Systemic Risk: Killing Them Softly (2012) & the Precarity of Modern American Crime
Release Date: 11/10/2023
Hanging Out With The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980)
Politics of Cinema
Need a warm cinematic hug from a group of close friends? Want to spend some time with people who get all your jokes? In this episode, we discuss The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980), a foundational work of American leftist cinema. We also look closely at John Sayles’ early career as a novelist and screenwriter in the buildup to his debut as a director. Follow us at: / / /
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How to Mock a Tyrant in The Great Dictator (1940)
Politics of Cinema
In this episode, we wrap up our look at depictions of fascism and authoritarianism on film with Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Chaplin had the nerve to go fully anti-fascist and anti-racist at a moment when much of Hollywood was still pretending Hitler was just a distant "European problem". Chaplin mercilessly skewers Riefenstahl-style fascist pageantry and spectacle while also refusing the era’s usual antisemitic caricatures. He centers half of the narrative on a working-class Jewish barber whose daily life is shattered by storm trooper raids that feel uncomfortably close...
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Imagination as a Form of Resistance in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Politics of Cinema
This week, we descend into the dark fantasy fairytale of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Amid the rich craftsmanship of the fantasy world that Ofelia imagines, the film lays bare the horrors of Francoist Spain—all captured through Del Toro’s anti-fascist cinema. The calculating evil of Captain Vidal, a devotee of Falangism and a violent patriarch, stands among the most iconic of Del Toro’s villains. With fascist rhetoric disturbingly mainstream in contemporary US politics, Pan’s Labyrinth feels less like a historical fantasy and more like a warning. It...
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Silencing Opposition in The Act of Killing (2012) & The Look of Silence (2014)
Politics of Cinema
After spending a number of episodes in the past, today we're jumping to the 2010's. We're looking at two documentaries from Joshua Oppenheimer; The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014). These docs reveal two different aspects of the chilling aftermath of Indonesia’s 1965-66 anticommunist massacres, one looking at the perpetrators and one looking at the legacy of the victims. We also draw on Vincent Bevins’ book The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World for our discussion on how the Washington-backed...
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The Third Generation (1979) & Other Instruments of State Sponsored Terror
Politics of Cinema
After examining Robert Kramer’s Ice (1970) fictionalize America in our last episode, we shift to West Germany to explore another cinematic portrayal of resistance to fascism in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Third Generation (1979). Set against West Germany’s postwar society, Fassbinder sharply exposes how insincere revolutionary acts can become hollow gestures, exploited to justify expanded state control and surveillance. Though rooted in 1979, the film eerily anticipates our contemporary world: a society numbed by constant surveillance, manipulated by capitalist tech moguls...
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Urban Guerrillas vs The State in Ice (1970)
Politics of Cinema
On this episode we wanted to see a depiciton of people resisting fascim, so we're looking at an Robert Kramer's Ice (1970). It's our first American film in this series and the resistance we're seeing comes from a cell of New York Urban guerillas. They are fighting a dystopian version of the Nixon administration and its illegal war of imperialism in Mexico. Kramer's film is less a straightforward dystopia thriller than a raw document of the fractured leftist movements trying to organize within the belly of U.S. empire in the late 1960's. Kramer's handheld, on-location shooting style...
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Bearing Witness in Gwangju with A Taxi Driver (2017)
Politics of Cinema
On this episode, we're leaving the 1960's behind and jumping to South Korea in 1980. In Jang Hoon's A Taxi Driver (2017) we get a wild sampling of genres in a remarkably well balanced film. It's an action film. A single father supporting his daughter story. It’s dramatic and also quite goofy. It’s based on a actual events, but it’s also highly fictionalized. It documents political history while being oddly apolitical at times. And it's a journalism film too. International treasure Song Kang-ho stars as a Seoul cabbie who's transporting a German journalist to cover what is...
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Army of Shadows (1969) & the Weight of Impossible Choices
Politics of Cinema
On this episode, we're staying in the late sixties for one more film as we watch Jean-Pierre Melville's (1969). A haunting portrayal of the French Resistance during the early days of World War II that serves as an existential reflection on what it really takes to fight an occupying force. Melville's muted color palette and precise framing underscore the suffocating atmosphere of occupied France, while also highlighting the moral complexity faced by those fighting fascism. The film presents a sobering look at the personal costs of opposing tyranny and forces the viewer to confront...
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The Damned (1969), or Why Industrialists Love Authoritarians
Politics of Cinema
On this episode, we're staying in the late sixties as we watch Luchino Visconti's (1969). Following our exploration rising authoritarianism in (1969) and reactionary Brazilian politics in Glauber Rocha's (1967), we're heading right into the Nazi den that is the von Essenbeck family in late 1930's Germany. A scathing critique of the German industrial elite's seduction by (and complicity in) the rise of Nazism, Visconti shows how a wealthy family's greed and moral corruption lead them to embrace fascism in order to maintain their social and economic status. Watching the...
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Entranced Earth (1967) as Radial Political Poetry
Politics of Cinema
On this episode, we're heading to Brazil and discussing Glauber Rocha's (1967), a pivotal work of the Cinema Novo movement. Following our exploration of (1969), we're delving into the turbulent world of Brazilian filmmaking in the wake of the 1964 military coup. Entranced Earth isn't just a film; it's a cinematic rebellion against political corruption and authoritarianism. Rocha's work, along with the broader Cinema Novo movement, redefined Brazilian cinema with its raw, politically charged narratives and innovative film techniques. We discuss how Rocha and the other Cinema Novo filmmakers,...
info_outlineThe fallout 2008 financial crisis has been portrayed on film in a number of ways; from documentary's like Iniside Job (2010) and Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) to ficiton films "inspired" by the events like The Big Short (2015) and Margin Call (2011).
Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly (2012) takes a different approach. It starts with George V. Higgins' 1974 crime novel, itself the third in a series, that centers on a lower level crime syndicate in Boston. Then Dominik places that story in a 2008 New Orleans during the final weeks of the Obama/McCain presidential election.
We get into the obvious metaphors that occur when organized crime is compared to financial institutions. But, we also end up discussing the various ways that Nationalism can manifest itself in America; from George W. Bush, to Obama, to Trump and Biden.
We'll be dipping our toes back into this Systemic Risk topic, the intersection of the 2008 crisis and it's portrayal on film. So if you have any particularly intereseting examples to suggest (documentary or fiction), send them to politicsofcinema@gmail.com
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