Anti capitalist films of Hollywood [Archive]

pranabjyoti

18th July 2010, 17:13

I watch Hollywood movies regularly and recently I have observed some kind of anti-capitalist view appears on Hollywood movies. Movies like "Robocop 3" and "Apocalypse: Resident Evil" are two very good examples. Those who have watched this movies can understand my point. Robocop 3, in my opinion, is much more militant in this respect. In this movie, citizens of Detroit were organized against an evacuation by OCP, a big industrial organization. At the climax, the police force rebelled and joined the citizens in armed fighting.
Though they aren't "communist" by any standard, but at least can we say that "there is something wrong in the Shipka Gorge". The Hollywood movie mughals are now forced the show a glimpse of reality to be in the market. I want our comrades from US show more light in this matter.

eclipse

18th July 2010, 18:20

Why are this movies anti-capitalist then? Because they display stereotyped evil, big corporations? I could name a bunch of other movies doing that, but that is not anticapitalist.

Rakhmetov

18th July 2010, 18:43

Os Cangaceiros

18th July 2010, 18:44

Verhoeven's original Robocop was a very nice satire of privatization, I thought.

The Idler

18th July 2010, 18:47

...The Hollywood movie mughals are now forced the show a glimpse of reality to be in the market. I want our comrades from US show more light in this matter.
Mughals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughals), haha.

R_P_A_S

18th July 2010, 19:04

Check out Dr. Michael Parenti's book, Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment

http://books.google.com/books?id=GbpzQgAACAAJ&dq=make+believe+media&hl=en&ei=JT1DTKjuLsH-8Ab4h6jlDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA

whoa! thanks! looks like I found my next book.

x359594

19th July 2010, 06:52

Anti-capitalist Hollywood movies: A Corner in Wheat (dir: D. W. Griffith, 1908,) The Crowd (King Vidor, 1927,) An American Tragedy (Josef von Sternberg, 1932,) Heroes for Sale (William Wellman, 1933,) Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1933,) Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936,) The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940.)

19th July 2010, 10:51

Death Race is a good example of what pranabjyoti is talking about.

In 2012, the United States economy collapses. Unemployment and crime rates shoot through the roof. The imprisoned population becomes so vast that private corporations buy the prisons and run them for profit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison). In a federal prison called the Terminal Island Penitentiary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison), "Death Race", a gladiator-like fight-to-the-end racing competition is held to raise funds. It becomes the most-watched television/Internet event around the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg7um3D76_4

ComradeOm

19th July 2010, 11:18

Death Race is a good example of what pranabjyoti is talking aboutAs is Highlander II :nods:

Invincible Summer

19th July 2010, 11:21

Dawn of the Dead?

biggig

19th July 2010, 11:26

i think you forgot about the greatest of all .. fight club... brad pitt and edward norton,.. :laugh:

A.J.

19th July 2010, 12:18

anti-communist films are much more entertaining.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wccIqjrGGMk&feature=related

:):hammersickle:

x359594

19th July 2010, 16:11

Dawn of the Dead?

Definitely. Land of the Dead even more so.

Rakhmetov

20th July 2010, 16:03

Missing, Salvador (Hollywood executives called it "a hateful piece of work") Salt Of The Earth, Oktober

x359594

20th July 2010, 16:38

...Salt Of The Earth, Oktober

Well, Salt of the Earth is not a Hollywood movie; it was made by black listed film makers as an independent production.

I'm not familiar with Oktober, but a quick search of IMDb shows only a German short subject with that title.

Fritz Lang's rarely screened You and Me (1938) was an unusual studio release in as much as it was deliberately Brechtian, with the action set in a department store that served as a metaphor for capitalism.

praxis1966

20th July 2010, 18:27

I was actually going to suggest that folks watch just about anything written by Dalton Trumbo. He was a blacklisted Hollywood writer who actually was a member of CPUSA and while the films he wrote weren't actively anti-capitalist, the way they were written did seek to subvert certain archetypes. The way he wrote his female characters (smart, witty, and challenging to patriarchy) definitely went against the grain in terms of the way most Americans viewed women in the 1950s. He also wrote Spartacus (Kubrick, 1960), and I don't think it was a matter of coincidence that Trumbo, an avowed communist, took on the project and that Karl Marx actually listed the historical Spartacus as one of his personal heroes. Later on, he both wrote and directed Johnny Got His Gun (1971), an obviously anti-war film produced at the height of the Vietnam conflict.

x359594

20th July 2010, 18:59

...He also wrote Spartacus (Kubrick, 1960), and I don't think it was a matter of coincidence that Trumbo, an avowed communist, took on the project and that Karl Marx actually listed the historical Spartacus as one of his personal heroes...

The film Spartacus was based on Howard Fast's novel; Fast was a fellow traveler if not an actual party member, so we have a double left contribution to the movie.

Os Cangaceiros

20th July 2010, 20:40

Dawn of the Dead?

Yeah, although Romero's Land of the Dead takes the social commentary to a much more explicit level (I don't really like LOTD, though).

John Carpenter's They Live! can be construed as anti-capitalist, although people on Stormfront praise it for being anti-Jewish, LOL.

pranabjyoti

21st July 2010, 16:52

But, what I want to say is that, even in the so-called mainstream movies, a clear anti-capitalist tendency can be seen very often. I have doubt that both the director or the writer have any such tendency originally in their mind. But, as film is an art, they must reflect the reality and this is an inescapable fact.

danyboy27

21st July 2010, 21:29

hollywood producer know how to use the frustration and exasperation of people and turn it into movie.

its a pressure failsafe, people watch it and it help them to exteriorize their feelings.

Tavarisch_Mike

21st July 2010, 23:22

Antz animated movie frome 1998 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120587/

One ant get tired of beinig a worker (getting exploited) by the oppressing system, more antz will fallow his example and soon they have a general strike. The rulers wants to take focus frome this and starts a war to control theire position as rulers.

Office Space http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/ its about questioning wage slavery and daily monotonous rutines, and later on starting to handle this by lightning up the situation bya stealing frome work, something i hope many of us are familiar with ;)

F.I.S.T. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077531/ A Stallone movie where they smash scabs, do i have to tell you more? :cool:

Sir Comradical

22nd July 2010, 00:17

^^ I never thought about Antz in that way and that was probably my favourite childhood film. It maybe even influenced my politics.

Okay Pranab, watch the movie 'Matewan' (1987), it's a about unions.
qwEMIvDEFy4

Then there's 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley', which isn't Hollywood but it is one of the most leftist films I've seen. Ken Loach's other film 'Land and Freedom' is a classic and trotskyites love it.

pranabjyoti

22nd July 2010, 02:18

hollywood producer know how to use the frustration and exasperation of people and turn it into movie.

its a pressure failsafe, people watch it and it help them to exteriorize their feelings.
But, at least this is a recognition that there is pressure inside. The question is HOW HIGH IT IS?

Tavarisch_Mike

22nd July 2010, 09:31

@ Sir Comradical, yeah forgott about Matewan really good shit there. Isnt all the films made by Ken Loach leftist?

Stranger Than Paradise

22nd July 2010, 15:06

Days of Heaven (1978) springs to mind, which is similar to a few John Ford films that you could also consider anti-capitalist. They are certainly positive working class portrayals and convey sympathy for the working class.

I don't think it's especially peculiar for there to be anti-capitalist Hollywood films. Of course none of these films anyone has mentioned are expressly anti-capitalist. All great directors are aware of the structure of society and can comment on it confidently and intelligently. Hence all great directors (at least in my opinion, i'm one of these people who finds it hard to like something if it does not agree even slightly with my politics) are anti-capitalist.

Sir Comradical

22nd July 2010, 16:06

@ Sir Comradical, yeah forgott about Matewan really good shit there. Isnt all the films made by Ken Loach leftist?

Yes he makes leftist films and good ones too! Land and Freedom has an anti-stalinist message to it which I'm assuming you may be allergic too given your Zhukov avatar.

x359594

22nd July 2010, 17:38

...Isnt all the films made by Ken Loach leftist?

Yes, but Loach is not a Hollywood film maker.

Tavarisch_Mike

22nd July 2010, 18:02

Yes he makes leftist films and good ones too! Land and Freedom has an anti-stalinist message to it which I'm assuming you may be allergic too given your Zhukov avatar.

I have allready watched Land and freedom and i think its great, im no stalinist im very aware of the moscow-puppets betrayal during the spanish civil war. Btw Stalin and Zhukov never got on very well and therefor i have him as my avatar :cool:

Sir Comradical

25th July 2010, 14:17

I have allready watched Land and freedom and i think its great, im no stalinist im very aware of the moscow-puppets betrayal during the spanish civil war. Btw Stalin and Zhukov never got on very well and therefor i have him as my avatar :cool:

I thought Stalin and Zhukov were best buds, lol. Shows how much I know...

RED DAVE

25th July 2010, 15:18

Even a movie like The Devil Wears Prada has its anticapitalist elements. Remember that Andy has written a piece in college about organizing the campus workers, and she ends up working for a magazine something like The Nation. (I'm not talking about Sex and the City or even The Women here.)

Oktober is, I believe, the Eisenstein movie better know as Ten Days That Shook the World, which is now available in a non-Stalinized version. In the version that circulated for years, Lenin, addressing the Petrograd Soviet after the seizure of power, is made to say, "Gentlemen, let us now build socialism in Russia." In the original, he says, "Gentlemen, let us now proceed to construct the socialist order." Big Difference.

RED DAVE

DunyaGongrenKomRevolyutsi

25th July 2010, 15:21

But, at least this is a recognition that there is pressure inside. The question is HOW HIGH IT IS?

What pressure? The state of the American class-struggle?

x359594

25th July 2010, 16:40

...Oktober is, I believe, the Eisenstein movie better know as Ten Days That Shook the World...

You're probably right. The German title threw me off. I know the restored version of Eisenstein's film circulates under the Russian title of Octobyr, so that's undoubtedly the source of the confusion.

By the way, Trevor Griffiths' original screenplay for Reds will be published under its original title Comrades. Apparently in Griffiths' version Reeds' politics are in the foreground and the romance is in the background, the exact opposite from Warren Beatty's revised version.

howblackisyourflag

25th July 2010, 20:01

Starship Troopers is quite subversive, it's written from the perspective of soldiers in a fascist state. 12 monkeys and anything else by terry gilliam is very anti-authoritarian, as are the films of stanley kubrick. Cape Fear by martin scorcese is also anti-authoritarian, showing how the people in charge are just as bad as the criminals they pursue.

KurtFF8

25th July 2010, 23:30

Salt of the Earth and Matewan are probably the most commonly cited American leftist films (although Modern Times is also notoriously awesome)

As for Hollywood, I agree that They Live! is another great example.

(All of these I wrote about on my blog Waiting for Lefty (http://leftisminfilm.wordpress.com) incidentally ;) )

x359594

25th July 2010, 23:41

Starship Troopers is quite subversive, it's written from the perspective of soldiers in a fascist state...

If it was Verhoeven's intent to undermine Heinlien's neo-fascist novel he failed miserably. I for one see absolutely no irony at work whatsoever in that picture.

x359594

25th July 2010, 23:46

Salt of the Earth and Matewan are probably the most commonly cited American leftist films (although Modern Times is also notoriously awesome)...

Well, all three movies are only marginally Hollywood productions. Salt of the Earth was made by Hollywood exiles, Matewan and Modern Times were independently made movies financed outside the usual Hollywood circuit (Chaplin spent his own money to make Modern Times.)

KurtFF8

26th July 2010, 03:30

I know, that's why I specified "American Leftist films" and later talked about a Hollywood film.

(And Reds is a Hollywood film)

howblackisyourflag

26th July 2010, 13:36

If it was Verhoeven's intent to undermine Heinlien's neo-fascist novel he failed miserably. I for one see absolutely no irony at work whatsoever in that picture.

For example, 'aryan' types living in argentina speaking english, invading another country for its resources loads more.

ComradeOm

26th July 2010, 14:55

If it was Verhoeven's intent to undermine Heinlien's neo-fascist novel he failed miserably. I for one see absolutely no irony at work whatsoever in that picture.Verhoeven satirised the book by giving its protagonists the fascist veneer that they lacked in Heinlein's version. Hence blond square-jawed 'heroes' dressed in black leather trenchcoats and cheered on by relentless state propaganda. It similarly works as indictment of US militarism. Like all good satire, its played completely straight

x359594

26th July 2010, 19:27

...Like all good satire, its played completely straight

Satire lacking ironic distancing fails in my view. Strictly played straight it can be read as an indictment or an endorsement, so it's all in the eye of the beholder.

RED DAVE

28th July 2010, 18:08

Verhoeven satirised the book by giving its protagonists the fascist veneer that they lacked in Heinlein's version. Hence blond square-jawed 'heroes' dressed in black leather trenchcoats and cheered on by relentless state propaganda. It similarly works as indictment of US militarism. Like all good satire, its played completely straightI've seen part of it; my conclusion is that there is little or no irony.

If you want to read an ironic treatment of "Starship Troopers," get a copy of "Bill, the Galactic Hero." I've never read any of the sequels, but the original is hysterical. ("Welcome to Camp Leon Trotsky!" Ride on the good ship "Christine Keeler.")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill,_the_Galactic_Hero

RED DAVE

ckaihatsu

12th August 2010, 22:16

Tough to top *this* list....

Salt of the Earth and Matewan are probably the most commonly cited American leftist films (although Modern Times is also notoriously awesome)...

I'll throw in my off-the-top-of-my-head list:

- 'The Joneses' for its stunning premise (it *is* _fiction_, right?)

- 'Hardwired' for its exposé value (I've posted on this)

- 'Hostel' for showing the lengths to which capital feels free to go, though I can't recommend actually *watching* the movie because of how disturbing and unsettling the explicit torture is

- 'Norma Rae' for historical illustration of labor in the U.S. South

- 'Sleep Dealer' -- a must-see

Also, good recent article here:

Cinema as an imperialist weapon: Hollywood and World War I

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/holl-a05.shtml

Os Cangaceiros

12th August 2010, 23:07

Satire lacking ironic distancing fails in my view. Strictly played straight it can be read as an indictment or an endorsement, so it's all in the eye of the beholder.

Verhoeven supposedly become very irritated when people came out of his movie talking about how cool it was and totally missed the point about how the film was not a heroic "humans vs bugs" story. :lol:

ckaihatsu

12th August 2010, 23:20

the film was not a heroic "humans vs bugs" story. :lol:

Wha...???

It *wasn't*???!!!

But I was *rooting* for the humans! So you're saying I was *wrong*??? But I *like* people!!

x D

Nolan

13th August 2010, 05:00

Moon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_%282009_film%29)

Telemakus

13th August 2010, 05:39

Good post:

hollywood producer know how to use the frustration and exasperation of people and turn it into movie.

its a pressure failsafe, people watch it and it help them to exteriorize their feelings.

The upper class knows how to use popular opinion to its advantage.

"We're on your side, guys! We want you to all be free! ... (to buy our stuff)"

Not to say that all anti-capitalist sentiment in the media is propogated with such sinister intention, but I've certainly seen a lot of it.

RadioRaheem84

13th August 2010, 20:30

One word: MATEWAN.

I am surprised no one's mentioned this gem.

That and nearly everything John Sayles has ever done!

RadioRaheem84

13th August 2010, 20:31

Robert Redford's Quiz Show is my favorite film though. It's liberal but it takes on Television and the entertainments industry's connection with big business.

RadioRaheem84

13th August 2010, 20:36

I am intrigued about Moon. Can any comrades in here give me a little more info on the film without spoiling it? Thanks.

RadioRaheem84

13th August 2010, 20:37

If Spielberg would've actually been a Marxist, then Schindler's List could've been the most Marxist movie of all time. Just watch that movie again and see the radical exploitation of a fascist capitalist society. The undertones are amazingly anti-capitalist. If these were brought out it would've been a Marxist masterpiece.

Nolan

13th August 2010, 23:23

I am intrigued about Moon. Can any comrades in here give me a little more info on the film without spoiling it? Thanks.

In short, corporate abuse of workers taken to an extreme. It's also kind of a psychological adventure.

x359594

14th August 2010, 07:30

If Spielberg would've actually been a Marxist, then Schindler's List could've been the most Marxist movie of all time...

And yet many Marxist critics hated it.

Stanley Kubrick quipped, "Schindler's List is about 600 people who lived, the Holocaust is about 6 million people who died."

Jean-Luc Godard, a great Marxist film maker, thought is was just the sort of palliative bourgeois audiences would swallow.

Jonathan Rosenbaum carefully dissected it but I don't think his review is on-line (though it may be.) He found a contrived suspense scene particularly offensive ("Is is gas or water that come will out of those shower heads?")

I agree with him. I also found Spielberg's mise-en-scene totally out of place; the kind of camera movements and cutting that he uses in his pureile adventure movies, as though he's taking us on a Holocaust ride. There's also the problem of the gentile mediator in the person of Schindler and the fumbling efforts to humanize Groth, a Nazi thug.

I well remember the controversy that ensued when a black high school audience in Oakland had the temerity to laugh at the movie. The media construed their laughter as mockery of the Holocaust, but it seems they were laughing at Spielberg's sentimental presentation and inept film making.

ZeroNowhere

14th August 2010, 15:05

One word: MATEWAN.

I am surprised no one's mentioned this gem.

That and nearly everything John Sayles has ever done!
Um, yes they had.

I well remember the controversy that ensued when a black high school audience in Oakland had the temerity to laugh at the movie. The media construed their laughter as mockery of the Holocaust, but it seems they were laughing at Spielberg's sentimental presentation and inept film making.I remember hearing of them laughing at the movie, but don't remember it being specifically about the movie being sentimental and inept, although the movie was certainly both to a laughable extent. Do you have a source for that?

Invader Zim

14th August 2010, 16:43

Verhoeven satirised the book by giving its protagonists the fascist veneer that they lacked in Heinlein's version. Hence blond square-jawed 'heroes' dressed in black leather trenchcoats and cheered on by relentless state propaganda. It similarly works as indictment of US militarism. Like all good satire, its played completely straight

Well Verhoeven altered the look, and most of the story, but the book really is steaped in fascism. So, i'm not sure if that is satire or just a representation of the society constructed by Heinlein.

ComradeOm

14th August 2010, 16:56

Well Verhoeven altered the look, and most of the story, but the book really is steaped in fascism. So, i'm not sure if that is satire or just a representation of the society constructed by Heinlein.Apparently Verhoeven, who lived through Nazi rule and its aftermath, sat down to read the book but had to put it down a few chapters in in disgust. Obviously the book portrays, with a straight face, a supposedly successful fascist society. This vision is, in my opinion, the prime target of the film's satire. Hence the representation of the same futuristic hyper-militaristic society but given the traditional fascist costumes that we're far more familiar with

RadioRaheem84

14th August 2010, 17:40

But Verhoeven must've failed because it's a teen favorite, bug vs humans movie.

I think that in our common humanity, most people would side with humans over the bugs despite the fact that the humans are fascists.

x359594

14th August 2010, 18:59

...I remember hearing of them laughing at the movie, but don't remember it being specifically about the movie being sentimental and inept, although the movie was certainly both to a laughable extent. Do you have a source for that?

I knew a teacher at the the high school in who put it this way, "They were laughing at the movie, not at the Holocaust."

After the news broke, the students claimed it was the way the movie portrayed the Holocaust that they found laughable, not the real historical event which they had been studying in class (seeing the movie was part the class.) They had already seen the horrifying French documentary Night and Fog.

x359594

14th August 2010, 19:15

...Obviously the book portrays, with a straight face, a supposedly successful fascist society. This vision is, in my opinion, the prime target of the film's satire...

Robert Heinlien's book is strait faced because he meant it.

I read several Heinlien novels and short stories when I was in high school, and many were exciting sci-fi stories, but at the beginning of the 60s his novels took an explicit fascist turn beginning with Star Ship Troopers and including Farnham's Freehold and Stranger in a Strange Land (which became a cult book for hippies who missed the point.) His earlier novel The Puppet Masters was a thinly veiled communist conspiracy allegory. He was a known right wing crank who lived in Colorado Springs on a quasi military compound and took a vehemently pro-war stance on the Vietnam conflict.

To be clear, I certainly don't think Voerhoven is a fascist, but I think he came a cropper with his movie version of Star Ship Troopers. Whatever its intentions it's about as satirical as John Milius's Red Dawn. To paraphrase an ancient carpenter, "It's by their fruits that ye shall know them, not by their disclaimers."

And by the way, Voerhoven's The Black Book is superior in every way to Schindler's List.

Os Cangaceiros

15th August 2010, 05:35

I read several Heinlien novels and short stories when I was in high school, and many were exciting sci-fi stories, but at the beginning of the 60s his novels took an explicit fascist turn beginning with Star Ship Troopers and including Farnham's Freehold and Stranger in a Strange Land (which became a cult book for hippies who missed the point.) His earlier novel The Puppet Masters was a thinly veiled communist conspiracy allegory. He was a known right wing crank who lived in Colorado Springs on a quasi military compound and took a vehemently pro-war stance on the Vietnam conflict.

I like one of his quotes: "Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss."

LOL

Anyway, I was more under the impression that his ideology was more Randroid libertarianism (as portrayed in some of his books, like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress etc.) than fascist.

To be clear, I certainly don't think Voerhoven is a fascist, but I think he came a cropper with his movie version of Star Ship Troopers. Whatever its intentions it's about as satirical as John Milius's Red Dawn.

Red Dawn wasn't satire? :ohmy:

ComradeOm

15th August 2010, 12:06

To be clear, I certainly don't think Voerhoven is a fascist, but I think he came a cropper with his movie version of Star Ship Troopers. Whatever its intentions it's about as satirical as John Milius's Red Dawn. To paraphrase an ancient carpenter, "It's by their fruits that ye shall know them, not by their disclaimers."I haven't seen Red Dawn. Are its heroes purposefully portrayed as militaristic fascists?

RED DAVE

15th August 2010, 15:14

Don't know if anyone's mentioned Ken Loach's (yeah, I know he's not Hollywood, but this film takes place in Hollywood) wonderful Bread and Roses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Roses_%28film%29).

What I can never figure out is why they didn't use the original poem and song, "Bread and Roses (http://www.revleft.com/vb/Bread_and_Roses)" in the film?

RED DAVE

x359594

15th August 2010, 15:16

I haven't seen Red Dawn. Are its heroes purposefully portrayed as militaristic fascists?

It's the ultimate Red Menace film. The ideological climate of the US at the time of the film's release was best expressed by Ronald Reagan when he characterized the Soviet Union as "the Evil Empire" and used that as an excuse for US proxy wars in Central America, development of the anti-missile defense system then known as the "Star Wars Defense", expansion of the nuclear arsenal, expansion of domestic spying, etc.

The premise of the movie is a Soviet invasion and occupation of the US assisted by Cuba and Nicaragua, and the story concerns a band of upright American citizens who wage guerrilla warfare against the evil occupiers.

x359594

15th August 2010, 15:22

Don't know if anyone's mentioned Ken Loach's (yeah, I know he's not Hollywood, but this film takes place in Hollywood) wonderful Bread and Roses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Roses_%28film%29)...

Bread and Roses is a terrific film. I guess you could call it a semi-Hollywood movie since it was made with the help of Hollywood progressives who worked for scale because they believed in the project.