[Marxism] A riff on "There Will Be Blood."

[Gerry Cavanaugh <gjcav@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"There Will Be A Bloody Allegory.”

        Of course the film is bloody and destructive and ends in heartbreak  
and rejection and separation and collapse and the foretelling of the  
death of the human habitat and the announcement of the death of god  
as well. Then and only then is it “finished.”
        Read correctly, that is, allegorically, the saga of Mr. Plainview  
must be read as a description of late capitalism in its final stages  
of the rape of mother earth.

        Mr. Plainview, without friends or family, a man who at once uses and  
hates people, must be seen as  personifying  the ruthless, merciless,  
domineering, duplicitous, grasping, huckstering, amoral  and, at the  
end, murderous economic system within which he works out his destiny.
        It is no accident that Plainview is an “Oil Man.” And it is  
significant that the most dramatic scene in the story depicts an oil  
well’s violent eruption into explosion and flames--- an early scene  
that goes on and on, graphically illustrating what will follow upon  
the releasing of oil and carbon gasses into our environment and what  
effect that will have on, has had on, the ecological basis of our  
existence. OIL! Without which almost nothing in modern civilization  
can function.  We have come to the dark bloody end of our blind alley.
        And it is significant, as well, that the only force that temporarily  
stymies Mr. Plainview is embodied in the person of a fundamentalist  
preacher.  This, too, must be seen allegorically. Religion,  
Christianity, was the most formidable force standing in the way of  
capitalism’s advance---after all what Christianity preaches is the  
antithesis of what capitalism practices.
        But by coercion, bribery, corruption and casuistic reinterpretation  
of the Gospel message, capitalism won acceptance and domination. In  
the film, the Oil Man delivers a savage beating to the preacher, a  
reenactment of the clash of institutions and ideologies in which  
capitalism thoroughly vanquished Christianity.
        So it goes with the slick smooth-talking preacher. Hypocritically  
representing the forces of salvation against the works of the devil,  
his message and charisma are temporarily powerful enough to bring Mr.  
Plainview  to feign acceptance of the faith and endure public  
humiliation as he confesses his sinful nature---all in order to swing  
the deal that makes him fabulously wealthy.
        The preacher, too, cuts his deal and departs to waste his substance  
in riotous living among harlots. Like today's televangelists combines  
the lust for earthly goods with the promise of salvation, but he  
succumbs to Mammon, and rather quickly his ill-gotten gains are  
swallowed up in the crash of 1929.
        Setting the climatic scene: The Oil Man, denied entry to heaven and,  
having forsaken family, friends, and happiness on earth, is left only  
with a raging alcoholic emptiness of body and spirit. When the  
prodigal preacher returns in his penury and shame and begs for help,  
Plainview forces him to proclaim that he, the preacher, has always  
been a false prophet and that god does not exist. Plainvew then  
denies the broken preacher’s request and in a long draw out scene of  
abuse and violence smashes the preacher to death with a bowling pin.  
Plainview’s final words: “I am finished.”
        Do not look for signs of hope. The signs all point to more blood--- 
that’s the view plain enough for all to see. But perhaps lessons  
learned in time will point to a new path---democratic cooperative  
socialism--- painful for some though it may be. Of the realization of  
that faint hope, however, no one may be sanguine.

        (PS: In my view the film is a failure of narrative and of character  
development.)

Gerald Cavanaugh
560 Oak St., Ashland, OR
482-6543
gjcav@xxxxxxxxxxx

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