March Towards the Sound of Guns

As there remains no tangible access to material power among the working class, and no clear movement in which one can invest themselves, the question of what is to be done remains the overarching one for all contemporary leftist political discourse. The answer has been provided to us by Napoleon: march towards the sound of guns. 

The titular order was one given to all of Napoleon’s field marshals to ensure that, even absent a clear directive, they would always seek out the nearest conflict to support their comrades. The leftist version of this is to seek out the battlegrounds, be there real or rhetorical, where the fighting is happening. These may include the rights and dignity of the global transgender community, the safety and independence of the people of Gaza, or unfettered access to abortion in the United States. The real question is not “should the left engage on these headline issues” because the answer is a resounding: of course. By planting a flag firmly on these issues in a manner that demonstrates political integrity and a prioritization of solidarity and empathy for the most vulnerable, it creates a contrast between the left and those that would attempt to use populist economic messaging to push reactionary politics. The better question is: how does one tail the headlines without tailing lumpen proletarian’s opinions? 

Tailing is the term often used in leftist rhetoric to refer to following behind some existing group. While often used pejoratively, it’s a neutral term out of context. One could describe the practice of trying to engage rhetorically on mainstream issues as tailing but failing to do so would be to cede that ground to populist reactionaries who would use these issues to sow divisions in the working class. However, trying to convince the lumpen proletarian to join the ranks by telling them what they want to hear in all contexts would also be tailing and would not be effective long term. 

Consider Marx’ characterization of the lumpen proletarian, the uninformed working class, as a “sack of potatoes,” or the Matt Christman post-modern update of the phrase “Pringles in a tube.” The capitalist superstructure, especially in the imperial core, will create a gravitational like force that encourages working class individuals to disregard any instincts they might have towards empathy, compassion, or solidarity. Combine that with how alienated the working class is from itself, and its inevitable that, absent interruption from the left, many lumpen will default to accept or remain ambivalent towards reactionary rhetoric and policy. The lumpen may share living conditions, but they do not share any political consciousness. 

This means that if the left wants to make meaningful penetration, and differentiate themselves from populist reactionaries, they need to aggressively pursue the issues to ensure they understand them, and can articulate them clearly and patiently. There must be some ideological grounding that issues are filtered through rather than just trying to react to everything in real time and form independent opinions. Practically, that means trying to read and grapple with theory, talking with those in various communities with whom these issues impact, and ensuring once an issue is understood that a clearly and concisely stated and actionable message is consistently delivered at all opportunities. 

On Boycotts

On October 14th a boycott of Starbucks was called in relation to the conflict in Palestine. Countless posts were made on Twitter about how Starbucks had taken immoral stand, and that consumers should punish them by voting with their wallets, in support of Israel. This first Starbucks boycott was because a union associated with the coffee chain had made a statement in support of the people of Gaza, and Zionist defenders of Israel wanted to monetarily reject that. A few weeks later another boycott was called, this time from allies of Palestine for Starbucks support of Israel.

Starbucks isn’t the only company to end up on both sides of a boycott. Various McDonalds franchises saw themselves on either side as they made posts on Twitter in support of either Israel or Palestine. The National Football League was boycotted over Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem by those who opposed his protest, and then again by his supporters when he was blackballed from the league. The video game Overwatch was briefly boycotted for having too many “woke” characters and then again for the company Activision’s corporate culture of sexual harassment.

The implication of a boycott is that finical pressure can be applied to companies via withholding consumer dollars. Those dollars don’t cease to exist however, they always go somewhere else instead. Instead of Starbucks someone goes to a local coffee shop, that has to use chocolate made by child slaves because their profit margins are so thin. TOMs shoes famously promised to provide a free pair to children in need, but in doing so tanked the economy of various small towns and villages by offering no-cost goods that used to be purchased from local businesses. A young woman on TikTok makes a video about how she’s giving up McDonalds to support the children in Gaza while wearing a Nike hoodie possibly made by other children across the globe.

Consumer based politics in a globalized economy is filled with contradictions, and while the desire to do good is admirable, it’s virtually impossible when attempted in the context of just trying to spend money the right away. The supply chains that span the globe ensure that almost every person in the imperial core touches likely dozens of products each day that were made, harvested, processed, or transported with the help of intensely exploitative labor practices, yet attempting to move consumer dollars around remains a consistent activist practice.

This isn’t because those who care about these issues are misinformed necessarily. To live with empathy is to yearn for progress. Everyone wants the world to be better, and when there’s not a clear mechanism one can participate in, that energy will be filtered elsewhere. Unfortunately, the intense propaganda of a century of an uninterrupted capitalist superstructure has channeled that energy directly into the free market. While Starbucks stock may suffer, though at time of writing its actually up around thirty cents from where it was on October 7th, those dollars get spent somewhere and the cruelty is simply displaced.

This rhetoric of course leaves people understandably angry. If one can’t boycott, a widely accessibly practice that is by definition the easiest form of activism to participate in because it is literally just not doing something, what can they do? The easiest answer is that they can pick up their friends from the airport, or help their co-worker move, or water their neighbor’s plant while they’re away. Activism, the desire to make change, starts locally; nothing will be accomplished without a substantive community. Do whatever is necessary in your life to maintain rigid integrity when it comes to your own political views while supporting those around you and slowly working to bring them into the fold. It feels slow, but the fastest way to do something is to do it right the first time.

Personal Politics

Machines of Cruelty and Mercy

A high school student who was immensely talented at basketball saw a special education student struggling with behavior issues at recess. He played a game of one on one with him, throwing himself dramatically to the ground to let the other student dribble by, and missing all of his shots with remarkable precision so the ball would rebound directly to his opponent. This turned what could have been a disastrous day into one the other student still references months later. This act of generosity was performed by a young man whose personal hero is Andrew Tate, the unrepentant (alleged) slave owner whose sex crimes were apparently so heinous that even the Romanian government found them to be beyond the pale. 

Many might be shocked by this seemingly stark juxtaposition between empathetic behaviors directed towards someone in particularly vulnerable moment and near worship of a cultural figure who represents animosity to those very ideas. However, this shouldn’t even be viewed as contrasting, let alone surprising. This isn’t because Tate is secretly not bad, or because this student’s isn’t secretly not good, but because there has been a distinctly wrong line of thinking that has permeated the political zeitgeist: the personal is political. 

Although often incorrectly credited to bell hooks, the phrase dates back to Carol Hanisch, who argued in 1970 that several women’s therapy groups revealed that a wide variety of their personal problems represented the broader political problem of sex based discrimination, stating: “[o]ne of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems.” This was meant to articulate how the home and the treatment of women within the home was reflected the oppressive misogyny that expected women to be the primary providers of unpaid domestic labor. The second part of the quote is often forgotten; it reads: “[t]here are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution.” Like the Second Amendment or the Pacific Rim film series, there’s a reason the second half of this quote has been all but obliterated from the collective consciousnesses of those that used the first half. 

The idea that the personal is political is now meant to place the burden on the individual, any desire to look systematically has been eradicated. Someone’s politics are representative of who they are as a person, which means that if someone has the right politics they are fundamentally a good person. This idea has become increasingly important as proletarian proximity to the actual mechanisms of power has been eroded. It is not without consequence however. If someone having the right politics makes them good what exactly does having the wrong politics make a person? 

The answer is of course self-evident, but it is also apparent in the shape modern political thought and discussion has taken, especially online. Antagonism cannot be expressed in any sort of upward direction, so instead its expressed laterally. Inter-community conflict is such a mainstream feature that every marginalized demographic or leftist organization is described as “toxic” or “filled with in-fighting” to the point where its cliche. Even takes on this very phenomenon are expressed with the same vitriol as takes on on-going genocides. Every issue and all subject matter have been flattened out into something that one must accept or reject. 

This isn’t to bemoan logic. Many of these questions, however narrow, however self-obsessed, do have right and wrong answers. Unfortunately, even in those mercifully private or at least somewhat insular conversations that produce coherent thought and understanding never breaks containment, they can’t. The lumpen have been inoculated from recognizing themselves in each other. “There is only me, and the working class individual in front of me who foreign, a fish person of Innsmouth, despite the fact that I am in fact looking into a mirror.” 

While this may sound like cause for pessimism, consider the student that started this off. He has consumed, been inundated with, absorbed the most hostile propaganda towards any concept of solidarity with those around him, especially the vulnerable, and yet his instinct directs him otherwise. Ardent theorized that Eichmann was a banal man, and this allowed him to commit intense cruelty, but she omitted that he had the industrial machinery to grant him that power. He was allowed to be a cog in the machine. There are many machines for cruelty that perhaps many students will become cogs for one day, but only because they yearn to belong. Build a machine for mercy though and they will choose it every time. 

Predatory Melodrama

Reciewing Saltburn and May December

The Baltimore Ravens recently honored former NFL player Ray Rice, who beat his wife so severely that he had to drag her unconscious body out of an elevator. Similarly the NBA has turned a blind eye to Oklahoma City Thunder player Josh Giddey who has been credibly accused of sleeping with a high school student, and allowed Charlotte Hornets player Miles Bridges, who beat his wife in front of their child, to return to the league, where he got a standing ovation by the home crowd. Finally, documents relating to Jeffery Epstein were released revealing a slew of incredibly famous and powerful people, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, had associated with the billionaire who convicted in Florida for sexual misconduct with a minor. The world is full of apex predators, free to hunt without fear of consequence in full public view.

English filmmaker Emerald Fennell release Saltburn to critical acclaim. While described as a “black comedy” by many, it plays out more like the type of cable drama that used to dominate in the wake of HBO’s initial success in the late 90s. The movies that followed like Swim Fan or Lakeview Terrace created a wide genre lane for movies that were basically psychological thrillers but with enough cliches and tropes to make them accessible to wider audiences. Saltburn follows closely in this tradition, but is seemingly elevated in its critical success, with many citing its class politics as the driving factor in its perception as occupying a higher tier of art.

What the text actually provides viewers isn’t the thoughtful class opus that some seem to perceive it to be. Barry Keoghan plays a middle class student who, much like Jeffery Epstein, works his way into the orbit of the upper class and uses their insecurities, foibles, and selfishness to out maneuver them to the point where he ends up with an eccentric wealthy family’s estate and wealth. All of this is revealed with the same Lifetime Original Movie twist pacing and usage of exposition, but with enough quirks to convince people that this is something more. Keoghan’s character kills wealthy college student Felix and then after the funeral strips nude and thrusts himself into the fresh dirt above the grade; Blood on the Dance Floor plays after he murders the last Catton family member thus inheriting their house as he parades naked from room to room, dancing along and preening.

If there is an elevation to Saltburn over the average Lifetime film, it’s the acting. Keoghan is excellent, and fully commits himself to the mediocrity on the page he was presented with. Euphoria alum Jacob Elordi plays the part of the privileged Oxford student to perfection. Richard E. Grant, Archie Madekwe, and Carey Mulligan all round out an amazing cast, even if Grant is seemingly the only one who is in on the joke. What’s left is a film that in quality is similar to Disturbia but with an Oscar worthy cast. The apparent desire for the film to make a statement about how monarchs deserve the peasants they create, or the predatory nature of the middle class was met with indulgence from fans who live on scraps of films from TikTok and think Wikipedia summaries and viewership are equitable endeavors.

May December tells a different predatory story. Similar to Alissa Nutting’s phenomenally discomforting novel Tampa, the premise starts with Julianne Moore’s middle age mom Gracie sleeping with then seventh grader Joe Yoo, played by Riverdale alum Charles Melton. Where it departs from Nutting’s work is that the story picks up twenty-four years later where Gracie served her prison sentence, had Joe’s baby, eventually married him, and had two more children. Natalie Portman plays basically a younger and less successful version of herself on assignment from her movie studio to research the family in Georgia to better play Gracie in an upcoming film. She arrives during a neighborhood barbecue where the film deliberately let’s slip its first tell.

The score of the film is adapted from The Go-Between, a 1970s British melodrama with a plot remarkably similar to Saltburn’s. It leans heavily on a piano riff that would find itself at home with any Lifetime original drama. In an early moment, the dramatic riff plays right before Gracie remarks that they might “not have enough hotdogs” for all the guests. It’s a clearly comedic moment clearly meant to coax a laugh out of its audience to settle them in for the upcoming uncomfortable exposition.

The scenes that follow are Portman’s character going through town and talking to everyone in Gracie’s life about her conviction for statutory rape and subsequent relationship with her victim. Her ex-husband, played by the underrated DW Moffett, is so even handed and understanding that after explaining how shocked and devastated he was upon discovering his wife’s criminal betrayal, he ends his interview by pointing out that they seem to be happily married and saying “what do I know?” He remains unwavering in his commitment to not paint her in the worst light possible. Portman moves on to her defense attorney, who is less sympathetic despite his willingness to defend her and keep her in his life to some degree. His wife still patronizes Gracie’s make-work cake business just to give her something to do.

With the presence of Gracie in town drudging up his sexual assault, Joe starts to reflect on what it actually meant for him. When his son, played by a cleverly understated Gabriel Chung, shares a joint with him, he realizes how few childhood experiences he actually got to take part in. When his twins graduate high school, he watches them through a fence at first, and cries after his daughter accepts her diploma. The adults sit elsewhere. When he cheats on Gracie with Natalie Portman, he is shocked by the situation but she tells him simply “that’s what grownups do.”

Gracie meanwhile tries to keep one foot in the camp of stern mother to her four children and Joe, and one in the camp of hapless victim herself. She tells Portman that Joe was actually more sexually experienced than she was, to which Portman incredulously replies “in seventh grade?” She tells Joe “you seduced me” but a letter Joe gave to Portman reveals she was clearly the instigator. She chides her daughters about their weight, remains aloof with her first son with her first husband, and has a breakdown when one of her cake customers moves out of town to care for a sick relative and cancels her order but still offers to pay. When Joe, who is comforting this woman in her early sixties, tries to inquire about the sick relative of their friend, Gracie replies “that doesn’t matter!”

Portman realizes soon she’s worn out her welcome and departs to shoot her film. Her acting is so terrible, take after take after take of her doing a far worse impression of Julianne Moore than even the worst SNL alum, but she insists on doing more, telling the director that she’s close to “something real.” The Lifetime style movie she’s likely making drives home how pointlessly damaging all of this was. It did irreparable damage to Joe, and likely their children, and the only ‘art’ to come out of the situation is revealed to be schlock meant for stay at home parents, retirees, and kids at home sick from school to gawk at.

Will Ferrell, one of May December’s producers, has pulled from this thread before, making A Deadly Adoption in 2015 with fellow comedic actress Kristin Wiig. While initially meant to be a parody of Lifetime movies, it became a more conceptual bit with Wiig and Ferrell deciding it would be funny to just make it and play the whole thing straight. The film itself is beat for beat identical to every other movie in its genre, but the presence of the two SNL all-stars makes it stand out as a truly bizarre piece of media. May December will likely feel bizarre to many, with some critics already stating they aren’t sure whether or not its meant to be a comedy send up of true crime, or a serious drama about a rape and a lifetime of grooming. Their missing the point is of course itself the point. None of this actually matters to anyone but the victims who inspire these works.

In a world of predators Saltburn and May December feel like they may be both benefiting from the seeming topicality of their subject matter but also might drive too many too deep into discomfort to be truly heralded. The academy loves sendups of itself but only in contexts in which they feel no shame. With new Epstein names dropping daily, and rapists and domestic abusers on television nightly, will there be too much unease surrounding what these films are trying to say to reward them critically? While only time will tell, what is clear in the immediate is that their relevance is sure to carry on.