I found it disturbing that the film romanticized underground violent pseudo-revolutionary work. The appeal of being part of a secretive group unfortunately appeals to too many young activists today.
I never read Vineland, but I'm halfway through "Battle," and wow, the "revolutionaries" are completely absurd and over the top. They remind me of the so-called "Symbionese Liberation Army," a tiny bunch of nutcases from the seventies, who apparently believed that murdering Oakland's first Black school superintendent, and then kidnapping a rich white girl, would kickstart the revolution.
After reading the takedown in Jacobin, I vowed to avoid Battle at all costs. But I beg your pardon, Max: many 70s hippies were *very* political. I was one of them. Underground newspapers, the early wave of coops, radical pamphlets and wall posters -- that was my world. The premature social democrats were stiff and way too straight back then. I hope to get around to Vineland. I like Pynchon, sort of, but I don't think he was such a great writer.
I was one of those hippies myself. My friends had a hippie food coop and I helped start an 'underground newspaper,' but I transitioned out of it into doctrinaire M-Lism.
I found it disturbing that the film romanticized underground violent pseudo-revolutionary work. The appeal of being part of a secretive group unfortunately appeals to too many young activists today.
No film is going to foreground non-violent organizing. Just like you hardly ever see a pro-labor film.
Matewan is one of the few.
I never read Vineland, but I'm halfway through "Battle," and wow, the "revolutionaries" are completely absurd and over the top. They remind me of the so-called "Symbionese Liberation Army," a tiny bunch of nutcases from the seventies, who apparently believed that murdering Oakland's first Black school superintendent, and then kidnapping a rich white girl, would kickstart the revolution.
Nobody is going to make a film about dull organizing. The violence is what makes the movie.
After reading the takedown in Jacobin, I vowed to avoid Battle at all costs. But I beg your pardon, Max: many 70s hippies were *very* political. I was one of them. Underground newspapers, the early wave of coops, radical pamphlets and wall posters -- that was my world. The premature social democrats were stiff and way too straight back then. I hope to get around to Vineland. I like Pynchon, sort of, but I don't think he was such a great writer.
I was one of those hippies myself. My friends had a hippie food coop and I helped start an 'underground newspaper,' but I transitioned out of it into doctrinaire M-Lism.