[Marxism] Political documentaries

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times Magazine, June 13, 2004
The Alienation Market
By ROB WALKER

"The Corporation"

In their 1944 work, ''Dialectic of Enlightenment,'' Max Horkheimer and
Theodor Adorno advanced a theory on the far-reaching power of what they
called ''the culture industry.'' This entity, encompassing all forms of
mass culture, media and the businesses behind them, made up such a
totalizing system that it was literally impossible to rebel against it.
This complex not only anticipated the urge to revolt but would sell you
something to satisfy it. (Che Guevara T-shirt, anyone?) It's a
resoundingly depressing theory but an interesting one to recall, because
anticorporate sentiment is lately prominent in pop culture.

The most intriguing example is a documentary called ''The Corporation,''
which opens in about 30 cities across the United States this summer. The
film offers a fairly relentless (though at times clever and quite
entertaining) two-and-a-half-hour assault on business power; it gives
screen time to Noam Chomsky and the radical historian Howard Zinn, and
it depicts the corporation not just as a callous and brutish institution
but also as a ''psychopath.'' Produced in Canada, it has been playing in
that country since January and has so far grossed about $1.1million, a
record for a Canadian documentary; a companion book with the same name
made it onto Canadian best-seller lists. It has been an audience hit at
festivals from Toronto to Sundance, and the filmmakers say that
thousands of people have signed up on the Web site to send e-mail and
hand out fliers to promote the film. ''The Corporation'' has also picked
up distribution in Great Britain, France, Italy, Greece, Japan, South
Korea and Australia. This is not bad for a film that aims in part ''to
alienate viewers from the normalcy of the dominant culture,'' in the
words of one of its makers, Mark Achbar.

There's an audience for alienation at the moment. Probably the most
talked-about American documentary of the year has been ''Super Size
Me,'' the Upton Sinclair-meets-''Jackass'' film in which Morgan Spurlock
eats nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days and details the calamitous
effects on his body and mind. Later this year, United Artists is slated
to distribute ''The Yes Men,'' a documentary that mocks the World Trade
Organization. Hovering in the background is the coming release of
''Fahrenheit 9/11,'' the latest offering from Michael Moore, who made
his name by zinging big business in ''Roger and Me'' 15 years ago and
has continued to do so in most of his work since then.

So what exactly is going on here? In Achbar's view, ''There's a real
disenchantment with corporate culture.'' Many people see corporations as
having governmentlike power with almost no accountability and don't see
the standard media outlets dealing with that issue. ''So they've got to
go to a movie theater to see their values reflected,'' he says.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/magazine/13CONSUMED.html

===

NY Times, June 13, 2004
Capturing the Rosenbergs
By SAM ROBERTS

A HALF CENTURY after the Rosenbergs were executed as atom spies, there's
really only one nagging question left about the case: Why did two
seemingly ordinary people from Manhattan's Lower East Side sacrifice
their lives for a distant cause when it meant orphaning the two young
sons they claimed to love? What did they die for?

"Heir to an Execution: A Granddaughter's Story," Ivy Meeropol's
sometimes teary 99-minute documentary film about her grandparents,
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, provides some answers. While still
unsatisfying, they may be as definitive as we're ever going to get. (The
film has its television premiere tomorrow night at 8 on HBO.)

Despite portentous newsreel narration and archival footage that morphs
into modern characters and locales, "Heir to an Execution" isn't really
journalism or historical documentary. Instead, it's a "Capturing the
Friedmans"-style home movie: Reclaiming the Rosenbergs. Like "Capturing
the Friedmans," the film refuses to issue a definitive judgment about
the legal guilt or innocence of the accused. Instead, it generally gives
the Rosenbergs the benefit of the doubt, by dwelling on their unalloyed
idealism.

It does so less, though, than defenders of the Rosenbergs who for
decades invoked largely tangential questions to justify their shrinking
claim of innocence (it's now narrowed to "Julius did not steal the
secret to the atomic bomb") or to suggest dismissively that he was a
hapless victim of a witch hunt.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/arts/television/13ROBE.html

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