ART IS NEVER NEUTRAL

Off and on, for many years now, I have enjoyed the observations of writer Micheal Ventura in his Letters at 3AM column in the Austin Chronicle. A couple of Ventura columns in particular that I read hot off the heels of my stint as an RTF student reinforced a belief in which I had strongly come to believe: there's no such thing as "just a movie." (Unfortunately, both of these columns seem to be unavailable online.) The first column, "Forest Gump Why?" blasted the wildly popular film on the grounds that it is anti-thought, that it glorifies the uniquely American notion that true wisdom is simple, and that intellectual notions cannot be trusted. The second column, "Forest Gump Why Not?" attempted to answer all the critical hate mail that the first column generated--in this second essay, Ventura presented his case for making critical analyses of film. He illustrated that, like it or not, all films present ideological messages; entertainment and art are never neutral, no matter how much we may love a particular film. Indeed, one of my favorite films, Gone with the Wind, is full of negative ideological concepts--slaves are portrayed as happy and stupid; the Klan is portrayed as heroic. Despite my love for the film, it would be dishonest and wrong to ignore its destructive messages.

Some years later, when I was getting my teacher's certification at the University of Houston Downtown, I was able to take a cool cultural rhetoric course. I was asked to write an analysis on the film Sneakers, and, riffing on Ventura, I decided to go for the jugular. I figured that, given my last post, "WHY 'REAL ART?'" I would let you in on how I tend to understand films these days. One note, the essay discusses radical violence to some extent: this is not to be understood as an endorsement of violence in any way; my own philosophy is decidedly non-violent. Also, in spite of my criticism, I really do like the film.

Enjoy:

“DON’T YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN COUNT ME OUT (IN)”

While writing the Beatles’ song, “Revolution,” John Lennon was facing a personal dilemma. Should he embrace the more radical elements of the 1960’s youth revolution or advocate a slower, more peaceful road to societal change? Lennon hated violence but people were being oppressed and murdered by establishment forces worldwide.

His struggle with the issue manifested itself in the song’s lyrics. The Beatles actually released two recordings of the song, a heavy guitar version as the b-side for “Hey Jude” and a slower, more relaxed version on their double l.p. nicknamed The White Album. The guitar version has the lines, “when you talk about destruction/ don’t you know that you can count me out,” but the slower version changes the second line by adding the word “in” immediately after the word “out.” Lennon was sitting on an ideological fence.

Using thirty years of hindsight, the Hollywood film, Sneakers, attempts to resolve this dilemma for aging baby-boomers everywhere. The film presents an ideology that dictates the preferred method of social change in the United States. According to this ideology, radicalism is bad, dangerous, and leads not only to personal destruction but also to potential destruction of the world. On the other hand, social change, if it is really even needed, should be peaceful, incremental, and, by and large, accomplished through the established institutions of society.

The two views are embodied by the actions of the film’s two central characters played by Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley. Kingsley is the bad guy and ideologically represents what is to the movie’s producers the wrong way to change society. Firstly, Kingsley’s character is clearly a radical, but he is also a cold-blooded killer working for organized crime: in Sneakers, radicalism is murderous; its often-noble goals are equated with the self-serving aims of the Mafia. Secondly, as a criminal, Kingsley leads a life of danger with bullets flying and risk of incarceration--radicalism is a dangerous thing; just ask Patty Hearst. Finally, Kingsley loses in the end; he fails to achieve his twisted dream of Nirvana overnight and, if I recall correctly, faces trial for his actions. On the other hand, if he had succeeded, the world as we know it would have ended, replaced by some dark vision. For Sneakers, radicalism, if successful, destroys the world, if unsuccessful, destroys the self.

Redford’s character, on the other hand, is the good guy and ideologically represents the right way to change society, if such a thing is needed at all. Indeed, according to the movie, Redford spends most of his life doing absolutely nothing to change society; he devotes himself to individual concerns, starting a business, leading his life. In Sneakers, societal change is rarely needed: the good citizen should be concerned mostly with his or her own personal business.

Further, Redford is peaceful, only encountering violence when he becomes again involved with Kingsley, the radical. When Redford finally does attempt to change society, even though he acts in a seemingly radical manner, he does it by influencing society’s established institutions such that change is slow and incremental rather than immediate. For Sneakers, good Americans embrace the establishment and seek only slow, non-violent change.

This ideology presented by Sneakers, however, is factually incorrect and even undermines itself through contradiction. To begin, even though radicalism is often associated with violence, it has, in fact, worked quite well numerous times and accomplished numerous worthy goals.

The U.S. labor movement of the 1920’s and 1930’s was, at times, extremely violent, seeking immediate societal change; however, it gained many rights that Americans today take for granted. Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution of the late 1950’s was also violent, changing Cuba virtually overnight. It is arguable how beneficial the revolution was to the people of Cuba, but, by many personal accounts, two great accomplishments were made: Cubans have food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care; the average citizen has a sense of dignity and self-efficacy that he or she did not have before. The African National Congress of South Africa also has a violent history of seeking radical change: Apartheid has ended; white minority rule is a thing of the past. Despite Sneakers’ messages to the contrary, radicalism not only works, but many times it has worked quite well.

Furthermore, the model of peaceful, incremental change offered by Sneakers is undermined by its own narrative elements. Redford’s institutional influence is, in the great scheme of things, inconsequential. He bankrupts the Republican Party; this action implies that the Democrats are the party of good. This notion is almost laughable.

First, one can easily imagine how quickly a raging flood of corporate donations would repair the damage to the Republicans. Second, the Democrats are arguably as money-driven and corporate controlled as the Republicans. It is business as usual one way or the other.

Redford then redistributes the money to Amnesty International and the United Negro College Fund. Both are fine organizations that have accomplished many good things. Despite years of activism, however, the United States still executes prisoners and supports repressive foreign governments; college is still, for the most part, mostly white (and with the dismantling of affirmative action, increasingly white). Redford’s use of established institutions to change society is, in all likelihood, doomed to fail. Therefore, as a close, critical reading of Sneakers suggests, incremental change within the status quo is probably not even worth trying. Just stay at home and watch a video.

John Lennon eventually embraced certain elements of radicalism and wrote some great revolutionary songs such as “Power to the People” and “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.” It is interesting to note, however, that when he withdrew from public life in 1975, he also seems to have withdrawn from radical politics, as did many other baby-boomers. Lennon was murdered in 1980; many of his contemporaries became soccer moms and stockbrokers, absolute symbols of the establishment.

Perhaps Sneakers is a corporate crafted absolution for the guilty conscience of a generation; perhaps it is just a movie. There is one thing, however, that this disillusioned, leftist Gen X-er knows: there is no better punishment for the turncoat hippies of yesteryear than to be condemned to the bourgeois lifestyle that they once despised.

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