Remembering the good old days of the ‘working-class hero’ that dominated the world cinema during the third quadrant of the 20th century, one might find it surprising how the revolution has disappeared from the movies of our time, to be replaced by resistance. Money Heist, the saviour of the quarantine for the middle class, tissue hoarding, Netflix watching populace of the world, reflects the same ideas that the so-called ‘revolutionary’ cinema of the mainstream West has propagated with the likes of ‘V for Vendetta’ and ‘The Dark Knight’.
Resistance, as a concept of physics, is a measure of the opposition to current flow in an electrical circuit. Resistance, even if very strong, cannot reverse the flow of the current. It does not possess the power to fundamentally change the current; it has the power of bringing halt. The anarchist idea of resistance, as represented in Alex Pina’s ‘Money Heist’ is precisely that. Naked symbolism, devoid of material mobilization of masses, the peasant-proletariat struggle and organised war of annihilation and support are features that define the unrealistic, utopian and erratic politics of anarchism. The professor along with his rag-tag team practices precisely this.
This romanticism of anarchism, ignoring the mass movement and ultimate disposal of the state, not just for the sake of disposal, but to make way for a new state, a new society, is what defines the recent ‘radical’ cinema of the West. The rhetoric of chaos guides the emotion of these movies, the romance with violence, turning something as noble as a revolution into a perverted, symbolic sanguinary fetish, taking away the humane face of it. What’s left alone is heroism, a nihilistic ego of the sole ‘revolutionary’, snatching from human life its value, its social character.
People Do Not Need Dali Masks, Governments Do
“We are the resistance,” said the professor to Berlin. For one, it means to resist the exploitative capitalist state. For two, it means to just do away with it.
This means not negating the elements of capitalism as it happens in the historical process, but the clear subtraction of it, as happens in mathematics. Professor also goes on to say that ‘chaos’ is their important tool.
The slogan of “kolaahaal hi kraanti hai” (chaos is revolution) has long been the catchphrase of Indian anarchist polemic.
The question of what happens after the chaos is dealt with the way Modi dealt with the state of things on November 9, 2016.
While having no real goal of ‘how the society should be’, the idea of ‘resistance’ as eulogized by the New Left retains the bourgeois character of politics and the petty bourgeois character of the activist organisations. These tendencies of identity reductionism, constitutionalism and ‘democracy’ rhetoric bring these identity groups to the consensus of bourgeois democracy, sustaining the base of capital-labour contradictions. The universalist goal of human emancipation, of class war and of the ‘whole individual’ gets lost while monopoly capital continues pushing millions to the periphery, incarcerating people into poverty, making desolation, creating destitution.
Communism Has Always Haunted Those In Power
As a small pamphlet published in 1848, written by two friends says, “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism”, the fear of communist politics in the Western intellectuals, media and governments even today remains so high that any ‘revolutionary’ art which seeks to relive the spirit of it, has to strip it of its flesh and bones.
They would have to make the revolutionary an abnormal individual, like ‘V’ or a maniac, like ‘Joker’. Or even an outcast, like our Professor. They have to present a future dystopian society for the ‘heroes’ to stand against (as if present isn’t dystopian enough) or to show a certain excess by the state to give reason to revolt. They indirectly have to make it clear that their flirtations with politics are only to create opposition, not snatch power, not do away with exploitation as a whole, but to check the rate of it; like what a dam does with rivers.
People do not need Dali Masks, the governments do, for they are the ones hiding; hiding from the truth staring into the eyes of the ministers, politicians, bureaucrats, experts, businessmen, police and army. The truth of the people, of exploitation and misery, of hunger, starvation and war. Hobsbawm once said that the worst thing about the politics of the last thirty years is that the rich have forgotten to be afraid of the poor. It is our job to remind them.
Bella Ciao!