Marxist Film Theory

This article considers The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) in order to argue through Fredric Jameson that postmodern aspects of a text are capable of obfuscating, if not altogether obliterating, any Marxist polemics. The first portion engages with Jameson's The Political Unconscious, particularly his emphasis on class struggle and identification of ideologemes which manifest in the text. The subsequent section considers The Dark Knight Rises as a postmodern text through Jameson's concepts of pastiche and nostalgia. Moreover, The Dark Knight Rises is contextualized within the recent spate of class-oriented cinema. Collectively, the goal is to identify a trend within such films of establishing a correlation between capitalism and inequality, ideologemes and postmodernism. The final result is an increasingly impressive group of genre-spanning films which address contemporary inequality in its multifarious forms, but which treat these issues more so as narrative devices than tenable critiques of the sites of oppression.

The myth of Metro Manila as the Promised Land is no stranger to being depicted in the celluloid. No less than Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal have explored the city’s urban landscape in their effort to articulate the ills and evils of the “City of Man” in the age of Marcos. In modern mainstream cinema, however, the neoliberal myth of Manila is continually perpetuated as the product of economic progress and globalization. Two recent films, however, deal with the modern issues of Manila, articulating problems that are particularly salient in contemporary Filipino society. Erik Matti’s On the Job and Sean
Ellis’s Metro Manila – both released in 2013 – are set with the city as an integral part of the narrative. In each of their capacities, they narrate the political economy of Metro Manila, communicating the modern maladies that plague the city, and destabilizing the established notions of the city. In this process of dissent and protest, both films serve to disentangle the myth of Metro Manila as a place where power is diffused, and where dreams are fulfilled.

This article explores the anticlimatic suspense sequence, a phrase used to describe the use of mise-en-scene to build suspense and tease the killer, within a recent cycle of slasher film remakes. Despite the ubiquity of these scenes in the horror genre, there has been little attention paid to them. There function as a formulaic device used to tease the climax and provide suspenseful interludes between exposition renders them analytically unattractive. However, these scenes often answer some of the most basic questions one can ask of the horror genre: What is used to frighten the audience? How is the audience frightened? Why are certain elements or objects of a film’s mise-en-scene used in these scenes? How these scenes then inform questions of horror pleasure is obvious but what is more apropos to this study is the question of how these scenes supplement the ideology of the films. Under this interpretation, the seemingly apolitical nature of the sequences as a result of their formulaic necessity is complicated by analyzing these sequences and their mise-en-scene as ideologically constructed. I argue the anticlimactic suspense sequences serve one of two purposes: they supplement the film’s narrative to create a cohesive ideology or they provide an ideology to the inchoate or ambiguous horror text. As such, these sequences are essential to analyzing the horror genre and the goal is to illuminate the ideological vitality of such an analysis. Furthermore, the article refines existing methods for conducting class analysis and expands the role of mise-en-scene.

This paper examines the representation of the working class in Ertem Göreç's film Karanlıkta Uyananlar (1964), assessing how the general characteristics of the working class and vvorkers are described, as well as the forms and tools of the struggle of these vvorkers. The analysis takes a Marxist approach, focusing on the phenomena of class and class struggle, the process of class struggle, the worker and the forms of vvorkers' struggles. The film Karanlıkta Uyananlar, concerned with the economic problems of vvorkers and the struggle of the vvorking class, bases itself in the historical and social structure of the society and positions itself in favour of collective approaches to action and social mobility in contrast to individualistic ones. İn both its subject matter and its treatment of the vvorking classes, this film was a first in Turkish cinema. Keyvvords: Karanlıkta Uyananlar, working-class, Turkish cinema, class struggle.

What can politically engaged aesthetic productions from the former Soviet Union tell us about socialism? As recently as ten years ago, popular audiences and scholars alike might have answered this question by invoking the dissidents who fled the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Throughout the twentieth century, dissidents provided popular and critical “Western” discourses with vivid tales of both the treachery of leftist utopianism and the courage of individual resistance. Today, the outdated imperialist ideologies that undergird this approach have become readily apparent, while a vital strand of post-socialist leftism has surfaced once more across the former Second World.

The emerging Russian filmmakers I discuss in this article offer visions of radical politics and aesthetics that learn and diverge from the state socialism that shaped their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Russia offers a stage for intellectual and artistic upheavals exceptional both for the political traditions they juxtapose, and for the foregrounded awareness of the ambivalent legacies of these traditions. Tackling a range of contentious subjects from sexuality to police brutality, these films met with controversy in Russia while securing the reputation of their directors on the international festival circuit. I examine three recent films—Svetlana Baskova’s For Marx… (2012), Angelina Nikonova’s Twilight Portrait (2011), and Lyubov Lvova and Sergei Taramayev’s Winter Journey (2013)—all by female directors or co-directors, and all seeking to imagine and image social alterity after state socialism.

The interaction between “art” and “society” has always been a fruitful source of inquiry for scholars and critics. It is a complex and multidimensional subject requiring an interdisciplinary approach in the context of cultural studies, literary theory, sociology and political science. The relationships between “art” and “society” can be multiple and the word “society” can encompass an infinite number of cultural, political and economic elements... It is possible to talk about the direct influence of socio-political powers on art such as “censure” or “manipulation for propaganda purposes” as well as the more subtle sociological and political determinants on art coming from this general rubrique of  “society”. This work will be primarily concerned with those “subtle sociological and political determinants” which create the favorable conditions for “classical realism” as a “film wave” to emerge in particular societies. As for the present study, post-war Italian society in the context of “neo-realism” in cinema (1945-52)  and  Turkey’s  “social realist” movement (1960-65) in the aftermath of the coup will be considered as major examples.

This was supposed to be an open issue. However, as the essays poured in and the responses to the important work done in 8.1 grew, the issue galvanized around a few, key, central ideas. Graham and Joe write presciently, on the eve  of the election, NOT after it: It is our wager that even though the forms of race, racism, and empire have changed considerably since he was at the height of his powers - as evidenced perhaps most starkly by the ascendancy of Kenyan-descended, African American, Barack Obama, during the recent U.S. Presidential race - Richard Wright's writings remain invaluable; even with their obvious limitations, they continue to yield insight, inspiration, and even injunction for those of us seeking to understand and to change the world in 2008.

This is a link to my film theory podcast with Thomas Radke. Each week we pair one film with one text to inspire a critical discussion and a fun conversation--ex. They Live w/ Capitalist Realism, (Jordan Peele's) Us w/ Capitalism and Desire, etc.... Hope you listen and enjoy

Communication dans le cadre du colloque "Critique du cinéma : cinéma et marxisme – pensées, formes, engagements".
LASLAR et IRCAV, Université de Caen et IMEC, organisé par Valérie Vignaux et Sébastien Layerle.
5 avril 2022.

En 1978, Peter Gidal, le cinéaste et théoricien du cinéma « structurel/matérialiste » et Jean-Louis Comolli ont participé à un débat, avec Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey et Maureen Turim, sur le thème du « dispositif cinématographique [Cinematic Apparatus] à l’université de Wisconsin-Milwaukee . Le ton se crispe entre ces deux théoriciens du matérialisme cinématographique vers la fin de la discussion, quand Comolli présente une analyse du cinéma expérimental et plus particulièrement de "Condition of Illusion" de Gidal (1975). Aux réflexions élaborées par Comolli, Gidal répond systématiquement de manière brusque : il accuse d’abord Comolli d’être aveugle ; puis il compare son discours à celui de Karl Radek au premier Congrès des écrivains soviétiques en 1934, où ce dernier fustigeait Proust et Joyce au nom du réalisme socialiste ; et enfin il rétorque à son interlocuteur français – qui avait défini les films de l’anglais comme « films de docteurs » – que « les docteurs enlèvent les sutures [doctors also take out sutures] ».
Se joue dans cet échange entre deux représentants illustres des deux « avant-gardes », décrits par Peter Wollen dans son célèbre article « The Two Avant-Gardes » , un conflit idéologique sur la manière dont on peut faire un cinéma « matérialiste », dans le sens que Louis Althusser donne à ce mot. En effet, si Wollen décrit les différences entre les deux avant-gardes des années 1970 – l’un « européen » et l’autre gravitant autour du London Filmmaker’s Co-op en Angleterre – surtout par rapport à la fois à leurs origines historiques et économiques et leurs attitudes envers la représentation et la narration, il nous semble que cette discussion montre qu’il y a un conflit un peu plus profonde entre les deux camps, qui concerne plutôt les manières dont ils se placent par rapport à un héritage althussérien qu’ils partagent.
Nous proposons que ce qui différencie ces « deux avant-gardes », tous deux marxistes et althussériens, concerne beaucoup moins le rapport à la représentation (rapport chez Gidal que Wollen a tendance à ontologiser, malgré les protestations de Gidal lui-même), que la manière dont ils répondent à un problème propre à la théorisation althussérienne de l’art : comment un film, de fait œuvre de représentation et donc de l’Idéologie, peut-elle aussi être du côté de la théorie (ou de la symbolique, en termes lacano-althussériens) ? Utilisant cette discussion entre Gidal et Comolli comme base, nous montrerons que les deux réponses différentes que formulent les deux camps permet de les départager en brechtiens d’un côté, et beckettiens de l’autre. Surtout, cela nous permettra de montrer à quel point la dispute autour du « matérialisme » au cinéma à cette époque concerne avant tout la question de la formation du sujet : quel sujet est créé, ou pas, à travers l’expérience cinématographique ?

Kumar Shahani's Maya Darpan is lauded as one of the finest experiments in colour in post-Independent Indian cinema. Under the tutelage of the finest Marxists - the filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak and the Historian D.D. Kosambi, he spent his years in Pune. He assisted Robert Bresson and years later studied Gwalior Khayal gayaki under Gwalior gharana vocalists; Neela Bhagwat and Jal Balaporia. Shahani's work stretches beyond the norms of his completed work and his exploration of the Epic form in cinema. This paper is an introduction to Kumar Shahani and through Maya Darpan, proposes a close link between the selection of parallel line movements it draws on.

This paper will argue that 3D digital animation, unlike its 2D and stop-motion counterparts, currently lacks recognisable self-reflexive aesthetic devices through which the trace of animators’ labour can be made visible. It will open with a brief history of how animation has previously shown its workings; from the pencil-wielding hand of Émile Cohl to the opening seconds of South Park, plus the intentional and unintentional smears and multiples visible on animation cells. These devices will then be discussed in relation to Marx’s analysis of the commodity in Capital Vol. 1, and how the process of fetishisation is momentarily disrupted by imperfections in the object which have been caused by production errors. These faults reconnect the object to its producer through the trace of (imperfect) labour which remains visible on the surface. In animation, similar (albeit consciously made) “errors” connect the perceptive viewer directly to the work of 2D or stop-motion animators. This paper will argue the need for an equivalent to emerge in 3D digital animation, as well as highlighting some contemporary animators testing and subverting the limits of 3D and sketching some possible ways these might encourage further formal innovations.

Presented at Work and Play: An Interdisciplinary Conference, held at Futureworks Media School, 6th July 2016.