fused) converge in images of the concrete pleasures of money. Both are thinking of the ways in which hands unconsciously encircle coins, a physical sensation. One man high-spiritedly lets them roll loose, the other deliberately stacks them on top of each other, with greedy precision. The spendthrift and the miser both feel the coins between their fingers.

Joachim Kalka - Money as we Knew It?[iv]

The children are not the only people that Mary Poppins wants to educate. Mary Poppins manipulates Mr. Banks into taking the children to the bank. He, believing it to be his own idea, declares it to be a “capital idea, a perfect medicine for all this slipshod, sugary female thinking they get around here all day long.” The children, excited that their father is going to show them attention, do not interpret the trip in quite the same way as him. For them it is an opportunity to see the city and all the sights. The city bifurcates: for the Banker, the city is the site of business and commerce, for the children the city is a space for “seeing sights”, for seeing things with no obvious practical purpose that excite and enthrall them; sites of aesthetic curiosities and fun. Throughout the film these two perspectives are forced into dialectal conflict. Mary Poppins, no doubt, fuels this conflict when she points out to the children one of Mr. Bank’s many blindspots: the little old bird woman selling bags of crumbs to feed the birds. To their father, the miser, this is a waist of money, and simply passes him by. Their father has no time for charity and abhors the waste of money, thus the old lady selling her wares means nothing to him. For the children, she becomes the focal point: the very centre of the city. For the father the bank is the centre of the city, for the children it is the little old bird lady. This doubling of the city draws their coins in different directions. For the father, money is for investing and therefore money should be deposited in the bank, whilst for the children it is the capacity to buy a particular pleasurable experience: ‘feeding the birds’. When Michael asks to use this tuppence to feed the birds, his father replies “Michael, I will not permit you to throw your money away. When we get to the bank I will show you what can be done with your tuppence and I think you’ll find it extremely interesting.” On arrival at the bank a further doubling of perspectives takes place. Mr. Banks introduces his children to the chairman of the bank, the elder Mr. Dawes as “a giant in the world of finance”. Michael is puzzled by the father’s description and asks himself aloud “A giant?” The father perceiving the world in terms of capital and status sees in the elder Mr. Dawes a giant. Michael, by contrast, does not perceive this class differentiation, he sees only a hunched wizened old man. If for the father sees the banker dressed up in all his class paraphernalia, Michael sees that the emperor is naked; he is simply a human being like you and I. In this sense, Michael is unable to perceive the unconditional imperative that motivates his father: capital. Rather Michael is driven by a childlike communism where all social customs and hierarchies are reduced to equivalence. These two perspectives come to a head, the children are not persuaded by the opportunities of investment and want to feed the birds; the bankers want to invest. Here the fathers’ solipsistic consciousness is put to the test. Being unable to see beyond the end of his nose he cannot empathise with his own children and has no way of reassuring and communicating with them. As a consequence, this split of perspective turns into a conflict. A scuffle breaks out which frightens the customers into withdrawing all their savings from the bank. A run on the bank ensues. A mere father-son conflict over a tuppense turns into a crisis of capitalism itself. Mr. Banks, unable to manage his own domestic conflicts, manages to muddle his home life with his work and in the process loses his own children, who, frightened and confused, run out of the bank. His whole frame of reference is capital and economic calculability and thus he is unable to perceive the very needs of his own children. Things go full circle and now the father is placed in the same place as the nannies he earlier scorned. Meanwhile the children are thrust into the dark underside of London’s financial capitalism: the slums. Here the reality that remains hidden in the two perspectives of London (the sight seer and the miser) is revealed: the brutal, miserable life of the excluded.

The Lucky Chimney Sweep.

The children are lost in London and with this disorientation, the secure idyllic magical London disappears and, maybe for the first time in the film, there is a genuine sense of danger. From a dog’s bark to an old lady who appears ready to sell the children into slavery, the film takes an unsettling turn. We are faced with a London without the security of money or the safe distance of the sightseer. However, this is a Walt Disney picture and brutal confrontations with reality are not their inclination. We do not remain in this brutal reality for long. It is as if an alternative vision of poverty is needed, one which is less dark and haunting. The figure of Burt, the chimney sweep, easily fits the bill; he is more a middle class fantasy of what the working classes are like than a real pauper. Burt appears offering a safety net, which momentarily disappeared. In this pinnacle scene Bert makes a speech that reveals the film’s overall work ethic.

“You know, begging your pardon, but the one my heart goes out to is your father. There he is in that cold, heartless bank day after day, hemmed in by mounds of cold, heartless money. I don’t like to see any living thing caged up. […] They make cages in all sizes and shapes, you know. Bank-shaped some of ‘em, carpets and all.”

It is not the Chimney sweeps and the poor that are the real exploited, but the bankers and wealthy, those weighed down by money. The chimney sweeps, free from the chains of money, can leap across the skyline singing and dancing: they are the truly liberated! They know that just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down and they can do the most horrible jobs, because they know that just a little song will help turn the job into a game. Thus, in the world of Mary Poppins the worker and the poor are the truly liberated. In contrast the banker doesn’t have such privilege and is weighed down by money and respectability. In light of this it is worth bearing in mind Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s account of Odysseus’ encounter with the Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey. When sailing home, Odysseus must pass the Sirens whose lure “remains overpowering. No one who hears their song can escape.”

“[Odysseus] knows only two possibilities of escape. One he prescribes to his comrade when faced with the beautiful He plugs their ears with wax and orders them to row with all their might. Anyone who wishes to survive must not listen to the temptation of the irrecoverable, and is unable to listen only if he is unable to hear. Society has always made sure that this was the case. Workers must look ahead with alert concentration and ignore anything which lies to one side. The urge toward distraction must be grimly sublimated in redoubled exertions. Thus the workers are made practical. The other possibility Odysseus chooses for himself, the landowner, who has others to work for him. He listens, but does so while bound helplessly to the mast, and the stronger the allurement grows the more tightly he has himself bound, just as later the bourgeois denied themselves happiness the closer it drew to them with the increase in their own power. What he hears has no consequences for him; he can signal to his men to untie him only by movements of his head, but it is too late. His comrades, who themselves cannot hear, know only of the danger of the song, not of its beauty, and leave him tied to the mast to save both him and themselves. They reproduce the life of the oppressor as a part of their own, while he cannot step outside his social role. The bonds by which he has irrevocably fettered himself to praxis at the same time keep the Sirens at a distance from praxis: their lure is neutralised as a mere object of contemplation, as art. The fettered man listens to a concert, as immobilized as audiences later, and his enthusiastic call for liberation goes unheard as applause.”[v]

In the above account, the worker and the bourgeois are both trapped. The bourgeois are consigned to their social role, they have become masters of their own bondage, which only the worker could liberate them from. Yet the worker is oppressed and unable to perceive the beauty that lies beyond their situation, they must simply keep their heads looking forward and row. However in the Poppinsian universe we are only given half of this equation. The bourgeois are bound by their social roles and they must deny themselves happiness, yet the worker does not have his ears plugged at all. Quite the contrary, the chimney sweeps are the liberated; they have the music already playing in their ears. In the Poppinsian universe utopia has come early, the workers do not need liberating from capitalism and as such no actual social reform is needed. However horrible the conditions of a chimney sweep’s life is, the “sweep is as lucky as lucky can be.”

Bankers who Fly Kites

In Mary Poppins the truly “oppressed” is the capitalist and the middle class family. They are the ones who have to learn to lighten up, have fun and go fly a kite. Thus Mary Poppins does change the social condition of work and co-ordinates of the bourgeois family, but in a way that leaves the lives of the workers the same. Work is supplemented with leisure (flying a kite); parents come to understand the needs of children and everyone comes to understand the need for a bit of fun. Even the banker comes to understand the Poppinsian alchemy (the transformation of the job into a game). Mr. Banks’ new found sense of humour not only earns him his job back, but a promotion. The age of remorse is over and the capitalists learn their lesson. What lesson have they learnt? Instead of learning the problems of ‘the speculation of hedge funds, derivative markets and an economic system based on consumption and debt”[vi], they learnt to have a bit of humour. Capitalism is not overthrown, a run on the bank cannot stop the forward march of capital; instead it acquires a human face. The turn to the tolerant fun-loving family is accompanied by a return to the market and anti-authoritarian fun becomes the order of the day. Here we see a perfect example of Žižek’s account of postmodern tolerance. He contrasts two fathers, the first the “good old fashioned totalitarian father”, the second the “tolerant postmodern father”. It is Sunday afternoon and you have to visit your grandmother, Žižek points out that the “good old fashioned totalitarian father will tell you “listen I don’t care how you feel you have to go to your grandmother and behave appropriately.”” Here the child is able to kick and scream and resistance remains possible. However, the “so-called tolerant postmodern father” uses a different tactic. 

What he will tell you is the following - “You know how much your grandmother loves you. But nonetheless you should only visit her if you really want to.”  Now every child who is not an idiot, and they are not idiots, knows that this apparent free choice secretly contains a much stronger order, not only do you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it. That is one example of how tolerance, choice and so on can conceal a much stronger order. [vii]

Not only does the fate of the workers not improve, but it is also dressed up in garb that quells any resistance and struggle. Mr. Banks becomes the happy-hearted banker issuing fines and re-mortgaging houses, just as David Cameron becomes the new Tory implementing drastic welfare cuts and austerity with the language of participation, democracy and the big society. Justice and equality are abandoned in the name of freedom, fun and participation. Throughout Europe, the failure to challenge capital has required placing the burden on the workers (and the public generally). The irresponsibility and greed of the banker and the structural problems of capitalism are increasingly re-interpreted as “too much public spending”, thus acquitting the banker and placing blame and burden on the people. As a result, the public, not the banks and the commerce, are being made to shoulder the costs. Rather than seeking alternative solutions, our one-dimensional discourse does nothing to challenge the hermeneutic of neo-liberalism, which serves only one interest: capital. Yet such measures are unpopular and must therefore dress themselves in rhetorical niceties. From the workplace to parliament, misery and toil appears as play, participation and choice.

The strange irony may be that the more that play is introduced into work the more the worker becomes trapped under work’s spell. As Sven Lütticken notes, “Play demands active involvement, not passive submission”[viii]. Those elements appearing to offer more participation and more playtime at work, may in fact disguise its opposite: the transformation of the worker into an all-singing, all-dancing chimney sweep. The more we are given the illusion of our own choice, the less we feel that we can complain and in turn the more we become compliant in the system that enslaves us. Because “emphasis on creativity and playfulness is perfect for legitimising ever-increasing in-equality in a stationary or shrinking economy”[ix] the idea of work as play increasingly becomes its opposite and a genuine liberation within work remains unachieved.

What differentiates the overworked Donald Duck in Der Fuehrer’s Face and the Chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins is that the Chimney sweeps have learnt to accept their servitude.Mary Poppins conducts the perverse chimera of treating the workers as free when they obviously aren’t. True freedom cannot be found by simply whistling while you work. In this respect the happy hearted roustabouts in Dumbo who “slave until they are almost dead” are the possible flip side to the chimney sweeps who step in time. Work itself remains a tortuous grind, but must be layered with a sweet sugary coating, something to keep the workers happy and distracted as their conditions worsen.

 Mary Poppins II: The Chimney Sweeps’ Revolution

Disney often has a tendency to give unsatisfactory endings. Cinderella must escape servitude by marrying into wealth; Dumbo must escape discrimination by becoming a star. Society itself never changes; some people just get lucky. Mary Poppins is no exception. Yet it is hard not to notice the lost potential in Mary Poppins. Not only is there a substantial critique of bourgeois society, but also the energy of the chimney sweeps seems to present us with a misplaced revolutionary fire; this energy builds throughout the chimney sweep section of the film and, in the process, distinctions and hierarchies erode. After leaping across the rooftops, the chimney sweeps descend down into the Banks’ household still leaping and dancing. In moving from their assigned zone on the chimney tops to the family house the chimney sweeps transgress a boundary that keeps the workers at a ‘safe distance’ from the bourgeois private sphere. Yet the workers appear not to acknowledge this boundary and leap and dance all around the floor. Just as Michael is unable to comprehend how a wizened old man could be a giant, so too, do the chimney sweeps seem unable to comprehend the public/private distinction that keeps them at a safe distance. In the process further social categories disintegrate. First the maid is incorporated into the jig. Her first reaction is shock, “Ow!” she exclaims, but the “Ow!” is simply incorporated into the song, as the chimney sweeps sing “Ow, step in time”. She is incorporated into the dance and soon her cries of “Ow!” transform into some form of enjoyment. Nor does Mrs. Banks’ return put a stop to this transgression; she too is quickly incorporated into the dance when the chimney sweeps call “Votes for women, step in time.” Her first reaction is “Oh, no, really, not at the moment.” but this soon transforms into a determined passionate call, “Votes for women!”, and she joins the chimney sweep’s dance.  It is as if the chimney sweeps dance is a revolutionary fever, which rips through the house acquiring momentum and broadening its base as it goes. Here a more radical conception of work becomes possible. Instead of seeing the Chimney sweeps as glorifying work as it exists, we could imagine this revolutionary fever fueling a kind of work that would overcome the conditions of work as they exist: the work of the revolutionary. If the work/play dichotomy is to be truly overcome it will require more than learning how to whistle. For Adorno, the positive side of work “lies in the teleology that work potentially makes work superfluous”. In the same document Horkheimer adds “A shaft of light from the telos falls onto labour. Basically, people are too short-sighted. They misinterpret the light that falls on labour from ultimate goals. Instead, they take labour qua labour as the telos and hence see their personal work success as that purpose. […] A shaft of light from the telos falls on the means to achieve it. It is just as if instead of worshipping their lover they worship the house in which she dwells. […] The shaft of light must be reflected back by an act of resistance.”[x] Work contains the means for overcoming of work and the path to human flourishing; this is the genuine purpose of work. But work is fetishised and drained of its true meaning. To combat this, the telos must be reflected back, not by supplementing work with play but via resistance and struggle for work as a drive towards a genuine purpose.

What if this was the missed possibility of Mary Poppins? It is in this respect that we should imagine an alternative Mary Poppins, a sequal maybe, where Mary Poppins is blown into the future, returning to empower the chimney sweeps, who, clasping their little red (Mary Poppins) books, join her in the social struggle and a long march to liberation, thus setting into motion a genuine synthesis of work and play.

[i] In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engles makes a remark that hints at an alternative reading of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.“Modern bourgeois society,” they write “with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” In light of this we may propose an alternative reading of the scene. The sorcerer, his apprentice and the brooms can be read as referring to three separate sections of society: the feudal landowner, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie seek to liberate themselves from the feudal system and conjure up the magical spell which is modern industrial capitalism. The bourgeoisie are liberated from the daily grind by the proletariat, who work to ensure the bourgeoisie’s freedom. Yet in conjuring up modern industrial capitalism, they lose control of capital itself, a process of valorisation and devalorisation takes hold and capital takes on a character of its own. The bourgeoisie become unable to take control of the world they brought into being. In this situation the industrial worker that the bourgeoisie brought about, becomes a revolutionary worker and rises up against them.

[ii] Slovoj Žižek, Living in the End Times. Verso: London. p. 334

[iii] It should be noted that Mary Poppins is a rather different Nanny in the P.L. Travers books. Rather than having a cheery disposition, Mary Poppins is generally stern; always cross, as well as being vain and easily offended. These character traits almost seem to disappear in the film. Whilst the book tends to be a collection of separate short adventures, Disney attempted to weave them into a unifying story. It is here that the ‘work as play’ theme comes to prominence. The trip to the bank and Mrs. Banks’ joining the suffragettes are also invention of the film. Overall the film tended to politicize aspects of the book, not the other way around.

[iv] Joachim Kalka, Money as we Knew It? New Left Review 2/60. November-December 2009. p. 65

[v] Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment. (Seehttp://www.sup.org/html/book_pages/0804736324/Chapter%201.pdf, sourced on January 2011)

[vi] Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Žižek ‘Introduction: The Idea of communism’ in Douzinas and Žižek ed. The Idea of Communism, Verso: London. p.vii

[vii] See the Astra Taylor film, Zizek! ICA Films. 26:52

[viii] Sven Lütticken, Playtimes, New Left Review, 2/66. November-December 2010. p.136

[ix] Sven Lütticken, Playtimes, New Left Review, 2/66. November-December 2010. p.138

[x] — Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer -Towards a New Manifesto? New Left Review. 2/65. Sept/Oct 2010. p.35

One+One: Filmmakers Journal. Issue 6

(http://filmmakersjournal.co.uk/article.php?id=54)

Editorial

Welcome to the sixth issue of One+One.

Bradley Tuck

______________________________________________________

“To put it in a nutshell: we have to be bold enough to have an idea. A great idea. We have to convince ourselves that there is nothing ridiculous or criminal about an idea”

Alain Badiou[i]

“He is sentenced to six years for wanting to make a film. A film he hasn’t even made. Six years in prison on an idea for a film.”

Rafi Pitts, talking about Jafar Panahi[ii]

 
Ideas are great and powerful things. A great idea can have far reaching effects. In December 2010, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was imprisoned for 6 years and banned from making films for the next twenty, simply for having an idea. Panihi certainly isn’t afraid to defend great ideas in the face of danger (a risk he took in his film The Circle which challenged Iran’s treatment of women). He stands as one of the great testaments for filmmakers who aspire to ideas. The charge of “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic” is clearly an attempt to suppress ideas and Panihi knows it. In his final statement before being sentenced he declared:

 “You are putting on trial not just me, but Iranian social, humanist and artistic cinema – a cinema in which there is no absolutely good or absolutely evil person, a cinema that is not in the service of power or wealth, a cinema that does not condone or condemn anyone … a cinema that is inspired by [addressing] social malaise and ultimately reaches out to humanity.”[iii]

This issue is dedicated to all those who take up the eternal struggle for great ideas, those who risk death and imprisonment to use cinema for the service of justice and equality. This issue is dedicated to a cinema that serves neither wealth, nor power; but a cinema against social malaise, that reaches out to humanity. This issue is dedicated to the eternal revolution.

To sign the petition against Jafar Panihi’s imprisonment please visit:http://www.petitiononline.com/FJP2310/petition.html

_{[i] Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis, Verso: London. p.66}

_{[ii] —Rafi Pitts, Iranian filmmaker- from an open letter to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Quoted at} http://cinefoundation.org/whitemeadows/_{(sourced on 12/3/11 14:00)}

_{[iii]Quoted in Hamid Dabashi, ‘Jafar Panahi’s reward for bringing cinematic glory to Iran? Jail’ The Guardian, Friday 24 December 2010 (see} http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/24/jafar-panahi-film-iran-prison-banned₎