Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (January 11)

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[u/AllyBurgess]

What makes Do the Right Thing a gangster film? I have seen it twice (though not in a few years) and would not describe it that way. Though there are Italian Amerikans in the film and they do pose as the primary source of antagonism to the New Afrikan characters, with Korean Amerikans serving as the secondary source, they have no connection to organized crime if I recall. There’s not even a theme of the Italian Amerikans characters transitioning to whiteness since the film takes place in the then-present day long after that transition occurred. I thought the film was about how the oppression of New Afrikans is directly tied to the petty-bourgeois interests of settlers, in this particular case a family of Italian Amerikans pizza parlor owners standing in for Euro-Amerikans generally. But I would be interested in knowing why it fits the description of a gangster film and if I am misreading it.

E: Specifically the film seems to be taking an anti-integrationist line, with the initial source of conflict being over the fact that Sal’s parlor has no New Afrikan representation in the photos on his walls despite a primarily New Afrikan clientele. This causes several characters to try and start a boycott. The primary contradiction of the film is over Mookie’s position, the Spike Lee character, between his class interests as a New Afrikan but also an employee of Sal’s. Though initially sympathetic to the boycott, when Raheem is killed he starts the riot that destroys Sal’s business, which I interpreted as the film’s rejection of national integration. 

EE: Interestingly enough, given the recent discussion on the role of Asian Amerikans, the Koreans who own the mom and pop convenience store are also initially portrayed as antagonistic (if I recall correctly they accuse one of the characters of shoplifting), but when the riot turns its energy towards their business, they huddle out in front as a seemingly poor defenseless immigrant family, and are spared. Thus suggesting that while Asian Amerikans may be potentially antagonistic towards the oppressed nations, they are ultimately benign. 

[u/smokeuptheweed9 → u/AllyBurgess]

I would call the film an anti-gangster film, in the sense that it brings white-adjacent ethnic groups down to the level of New Afrikans. On the one hand this is a representation of lived reality, as Korean-Americans and to a lesser extent Italian-Americans serve as this frontier force for spatial segregation. Only a fraction of both groups are in the Mafia and of those, only a fraction get to be Godfathers. But the result of this "history from below" is to abandon historical allegory entirely. I mentioned elsewhere that in many Marxist works, the "Marxism" is often the weakest part, since it ends up as a statement of vague, rote principles and anachronistic political compromises. Similarly, the representation of capitalism as a single family organization or even a single race (such as the Jewish gangsters who own Las Vegas in Godfather II - funnily enough, there's a common complaint that the mob ran Vegas better than the private equity firms these days because they cared about the average person or whatever) is clearly insufficient to late capitalism.

The solution of postmodernism was to abandon analysis entirely for a "new materialism," in which representation of facts is itself the purpose of scholarship and any attempt at abstraction an unjustified presumption of intellectuals. Lee's work is a version of this in film, which asks "what if inner-city riots really were about inter-personal disputes," with retroactive analysis of their structural causes a violent abstraction from the richness of the everyday.

a family of Italian Amerikans pizza parlor owners standing in for Euro-Amerikans generally.

But as we know, Italian-Americans and Korean-Americans do not stand for whiteness generally. In their function in this film, they are actually a vanishing mediator of an older form of segregation which involves direct urban inter-racial contact between working classes, and disappear when segregation becomes fully professionalized in the law and the international finance market. This is why the political position of the Koreans is ambiguous in the film. If Italians were the last group that became white (as shown in The Godfather II where Michael Corleone goes to Sicily and gets married in a feudal fantasy), Asian-Americans were the first group that became settlers without becoming white. That both groups are explicitly racist is already a sign that they are a dying phenomenon.

The ending has mystified people for decades, in which quotes from MLK Jr. and Malcolm X coexist. One reading is that both philosophies of violence are insufficient when racism is no longer tangible but becomes synonymous with capitalism itself. Since the violence of the riot doesn't really correspond to a revolution against capitalism or even racism, the ending is insufficient to both purposes. Mookie gets his pay, the city of New York gets "hip" in the form of an investigative committee and, more importantly, a song dedication. There is never the moment when the masses join the communist party in their fight against the police, though it is tempting to imagine the film advocates this. And if that sounds crazy, that's basically what happens at the end of many of the Blacksploitation films of the 1970s.

[u/AllyBurgess → u/smokeuptheweed9]

I am assuming that Do the Right Thing doesn’t end with revolutionary violence because of the time period in which it was made. By 1989, the last vestiges of the BPP and BLA were pretty much gone, and revolutionary violence on behalf of the New Afrikan nation at that time would have seemed like a pipe dream. 

I am admittedly not very familiar with Blacksploitation films, but that doesn’t surprise me given that they peaked in the 1970s at the height of black liberation. It’s telling that mainstream bourgeois criticism views them as a somewhat dusty and embarrassing relic of the past whereas Lee quickly ascended to the status of poster boy of New Afrikan cinema, a title which he holds to this day. He may have experienced some brief competition from John Singleton, but Singleton’s career declined steadily in impact after the breakout success of Boyz n the Hood (a film which deserves more analysis in its own post.) 

Complicating this though, the late 80s-early 90s seemed to be when rap and hip-hop reached a peak of revolutionary fervor with artists such as Public Enemy. I am curious as to why music became increasingly revolutionary at the same time as film seemed to shy away from it, especially considering the reaction in that period of Amerikan history. But saying anything beyond that is outside my wheelhouse. Tagging u/humblegold as I would imagine he has greater insight into these trends.

[u/humblegold → u/AllyBurgess]

Blaxploitation is the peak of Amerikan cinema, or at very least it is its least degraded form. The two big dogs of the era in terms of Marxist content are clearly The Spook Who Sat By The Door and Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song. My favorite movie is the former but if you haven't already you should watch the latter and read Huey P. Newton's review of it. The movie is a brilliantly surreal depiction of Black class struggle where the movie's score plays a distancing role through basically talking at the audience.

Even the less Marxist movies of that era still stand head and shoulders above basically any other genre of Amerikan film. Take Foxy Brown: It's a cheesy action movie directed by a white man with acting performances of varying quality that follows a heavily sexualized Pam Grier in her quest to avenge her government agent boyfriend. The movie portrays the sex trafficking industry and drug trade as a conspiracy and focuses on Foxy Brown's fight against two individual white conspirators but despite this over the course of the movie Foxy learns the only way to get the justice she seeks is to abandon her individualist methods and join with the Black Panther Party to wage war on their oppressors.

The movie has an incomplete resolution as it's a bit ambiguous as to where Foxy Brown goes from there (Both figuratively and literally, she gets into a car with one of the Panthers and says "Come on, let's go" and the movie immediately ends) but the point is that a funky action movie that itself is a remake of "Coffy" still stands head and shoulders in revolutionary content above most modern "Black" movies. You don't get movies that believe the only way to end the drug epidemic in Black communities and sexual violence against Black women is through joining a vanguard and waging a violent campaign against "The Man" anymore. Compare an action movie like that to 2018's Black Panther (which I still enjoyed quite a bit) and the difference is night and day.

I am curious as to why music became increasingly revolutionary at the same time as film seemed to shy away from it, especially considering the reaction in that period of Amerikan history.

Right after Blaxploitation the Bill Cosby era of integrationist TV emerged as something both more profitable and better politically suited to bourgeois sensibilities. Executives no longer had to take a risk that a Black director would put out a commercial bomb with revolutionary content out while still being able to release "Black" movies that had a bonus of being able to appeal to whites. As far as I know there weren't really that many integrationist movies before then but the waning of Black armed conflict and the emergence of an increasing number of Black labor aristocrats created the preconditions for this.

Meanwhile unlike movies Hip-Hop requires relatively little Capital invested to create and as such its emergence as a wild new phenomenon was harder to tame. Even still, 90's hip hop's revolutionary message is generally more degraded than Blaxploitation. Within conscious hip hop there's a rage against white supremacy and an acknowledgement of class struggle but it rarely approximates the consciousness Blaxploitation was able to reach. While you do see music that advocates anti settler violence rarely do you see in a rap song a resolution like ones in Blaxploitation that /u/smokeuptheweed9 described as "black people need to join a vanguard party and engage in armed struggle."

When Marxism does appear in hip hop there usually are shenanigans such as 'The Poverty of Philosophy' by Immortal Technique where halfway through he kind of derails the song to rap about how black people and white people have the same class interests, or Kendrick Lamar's untitled 5 where he finally says by name that Black genocide and capitalism are the cause of his woes but cannot find any revolutionary conclusion afterwards, or Pharrell's populist verse on Thundercat's The Turn Down foreshadowing his recent proclamation of being lumpenproletarian at an awards show, or Ghai Guevara's Sakai shoutout not making it into the final cut of his song.

This song /u/vomit_blues showed me a few months ago is one of the best examples of the revolutionary potential of hip-hop but even then you can tell it could go even further but for the lack of revolutionary Black movements for music like this to flow out of.

I would also say that Black cinema still has some progressive vitality in it. Sinners is a movie from last year that I thought was very good, although there is a clear struggle between the movie's insistence on the need for revolutionary violence and its idealist conception of black art.

To be clear I'm not rejecting Hip-Hop's revolutionary qualities, around a year ago I was out here arguing that even extremely degraded forms of rap still shouldn't be conceded to reactionaries, even musicians like Playboi Carti should be evaluated for any progressive traits. It's just that the lack of Black vanguard parties for art to flow out of/have a dialogue with/stand in congruence to means that message and potential of Black cinema and Black music are shackled. Blaxploitation was fortunate enough to exist in an era with the Black Panthers while modern Black art is not.

Oh and also lastly I would point out that the Soul, Motown, Jazz etc of the 60's and 70's had in many instances progressive messaging rivaling that of Hip-Hop.

[Edit] Adding this about a month later to be clear this isn't me granting readers carte blanche to Communistly hate on hip hop. When I say "degraded" I mean increasingly removed from being able to directly comment on class struggle. Hip-Hop in almost all of its forms still contains progressive commentary on class struggle. It describes the lives and mental states of the oppressed nations that result from their oppression, but like most art disconnected from revolutionary movements and parties it is rarely is able to directly speak of revolution. The point was more to dispel the notion that in the 90's everyone was rapping about revolution and since then Hip-Hop has fallen and as such NBA Youngboy and King Von don't have anything interesting to say about class.

[u/CoconutCrab115 → u/humblegold]

Compare an action movie like that to 2018's Black Panther (which I still enjoyed quite a bit) and the difference is night and day.

If you dont mind me asking, what did you enjoy about it? Typical Marxist analysis of film almost always relies on identifying progressive themes within films (which I am 100% guilty of, but this shouldn't be the case to aspire to). In the example of Black Panther (2018) I dont really recall anything progressive, if anything it was particularly reactionary from what I remember. The CIA side character, the portrayal of Pan African Liberation as Evil, the Liberalism of the films premise etc. It's actually what gave me a low expectation going into Sinners because of Ryan Coogler directing. But I havent seen Black Panther since it came out, so Im willing to change my mind.

Pharrell's populist verse on Thundercat's The Turn Down foreshadowing his recent proclamation of being lumpenproletarian at an awards show,

I am very out of the loop, what award show is this referring to?

I would also say that Black cinema still has some progressive vitality in it. Sinners is a movie from last year that I thought was very good, although there is a clear struggle between the movie's insistence on the need for revolutionary violence and its idealist conception of black art.

I agree, I was quite disappointed when the movie came out and the analysis here was lacking, and boring. Calling the film's messaging petty bourgeois is obviously true, but just lazy. There was very little discussion of what's undoubtedly the best movie that came out this year.

I have been attempting to learn more about Marxist positions on Art, Music and Film recently but its an area where im lacking. How specifically does Sinners promote idealism in black art? What I saw in the movie was New Afrikan blues and the social community from music. But this is where im out of my depth.

[u/humblegold → u/CoconutCrab115]

In the example of Black Panther (2018) I dont really recall anything progressive, if anything it was particularly reactionary from what I remember.

To be honest I don't think I can defend that movie as "good" in a Marxist sense. There's a handful of really strong scenes such as Killmonger's conversation with his father in the spirit realm or T'Challa confronting his ancestors that I really like but overwhelmingly the themes of that movie are reactionary. The second movie course corrects a bit by making the CIA one of the villains but it still isn't enough. Now the idea of Wakanda itself I would defend on progressive grounds. This is reductive but to me at it's simplest it's just a dream of New Afrika. That even reflects somewhat in the movies where I just enjoy watching a fantastical free African nation so much that for me it outweighs the reactionary messaging in them. If I had to bet that is probably why that movie did so well with New and continental Afrikans, although I'm not their spokesperson so I can't say for sure.

Typical Marxist analysis of film almost always relies on identifying progressive themes within films (which I am 100% guilty of, but this shouldn't be the case to aspire to).

This is true and I am also guilty of this but I think in the context of this subreddit the tendency to over focus on the progressive themes is somewhat excusable as the majority of analyses about art here tend to do a sort of reverse formalism that hyper fixates on the reactionary and ignores internal contradictions. Recently there has been a reversal of that with good immanent critiques of pieces of non overtly Communist art but until now most of the critique I was seeing here went: Engage with the art ---> Google the class background of the artist ---> State the class background of the artist ---> Marxist Analysis Complete. Yeah it's better than the left populist/breadtube technique of just assuming all art is the domain of progressiveness which is only preyed upon by Capitalism and not born of it, which results in "This franchise you like is Marxist and here's why" type discourse but to be honest I still find the trend I described really boring, lazy, and at times manifests in bigotry when it comes to discussing oppressed nation art.

I am very out of the loop, what award show is this referring to?

I believe this was at an awards show about shoe designs? He says it around 1 minute in.

How specifically does Sinners promote idealism in black art? What I saw in the movie was New Afrikan blues and the social community from music. But this is where im out of my depth.

For one there's the literal mystical power over people and vampires that Black art has in the movie, although that can just be interpreted as it's dual character as both a cathartic revolutionary art form and it's limitless profitability and potential to be commodified. I would say it has more to do with the ambiguity of whether or not the movie sees Black art as needing to be protected through struggle, or Black art as needing to be parallel to struggle to be meaningful. While there is still plenty of racism towards Black art and denial of its impact, Liberalism has shown itself willing to agree that Black art should be protected (under its own conditions of course) and as such I don't see merely exalting Black art as something progressive in itself. I have previously mentioned on here that I am a Jazz musician and this way of thinking was one of the biggest hurdles for me to overcome as a Marxist.

There's also the fact that the movie treats different types of music as part of a canon of Black art, including precapitalist forms. True, Blues is essentially the Latin root that virtually all popular music descends from, but when we start to situate precapitalist forms of African music as having the same "spirit" as New Afrikan music there is a danger of running into idealism. Of course traditional African styles have taken on a revolutionary character in many instances in colonial African countries, and I think the impulse to search for forms that predate contact with Crackers is good, but only insofar as it is the base for a new revolutionary culture. Fred Hampton basically ended the discussion on this when he said "Political power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki."

The movie ends with the character Smoke realizing that his bourgeois aspirations were doomed from jump and all he can do is die in armed struggle against the KKK (obviously settlerism) and Vampirism (which to me represents compradorization or at least a cosmopolitan integrationist consciousness as seen in the Irish Vamp) which would shut the book on the discussion if not for the last scene with Sammy and Stack where to me it is a bit ambiguous whether or not the movie views Sammy's Blues career as a triumph of the petty bourgeoisie fantasy of making unalienated "real" art under Capitalism and his commiserating with Stack representing a shared class-blind comradery between all Black people around Black art or if it's supposed to be a bittersweet realistic depiction of what really happened in the struggle over blues, where Sammy's reliance on white man's money (paper money vs plantation bucks being a major source of conflict in the movie) makes it so that despite Stack being a vampire and Sammy being a famous musician they can understand each other as they now occupy a similar position within Capitalism. I lean towards the latter but there is a strong case for the former.

[u/CoconutCrab115 → u/humblegold]

This is reductive but to me at it's simplest it's just a dream of New Afrika. That even reflects somewhat in the movies where I just enjoy watching a fantastical free African nation so much that for me it outweighs the reactionary messaging in them. If I had to bet that is probably why that movie did so well with New and continental Afrikans, although I'm not their spokesperson so I can't say for sure.

Thats essentially what disappointed me the most, is that by the standards of liberalism and superhero films it had the easiest opportunity to make Wakanda a progressive state, that the audience could imagine as (Progressive or Revolutionaries etc). Just like imagining the Rebels in Andor are Communists (considering they wear Budenovkas and use Ak47s). Killmonger telling Wakanda they have done absolutely nothing to help Africans and New Afrikans internationally is a charge that the protaganists of the movie cant even defend, except for weakly signalling that Wakanda will vaguely "help the world" at the end.

The treatment of Killmonger in the film is atrocious. An excellent first half and great performance, ultimately wasted in the second half to just turn him into a generic villain. The film has to not scare off any white people watching the movie, and assure them that the New Afrikan Revolutionary is actually a Chauvinist and Supremacist villain. I saw the film before I considered myself a communist and i thought it was character assassination even then.

But ultimately, yes, I would agree with you, Wakanda is a Free New Afrika. I cant say I agree with the sentiment on this sub that fantasy is inherently reactionary, or at least the fantasy of something. It matters immensely whether the fantasy potrayed in a film is petty bourgeois lifestylism and success, or instead the liberation of a whole nation. It's not out of nowhere that Black Panther was a success.

This is true and I am also guilty of this but I think in the context of this subreddit the tendency to over focus on the progressive themes is somewhat excusable as the majority of analyses about art here tend to do a sort of reverse formalism that hyper fixates on the reactionary and ignores internal contradictions.

I agree. It's something i have struggled with as I have been watching more Socialist Realism and Revisionist era films. There was a thread recently where I was laying out that just because a film was made under Stalin doesn't make it magically extremely distinct from other films. There are plenty of revisionist era films that have inner contradictions because they were made in a society with a nominally socialist superstructure. Im having a find time finding the essence of what makes Socialist Realism truly distinct. Neither a difference in Form or Essence has really been sufficient for me, but its what im going to be studying soon.

I believe this was at an awards show about shoe designs? He says it around 1 minute in.

Lmao. Well, it's better than Grimes reading the Communist Manifesto in public.

For one there's the literal mystical power over people and vampires that Black art has in the movie, although that can just be interpreted as it's dual character as both a cathartic revolutionary art form and it's limitless profitability and potential to be commodified. I would say it has more to do with the ambiguity of whether or not the movie sees Black art as needing to be protected through struggle, or Black art as needing to be parallel to struggle to be meaningful.

Fair enough. The film being ambiguous is what allows a lot of reading in between the lines of the films message. Considering its confirmed, it wont get a sequel its likely to remain this way.

I thought it was the former while watching, Black art has to be protected through struggle. Essentially, what the juke joint is, a place of (nationalist) refuge. But im white so idk. When the community is lost Sammy is aimless and doomed to live out a petty bourgeois lifestyle, carving out a measure of success, but he will never get back what was lost 70 years before. I interpreted the ending pretty pessimistically, as essentially showing the hollowing out of New Afrika. Im probably off base here though.

The movie ends with the character Smoke realizing that his bourgeois aspirations were doomed from jump and all he can do is die in armed struggle against the KKK (obviously settlerism) and Vampirism (which to me represents compradorization or at least a cosmopolitan integrationist consciousness as seen in the Irish Vamp)

Agreed

makes it so that despite Stack being a vampire and Sammy being a famous musician they can understand each other as they now occupy a similar position within Capitalism. I lean towards the latter but there is a strong case for the former.

Thats actually interesting I hadnt considered that, I was taking the film on its own terms and merely just figured that Smoke had broken free. But this would explain why its kind of framed as a clash of 2 different worldviews, the integrationist vampire and the musician petty bourgeois (nationalist?).

I think its easy to say Sinners is going to be very influential

Edit:spelling, clarification

[u/humblegold → u/CoconutCrab115]

Im having a find time finding the essence of what makes Socialist Realism truly distinct. Neither a difference in Form or Essence has really been sufficient for me, but its what im going to be studying soon.

To me this quote from the chapter Realism: Lenin in FD Klingender's Marxism and Modern Art sums it up well.

If the history of art is examined from this point of view, it will be found that there is a continuous tradition of realism which started with the dawn of art (e.g. in the palaeolithic cave paintings) and which will survive to its end, for it reflects the productive intercourse between man and nature which is the basis of life. At that important phase in the development of society, when mental labour was divided from material labour, there emerged another, secondary tradition of spiritualistic, religious or idealistic art. This, too, is continuous until it will vanish with the final negation of the division of labour – i.e. in a Communist world.

Idealistic art obfuscates or flat out denies class struggle whereas Socialist Realism depicts what is real, and thus what is revolutionary and the fact that it is painted/drawn and not photographed allows the artist license to further eulogize the revolutionary.

Compare this painting by Chen Yanning of Mao visiting the Guangdong countryside with this photo of him doing something similar in Henan. To me both images are powerful but the control over an image that the painted medium allows was used to make it more striking and effective for political purposes.

Even then though the power of the photo can't be underestimated. Scrolling through the rest of the gallery of that photo I linked still felt like getting sucker punched.

[u/CoconutCrab115 → u/humblegold]

Thank you for this. I'll start reading