The Enslaved Genre: Why Cinema Sticks to its Root Principles—Inequality and Injustice

“I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice … .”

—Martin Luther King, Jr., from “Letter from Birmingham Jail”[1]

Lincoln, 2012

The recent lauding of Steve Spielberg’s film Lincoln illustrates once more that the widespread vaunting and decrying of the supposed radicalism of high-profile modern cinema is based on erroneous assessments. For like Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) amongst other productions in the Spielberg genre, and other productions by many other high-profile directors, the film’s sham liberalism is sufficient to win it widespread accreditation in Hollywood, but insufficient to challenge establishment myths about history to which cinema has pandered for about a century. Yet the panegyric accorded this latest in a long sequence of disproportionately high-budget cinematic productions is also indicative of far more serious problems and social injustices.

Slavery in film
The first identifiably modern film in which Abraham Lincoln appeared as a heroic figure, and arguably the first identifiably modern film of all, was D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). Although as notoriously racist as the novels of Thomas Dixon on which it is based, Griffith’s film is still cited in laudatory tones as a landmark in the evolution of cinematic techniques. Yet neither the smug self-conscious liberalism of Hollywood’s paragons, nor the fulminating conservatism of its loudest critics’ complaint that Hollywood is “subverting America,”[2] have an interest in recognizing just how small is the distance that well-funded and influential cinematic productions have moved, not only from its founding techniques, but also from its founding indifference to social justice issues.

The Birth of a Nation had the Presidential endorsement of Woodrow Wilson, “it is all so terribly true.”[3] This endorsement is perhaps unsurprising given not only the influence on the film of Wilson’s own writings, but also its representation of one of Wilson’s predecessors as an earnest statesman whose brave work of reconciliation made him a target for partisan criticism from naive radicals such as Thaddeus Stevens, and ultimately the victim of personal tragedy. Although The Birth of a Nation is notorious because of its disgusting representation of African Americans in the post-war South, and its implicit justification of segregation and the Jim Crow laws, neither Griffith’s nor Dixon’s productions actually endorse slavery: Dixon regretted that African slaves had been transported to America at all, thus blaming the victims for the problem.

Through the Civil War white leadership, courage, bloodshed and altruism had rid America of the curse of slavery and freed African Americans.  Thanks to the liberalism and altruism of the establishment, injustice had been consigned to the past. Any suggestion that African Americans contributed to their own liberation is downplayed[4] and the real focus is on white individuals in the film and their emotional progress, characters, lives, loves and losses. Slavery having been abolished by white effort, African Americans are the victims of no injustice; indeed the danger lies in a radical white minority’s indulgence of African Americans, and the latter’s destructive jealousy of white males’ fairly gotten acquisitions; wealth, property, life-styles, and the white women depicted as accompanying these acquisitions.[5]

That contemporary film misrepresented African Americans was apparent to many critics of Dixon and Griffith, an awareness which influenced the activism of Paul Robeson among others. Film producers have thus been obliged to respond to this criticism, at least for commercial reasons.[6] Yet such gestures aside, there is little in the narrative of The Birth of a Nation that has been fundamentally queried even in recent high-profile productions feted for their liberalism.  Lincoln has also been criticized for downplaying the active contribution of African Americans to the end of slavery. As Kate Masur observes, “it’s disappointing that in a movie devoted to explaining the abolition of slavery in the United States, African-American characters do almost nothing but passively wait for white men to liberate them. For some 30 years, historians have been demonstrating that slaves were crucial agents in their emancipation.”[7] There is little recognition in the film that pressure for abolition from such sources significantly predated the somewhat tardy Emancipation Proclamation.[8]

Abraham Lincoln does not appear in Glory (1989), except by proxy at the end when a statement from Lincoln appears to endorse the message of film (ostensibly a liberal one concerned with racial reconciliation). Yet the focus of the film is once again a white protagonist in the Civil War, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. In a key scene in the film, Trip, the character played by Denzel Washington, refuses Shaw’s request to carry the regimental colors, instancing the injustice that at the war’s conclusion Shaw and his ilk will go back to a prosperous lifestyle in Massachusetts whereas Trip will return to poverty. At the film’s conclusion, Shaw’s courageous death in leading an assault on Fort Wagner moves Trip to seize the colors (with their striking affinity to the modern U.S. flag) in order to renew the assault. Implicitly, white courage and altruism has vindicated white privilege; the question of which social groups really gained from the Civil War is neatly dodged, and the obstacle to African Americans’ integration in the United States is seen not to be injustice or inequality, but African-American unreasoning jealousy of white wealth. In contrast to white courage in battle, in a film ostensibly concerned with African Americans’ own contribution to their own liberation, the latter contribution is surprisingly underrepresented, almost as much as is Frederick Douglass, who makes an appearance in the film which is fleeting, token, and, tellingly, non-speaking.[9]

A twisted representation of reality common in the American and British mainstream media has succeeded in depicting “anti-American” prejudice (and indulgence for terrorism) as solely left-wing.  Ironically, this has not stopped British conservative writers engaging in one-upmanship at American nationalists’ expense regarding the earlier abolition of slavery in territories under British sovereignty.[10] Nonetheless, high-profile and well-funded British cinema is guilty of the same misrepresentations regarding slavery as its American equivalent, wrongly suggesting that the moral of the story of abolition is that a white elite may be entrusted to eliminate racial and social injustices within the existing political dispensation. This for instance is the message of Amazing Grace (2006), a part-British production which emphasizes the roles of William Wilberforce and Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger in the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire. Like Lincoln and The Birth of a Nation, the film echoes establishment myths peddled about history inside and outside of the historical profession.

As in the popular conservative media, the altruism of abolition and other reforms supported by Wilberforce and contemporary elite conservatives is exaggerated, in part owing to a selective chronology.[11] The film makes little mention of the impact on the case for abolition of the empire’s recent loss of lucrative slave-based economies in America. Meanwhile, Wilberforce and Pitt’s role in abolition is overrepresented in the film particularly at the expense of popular non-elite pressure within British society for abolition, the effects of slave revolts, and the efforts to raise awareness made by former slave Olaudah Equiano and other African abolitionists in the group Sons of Africa. Without pressure from such sources, the sugar capitalists’ powerful influence upon the authorities may have continued effectively to defend the slave trade. Yet recognition of individuals such as Equiano is bitterly resisted by conservative sources, which have a powerful influence on the mainstream British media.[12] In any case, in a sense, as in the United States after the abolition of slavery, propertied whites’ collusion with the British authorities also continued to be among the most powerful influences. After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the plantation owners managed to retain slavery itself until 1833, when slaveholders were lavishly compensated at taxpayers’ expense. A system of apprenticeship still remained in operation for another five years, and slavery for some years remained in force in those lands of the British empire under the control of the East India Company. Even then, in contrast to the suggestion of Amazing Grace that Wilberforce and his like widely and altruistically succeeded in making society more humane, within a few years plantation owners used their influence to initiate a system of indentured labor which often differed little from slavery.  In many aspects of the history of British empire as of the United States at this time, “the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness.”[13]

Film on race relations
The established mode of representation of history in high-profile cinema—reaffirmed in the chorus of praise with which Lincoln has met—is to focus the narrative around an already well-known figure. It is noticeable even then that the subjects are select, usually comprising a figure acceptable to the white establishment; it is unlikely that a laudatory biopic on the model of Lincoln would focus on a figure such as Castro, Trotsky, Hugo Chavez, Samora Michel, or Agostinho Neto, or at any rate be well-funded. Lincoln epitomizes the dangers in this mode. As repeated cinematic examples show, to place a figure such as Lincoln, Wilberforce, Pitt,[14] Churchill,[15] Kennedy,[16] or Gandhi[17] at the core of a narrative regarding a fight against discrimination and injustice is not only to trivialize the earlier contribution of more humble pioneers and obscure the almost inevitable tardiness of elite individuals’ commitment, but also to obscure how much inequality is tacitly accepted in vaunting a privileged figure.  The current (unequal) political and social systems are posited to be reformable, and existing white elite groups are suggested to be deserving of trust in their ability and willingness to quash any injustices; thus, logically, resistance to continuing layers of privilege (which are usually concentrated in white male hands) can be dismissed as jealousy.

Cinema cognate to civil rights issues exemplifies this point. 12 Angry Men (1957) centers on a murder trial, and famously features a vignette in which the bigoted social (and by implication racial) prejudice in favor of a conviction of a single white juror is easily ostracized and rejected by his fellow jurors, as part of a critically important process of giving the defendant the benefit of doubt. The system appears to be vindicated when the defendant is acquitted. Yet a near-contemporary case linked to the lynching of Emmett Till casts light on the true possibility of justice being dispensed and prejudice defeated in a system featuring juries composed entirely of socially well-established white men and a white-dominated judicial bench. More recently, In the Name of the Father (1993), which like Lincoln stars Daniel Day-Lewis, is pilloried in certain quarters as an IRA propaganda film; yet the selected emphases in the narrative vindicate the possibility of redemptive justice through the existing systems of power in the British state.[18]  The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is a highly acclaimed film, spinning an ostensibly uplifting narrative around an interracial friendship.  But the film panders to establishment prejudice by depicting the white prisoner Andy Dufresne as the innocent victim of a miscarriage of justice.  No more doubt is expressed in the film about the guilt of its African-American characters accused of crimes than is that of African-American victims of lynching in the works of Thomas Dixon.[19]  High-profile cinema also suggests that the existing system allows political and economic as well as judicial injustice to be remedied.  Mississippi Burning (1988) overstates the role of white sympathizers, rather than African American activists, in rooting out racism and making possible breakthroughs in the civil rights campaigns. Billy Elliot (2000) centers on a young boy who leaves a north of England affected by high unemployment, poverty, and poor industrial relations to live his dream of becoming a successful ballet dancer in London. In spite of its antagonistic representation of the policing of the 1984-5 miners’ strike, the film appears to justify the Conservative governments’ economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s by suggesting anybody could “make it” under their dispensation.

As The Shawshank Redemption and 12 Angry Men demonstrate, even when an effort seems to have been put into incorporating liberal themes of racial reconciliation, ultimately the perspective of a production justifies or accepts inequality. This is often because, as in Glory, the narrative centers on the perspective or journey of a central white (and usually) male character.  Thus a white perspective is seen as the only basis on which enlightenment is possible, embodying, in an analysis which as Henry Giroux observes obscures “dominant relations of power and class oppression … the liberal assumption that as a privileged white man [they] can solve the problems of marginalized and subordinate Others.”[20] The white journey to enlightenment, often punctuated by acts of courage and heroism by a white central character, is central to Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and Cry Freedom (1987), David Lean’s A Passage to India (1984), James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), Apocalypse Now (1979), and a film often depicted as “politically correct” in its representation of Native Americans, Dances with Wolves (1990).[21] Hence none of the films mentioned really radically challenge first-world privilege. Dances with Wolves appears to suggest that in spite of all cross-cultural barriers, an all-seeing colonial gaze offers a vantage point from which everything can be understood; the reassuring nature of this narrative to first-world audiences must partly explain its commercial and critical success.[22]  As in Avatar, the heroism and ingenuity of the first-world male is ultimately vaunted, most notably in a scene in which John Dunbar, played by Kevin Costner, is seen to save the Sioux by finding a herd of buffalo. For similar reasons, as well as the ecological destruction involved in its filming, anti-colonial elements of Apocalypse Now have been much exaggerated.[23]

The Patriot, 2000

Yet notwithstanding Foreman’s criticism, the most serious problem with The Patriot, for instance, is not that it is anti-British,[41] but that because the film focuses on the main character Benjamin Martin and his construction and protection of an idyllic family life, it fights shy of engaging with the historical reality of the period in every important respect—and with the question of who gained from American independence. In spite of the characteristic cosmetic gestures in the film in favor of racial reconciliation, it is clear that in historical reality the result of the war made the fate of Native Americans significantly worse. Indeed, Martin’s past as a barbarous killer in the French and Indian wars is unproblematically reconciled in The Patriot to his glamorized role as a war hero and doting father and husband, and to his contented family life.[42]  Mangal Pandey: The Rising (2005) is similarly criticized by Foreman for historical errors and anti-British bias in its depiction of the Indian mutiny of 1857,[43] and like In the Name of Father and Michael Collins (1996), for potentially offering solace to terrorist groups.[44] An equally pertinent criticism could however suggest that the same or other films distort reality by exaggerating the distance between guerrilla groups and a surrounding community.[45] Yet more strikingly, Mangal Pandey features a sequence in which a British soldier rescues an indigenous widow from sati or ritual immolation, the two subsequently becoming romantically involved. This scene echoes a very old propagandist myth, powerfully used to justify the British empire before domestic, indigenous and international audiences, wrongly crediting the British with unilaterally suppressing a “custom” of sati that was supposedly prevalent in pre-colonial India in the teeth of indigenous opposition.[46] The vignette, which Foreman wrongly thus describes as comprising a “rare moment of honesty,”[47] is artistically derivative of celebratory fiction produced at the height of imperialism itself, being at least as old as Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days (1873),[48] as well as sundry other scenes of rescue of damsels in distress in misogynistic cinematic traditions in many cultures—not least in imperialist and racist variants such as The Birth of a Nation.[49]

The rearticulation of blatant self-serving imperialist myth-making does however have the effect of making the film more palatable to an audience which is European (or European-influenced) and of high purchasing power.  In a nationalist film (one which Foreman describes as tainted by “moronic Marxism”), this comprises both compelling testimony to the power of imperialist myth over the marketplace, and over the imaginations of descendants of those formerly colonized,[50] and another example of cinematic narratives privileging the perspective of a white male hero on his journey to enlightenment.  Indeed, another object of Foreman’s strictures about “politically correct” modern cinema, The Gangs of New York (2002),[51] like Mangal Pandey, Dances with Wolves, Glory, Lincoln, Last of the Mohicans, The Patriot, and Amazing Grace is really objectionable on the ground that it avoids exploring the fact that already empowered Anglicized white elites gained most from social and political changes in the relevant period of history.[52]

Wedded to an unjust economic system: cinema’s real flaws
As Mark Cousins observes, interested critics are wrong-footed in part because Hollywood’s narrative conventions, which press high-profile films to glorify the role of white male heterosexual heroes, more often than not yield a reactionary message. The story follows an individual’s progress, in the process usually privileging the individual at the expense of any real sense of community, often terminating in a celebration of a privileged liberation from restraint which roughly corresponds to what talk-radio critics wrongly describe as “freedom.”[53]

But film in part achieves the artistic objective of imitating society, insofar as it represents society’s flaws in a way that token political gestures cannot conceal.  High-profile cinema is marketable because it offers presentable narratives, celebrating the “triumph of the human spirit,” even where a happy ending cannot be celebrated. But uplifting conclusions overrepresent the possibility of contentment rather than ask searching questions as to whether or not justice is possible without a radical challenge to the status quo.  Since the possibility of contentment is in reality unequal, to represent this possibility is to privilege certain social groups rather than others, and it is suspicious that these are commonly the same groups which exert disproportionate power in the market for cinematic as well as many other products. It is high-profile cinema’s innate complicity with an unjust economic system, as well as its preferred narrative conventions, which leads it to reflect and support existing inequalities; and illumination of serious problems with the medium is inhibited, precisely because the mass media is oiled by similar sources as the films, and in some cases, identical sources.[54]

The market for both films and popular media is not free, or a matter of choice, but grounded in inequality and constraint. People with time and money to read newspapers, attend cinemas, consume DVDs, etc., are disproportionately well-to-do. Notwithstanding risibly weak complaints about “the liberal media” to the contrary, such media will inevitably in great measure appeal to the prejudices of this privileged constituency, and avow a conservative narrative, irrationally hostile to change, and at best sniffily indifferent about notions of universal rights and of combating poverty. That the purchasing power and wealth on which cinema depends for its audiences is disproportionately white, male, and English-speaking also has substantial influences on the end-product. Hence in part the tendency for films to privilege and appeal to the perspective of the all-seeing comfortably positioned white man, usually accorded heroic attributes and acquitted of guilt.

In contrast, although the common token gestures “representing” ethnic minority groups evoke a totally disproportionate fervor of denunciation,[55] there are still relatively few high-profile black male or female actors, relatively few roles for them, and even the casting of such roles reflects long-standing inequalities.  In two very recent films, Goodbye Bafana (2007) and Clint Eastwood’s Invictus (2009), well-known black American actors (rather than African actors) were cast to play Nelson Mandela; there is little evidence of progress here from Richard Attenborough’s casting of Denzel Washington in the role of Steve Biko in the 1980s,[56] or indeed, by extension, of the poor representation of ethnic minority groups in film in Paul Robeson’s era, or even Griffith’s use of the vaudeville tradition of having white actors black up to represent (or more commonly misrepresent and stereotype) African-American characters.

Much the same could be said of women, who are still usually cast only in supporting roles, timidly requiring the protection of a white (and usually American) male. The model of family and relationship vaunted by this narrative is usually a male-led nuclear family. This is highly conventional in first-world terms, but underrepresents networks such as extended families, which are common in many places in the world (among many other possible historical and contemporary family structures). Hence the male protagonist’s actions are commonly presented as simple moral choices; his action in defense of both himself and his family is rarely depicted as involving any conflict with justice, and any such dilemmas are quickly resolved.

In The Patriot, Martin’s initial conviction that as a parent he must remain neutral in the political conflicts of the 1770s is quickly overtaken by events. Similarly in Cry Freedom, the dilemma of Donald Woods (who is played by an American actor) that trying to expose the South African apartheid state’s complicity in Biko’s death might disrupt his family life is quickly resolved by the state’s security force’s dirty tricks. In Amazing Grace, Wilberforce’s political triumph is presented as of a piece with his domestic triumph of fathering a child, while in Reds (1981), the rise and fall of the fortunes for political radicalism form a soundtrack to the on-screen romance of Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton. The presented moral choice is no more complicated than that in Die Hard (1988). It is rare that cinematic productions really focus on the countless decisions humans in real situations must make between justice and a quiet (and politically and socially acquiescent) domestic tranquility.[57] By implication, first-world (and usually American) white men do not have to choose between their assigned role as head of a conventional family and justice, because the society they are defending—its self-evident inequalities notwithstanding—is assumed already to be just.

Because male leadership is depicted as the norm, the qualities vaunted tend to be hypermasculine.  Male physical violence, physical rather than other forms of courage, defense of the status quo, and male sexual conquest tend to be linked together in simple binary oppositions of “good” against “evil.”[58] Hence the influence and repeated rearticulation of Griffith’s image of the vulnerable damsel in distress menaced by racial others, requiring white male protection.[59] As Clyde Taylor observes: “The imminent violation of a white woman has played so large a role in American cinema compared to others as to seem an American obsession.”[60]  It is symptomatic of these considerations that, much as in Dixon’s day, establishment media, including cinema, continue to handle interracial romance with unease and distaste.[61] White women who have romantic relationships with black men, even when acknowledged as “victims,” are still commonly seen as treacherous or “loose.”[62]

Politics or aesthetics? A plea to recognize humanity beyond the heroes
One historian, defending Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner from charges of historical inaccuracy, urges his colleagues to be more “sensitive to the artistic goals of filmmaker and the limitations that those who choose to focus on historical subjects face,” praising the effectiveness of the medium for reconnecting people with history.[63] Yet it is important to question if these “artistic goals” are worthy of the central position they are accorded in the pursuit, and to appraise the type of narratives with which the medium “connects” its audience. As Lincoln, Gandhi,and Amazing Grace each represent, the most critically and commercially acclaimed such films are attuned to the notion that one man—usually high-profile fictional or factual historical protagonists—can “change the world;” that ordinary people, the sum total of millions of humble individuals’ actions, or “vast impersonal forces” (in T.S. Eliot’s phrase, sniffily deployed by Isaiah Berlin[64]) not only can change history, but may be the only way in which history can be changed, is a possibility film can rarely envisage or depict.  Thus on account of the conventions of the genre rather than the intentions of practitioners, even cinematic productions inspired by radical political motives ultimately fail to realize their objective and trivialize and misrepresent principles, causes, and historical change.

This point is tellingly demonstrated by consideration of the oeuvre of the British producer Ken Loach.  A known radical, Loach’s films, notably Hidden Agenda (1990), are sometimes criticized because of the message that the status quo cannot successfully be fought; to the comforting mainstream message of the triumphant human spirit, dissident radicalism can only respond by celebrating causes doomed to defeat.[65] But this is a minor objection compared to the punctuation of Loach’s films by formulaic narratives. Loach makes the type of gestures to which the medium’s audience are accustomed in terms of developing and eliciting sympathy with his characters, and tries to represent their loves and losses. The real tragedy in films such as Bread and Roses (2000), The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006), and Land and Freedom (1995, Loach’s film about the Spanish civil war) is personal, and not the loss of opportunities for radical social and political change.[66]

There is a popular view that cinema should be evaluated for its success in dealing with individuals and their concerns, its characterization and aesthetic qualities.  The argument goes that cinema should not be political (or certainly not overtly so) and films that concentrate on making a political statement rather than presenting well-rounded characters are condemned.[67]  It is however notable that the condemnation appears to be louder the more radical the political intention appears to be, and that what are ostensibly framed as solely aesthetic criteria can be both highly political and rooted in injustice: when conservative historian and commentator Roy Strong asserted “to own a work of art is a natural expression of a genuine love of beauty which is otherwise inexpressible,” he voiced a deeply partisan affirmation of private ownership, particularly as concentrated in the hands of a wealthy established elite.[68] Nonetheless, the preference for “aesthetic” criteria is endorsed at a number of levels: a popular audience appreciates a good story, and a more critical reception applauds Griffith’s aesthetics and tries to dissever them from his racist political intention and glaring historical inaccuracies.  It could be argued that evaluating cinema on these “non-political” criteria is however not particularly realistic: it would surely be erroneous to suggest that films as diverse in political intention as The Birth of a Nation, The Patriot, Mangal Pandey and Land and Freedom are rendered artistically significantly better by their inadequate attempts to shoehorn a representation of the complexity of human relationships and human character within a few hours of celluloid.  As Clyde Taylor suggests, in any case, the notion that pioneering cinematic techniques as practiced in The Birth of a Nation can be dissevered from its racism is flawed. Close-up shots, melodrama and other aesthetic techniques are used in the film to propagate the message that America is a white nation, thus humanizing only its white characters and dehumanizing non-white characters, in a pattern which has influenced a number of subsequent films.[69]

But more fundamentally, cinema as an art form cannot transcend underlying social injustices and inequalities. Love and loss, which are supposed to be the main themes of the medium, and which usually dominate its core narratives, require a base of rights respectively to be enjoyed and endured. Human situations exist (and happen to be concentrated among non-white subjects) which lack this base of rights. It may be reassuring to assert that because the human spirit will triumph come what may, the existing dispensation (this “negative peace”) is sufficient to afford an opportunity for access to justice and the acquisition of emotional fulfillment for all. But no saccharin-sweet statement of modern cinema, dripping with an overwrought score on a full-piece orchestra, should distract attention from how powerfully propagated is the wishful thinking (or worse) of those in positions of relative privilege—a category into which popular film-makers and journalists, those who control the purse-strings of each, and their audiences, all disproportionately fall.  Self-serving myths prevalent in this constituency—that the privileges that come with being a first-world male are down to greater human qualities rather than just luck and money—are older than cinema itself. Dixon represented “the Negro” as a “creature … half-child, half-animal, the sport of impulse, whim and conceit, “pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,” a being who, left to his will, roams at night and sleeps in the day, whose speech knows no word of love, whose passions, once aroused, are as the fury of the tiger—they have set this thing to rule over the Southern [white] people.”[70] Socially and economically marginalized groups must be assumed to lack human qualities and experience through personal inadequacy, because the privileged must be reassured that their condition is a reward for their greater qualities.  Hence also in the popular media a disruption to a first-world family is normally represented as a greater tragedy than its equivalent elsewhere; a terrorist incident in the first world receives saturation coverage, whereas genocide and famine in the third world induce mere shruggings of shoulders.  If this is a triumph of the human spirit, it is a strange kind of “humanism,” which, because of its link to the basis of modern first-world states, is underwritten by inegalitarianism, panders to the privileged property-holders who form the bastions of that state, and celebrates the violence and extortion by which these privileges were assured.[71]

If art serves any purpose, among the most worthy prime objectives, and arguably the most worthy objective, of any serious art form has to be a political one: to illuminate the injustices in the world.  It has to be legitimate to evaluate art as to whether it challenges or perpetuates injustices. The fact that this is so insistently denied, inside and outside of the film industry, is a telling testimony to how large these injustices are, and how overwhelmingly powerful are the interests which are continually served by their maintenance.  That certain brands of films will go on being produced on vastly wasteful budgets and heaped with vastly disproportionate praise is only a tiny symptom of this bigger problem.

G.K. Peatling, a contributing editor, worked in universities in Britain, the U.S., and Canada, before resigning his last such job to undertake volunteer work in Angola. He now works part-time with schools in eastern England. A previous article on cinema and history, “On Giving a Dog a Bad Name,” appeared in our summer2012 issue.