Is this the most powerful protest film ever made? | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Is this the most pow­er­ful protest film ever made?

13 May 2017

Black and white image of law enforcement officers restraining a person on the ground.
Black and white image of law enforcement officers restraining a person on the ground.
Peter Watkins’ incen­di­ary pseu­do-doc Pun­ish­ment Park feels as vital today as it did back in 1971.

Emmanuel Macron may have won the French Pres­i­den­cy by a size­able mar­gin, but the groundswell of sup­port for the Nation­al Front can­di­date Marine Le Pen is nonethe­less indica­tive of the glob­al rise of right-wing Nation­al­ist sen­ti­ment, thus far best demon­strat­ed by Brex­it in the UK and the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump in the US. As ten­sions and tem­pers flare, and ide­o­log­i­cal dis­course becomes increas­ing­ly polarised, many of those posi­tioned at oppos­ing ends of the polit­i­cal spec­trum have attempt­ed to reduce the con­ver­sa­tion to a bina­ry rubric of us-versus-them.

One of the more alarm­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions of this trend has been a marked increase in anti-protest bills intro­duced through­out var­i­ous lev­els of Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment. The ACLU and the UN have assured that most of the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, but while the vol­ume may be unprece­dent­ed, the sen­ti­ment is not. In 1950, at the height of McCarthy­ism, the US Con­gress passed Sen­a­tor Pat McCarran’s Inter­nal Secu­ri­ty Act which in essence gave the Pres­i­dent the pow­er to detain any cit­i­zens he deemed guilty of dis­loy­al­ty or subversion.

In 1970, with anger over the Viet­nam War and injus­tices of race, gen­der, and class esca­lat­ing, British film­mak­er Peter Watkins made Pun­ish­ment Park, a spec­u­la­tive pseu­do-doc­u­men­tary which posit­ed an alter­nate near-future in which Nixon had availed him­self of the rights accord­ed in the McCar­ran Act in order to silence all dis­sent. Shot on 16mm in the desert of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Pun­ish­ment Park is a raw, brac­ing, vis­cer­al and con­fronta­tion­al work which alien­at­ed much of its ini­tial audience.

After screen­ing at var­i­ous film fes­ti­vals, the film opened the­atri­cal­ly at the Mur­ray Hill The­atre in mid­town Man­hat­tan, only to be uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly pulled after four days. It has been shown only inter­mit­tent­ly since, an over­sight (or, as Watkins con­tends, an act of wil­ful sup­pres­sion) which deserves to be swift­ly remedied.

Pre­sent­ed as a doc­u­men­tary for British tele­vi­sion, the film fol­lows two groups of most­ly young, most­ly lib­er­al detainees: Group 638, whom we see being ques­tioned and sen­tenced by a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white, mid­dle-class, mid­dle-aged tri­bunal for obstruct­ing the war effort; and Group 637, recent­ly sen­tenced to and now dis­em­bark­ing upon sev­er­al days in the Bear Moun­tain Nation­al Pun­ish­ment Park, dur­ing which they will nav­i­gate fifty miles of bar­ren ter­rain with­out food, water, or shel­ter in lieu of incar­cer­a­tion for their sup­posed crimes against the state. The Park, we’re told, serves a dual pur­pose: a nec­es­sary train­ing for the law offi­cers and Nation­al Guard” in the con­trol and repres­sion of pro­tes­tors and a puni­tive deter­rent for said sub­ver­sive elements.”

It is the lat­ter group which gives the film its name, but the for­mer which gives it its dra­ma and emo­tion­al heft. By appro­pri­at­ing the doc­u­men­tary form, specif­i­cal­ly in a court set­ting, Watkins allows for his char­ac­ters to nat­u­ral­ly soap­box and lay out the dichoto­my of their con­flict with­out com­ing off as rote or didac­tic; by fram­ing their tri­al with­in the fic­tion­al con­struct of what amounts to sadis­tic free-range tor­ture and assas­si­na­tion for the crime of think­ing in oppo­si­tion to The Man, the con­vic­tions of the accused take on a height­ened grav­i­ty, mak­ing them a lit­er­al mat­ter of life and death.

Some of the lan­guage may be dat­ed, but the sen­ti­ments are, sad­ly, ever­green, as the accused indict the war-mon­ger­ing and prof­i­teer­ing of their elders, crit­i­cis­ing them for cal­lous self-regard at the expense of the less for­tu­nate. One mem­ber of Group 637 observes that the oppressed only turn to vio­lence as a last resort, a final excla­ma­tion of frus­tra­tion over an inequity that the film itself attempts to rem­e­dy by, in Watkins’ own words, allow­ing young peo­ple the pos­si­bil­i­ty to express them­selves freely and with force with­in the frame­work of an impor­tant social metaphor.”

Watkins, who worked almost exclu­sive­ly with non-pro­fes­sion­al actors through­out his career, cast men and women who large­ly held the con­vic­tions of the char­ac­ters they were play­ing and sub­ject­ed them to the bru­tal rigours of tri­al and desert. There was no script – the actors devised their char­ac­ters with Watkins and were then instruct­ed to impro­vise their scenes as though they were unfold­ing in real life, in real time.

Accord­ing­ly, even as the accused clear­ly rep­re­sent a cul­ti­vat­ed cross-sec­tion of types (the paci­fist, the yip­pie, the social­ly-con­scious singer-song­writer), the pal­pa­ble dis­cord and ani­mos­i­ty in the tri­bunal scenes – which were mod­elled, in part, after the tri­al of the Chica­go Sev­en – give them a raw, wrought, live wire authen­tic­i­ty that would have been impos­si­ble to achieve in any oth­er form. It’s easy to for­get that we are watch­ing a fic­tion, just as the per­form­ers sure­ly for­got they were enact­ing one.

Watkins wise­ly makes a point to address race and racism while nonethe­less main­tain­ing that the main divi­sions are those of class and ide­ol­o­gy, of which race is only one of man­i­fold facets. These are polit­i­cal crim­i­nals, not social crim­i­nals,” one mem­ber of the tri­bunal insists, and they have to be shown that their way is wrong.” What their way” amounts to, how­ev­er, is not an eas­i­ly reducible polit­i­cal or philo­soph­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, despite the fact that their shared out­rage over the Viet­nam War is what has brought them to tri­al. Instead, Watkins sug­gests that in such fear­ful and author­i­tar­i­an states, any kind of thought or action which ques­tions the suprema­cy or moral­i­ty of those in pow­er is in itself sus­pect, no mat­ter how equi­table, diplo­mat­ic, com­pas­sion­ate, or benign the query. As one defen­dant says to his inquisi­tors, You don’t want to hear shit that means you might have to give up something.”

While Pun­ish­ment Park depicts dia­logue as a weapon, it also sug­gests that it is only through open, unfet­tered, and above all civ­il dis­course that we can pro­duc­tive­ly acknowl­edge and address our frac­tures and fis­sions, by bear­ing wit­ness to the human­i­ty shared among us rather than by demar­cat­ing our­selves from oth­ers by super­fi­cial, cir­cum­stan­tial, or ide­o­log­i­cal distinctions.

Writ­ing about audi­ence response in the Spring 1979 issue of the jour­nal Film Crit­i­cism, Scott Mac­Don­ald observed that, Pun­ish­ment Park is first and fore­most an attempt to cre­ate an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion of the issues raised in the film,” and that when the film is fol­lowed by a dis­cus­sion, the audi­ence tends to break down into exact­ly the polarised divi­sions pre­sent­ed in the film.” Rather than dis­miss the premise as ludi­crous, as many con­tem­po­rary crit­ics did, we should recon­sid­er Pun­ish­ment Park as a metaphor for the bot­tom of the slip­pery slope we stand atop when we enter­tain the notion of crim­i­nal­is­ing dis­sent and reck­on with both the pru­dence and the moral­i­ty of silenc­ing sedi­tious thought and deed.

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