Punishment Park

On the recommendation of housemates plus David Carr, who reviews the film in the latest Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, I finally watched “Punishment Park” tonight. This is one seriously underrated flick!

Released in 1971, this mock documentary by British director Peter Watkins perfectly captures the whole bad trip of post-Kent- and Jackson State dissent in the US as experienced in the heads of many participants, and sometimes with their bodies. Although the scenario is fictitious – alleged and real dissenters have been rounded up, tried in military tribunals and offered either lengthy sentences or a three-day run through the no-win “Punishment Park” in the high desert, without food and water while pursued by government swine – the picture of the social, political and mental climate of these times strikes me as accurate. Everything has been reduced to momentary evasion, to ridiculous attempts at survival, to perhaps vigorous mouthing off in protest or even violence more desperate than strategic, but there seems to be no real solution to the massive power of those with the guns and in command. At least one person before the tribunal, of course, gets offered amnesty if she agrees to sever all ties to vaguely-defined “subversion” (and honorably and perhaps stupidly doesn’t go with the choice.) For the rest, whether they tend towards pacifism or militant bloodshed, and whatever the degree of their illusions, it’s punishment. They even become functional for the system as “counter-insurgency” training material. The scenario makes for gripping and uneasy watching. Plot spoiler: people die.

Given that the times don’t seem all that groovy at this very moment – and that we’re again dealing with the question of rollback and repression – the DVD reissue of this movie, which was under-rated when not reviled upon initial release, couldn’t have come at a better time.

One last note: after watching this movie, I checked online and read a few reviews. The ideological racketeers at the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) utterly miss the point of the movie. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising - they evidently leave their Trotskyite blinkers on even when viewing films. The moron responsible for the WSWS review, Clare Hurley, states, “the [movie’s] structure is unduly repetitive.” Yet it is precisely by repetition – by case after rigged case, by non-communication after non-communication, with all the torture that accrues in such situations (as there is no question of Truth, simply of truth-power, and the powerless are identifiable precisely by their “incoherence”) – that the movie resonates with the viewer. Hurley concludes that the movie displays “no real understanding of the actual driving forces behind the government’s resort to police-state measures.” Presumably these “actual driving forces” can be derived from crude Marxism’s base / superstructure differentiations and a concomitant reduction of the social to political/economic “progress.” In fact, the movie shows a better understanding than its imbecile reviewer, who fails to understand the constant interweaving of the “subjective” and the “objective” in our world. This is not to say that the movie doesn’t have problems – Carr’s review for Anarchy: AJODA is un-blinkered and points to some of these – but that it at least poses the fundamental question. It doesn’t ask us how to play the power/punishment/politics game, but broaches the topic of how to get it out of our lives once and for all. Wretched times call for unfailingly creative thinking; “Punishment Park” may still provoke some.

Some New Radical Publications

At a time when radical presses seem to be in the decline due to market pressure and the whole inter-web thingy, it's encouraging to see some great journals continuing and even new print projects springing up. Here are some journals I've been leafing through recently.

Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (AJODA hereafter) has brought out a pretty strong new issue with #63. While I read one of the featured articles, Wolfi Landstreicher's "A Balanced Account of the World" a while ago when it was released in pamphlet form, I presume that the changes to the text in the new version are insignificant, and that this remains as a strong critique of the scientific worldview. Some of the other articles in the "Spawn of Anthropology" feature are informative, but I remain hesitant about the current anthropology-craze amongst anarchists (in fact, a review elsewhere in the issue seems to display similar reservations.) Wolfi's column "The Egoist Encyclopedia" has a lot of attitude this time around (e.g. "How do I say this nicely?...fuck it, I don't.") while Liana Doctrines' new column "Choosing Relations" contains a necessarily overbroad introduction to topics which I presume will be grappled with in interesting ways in future issues. AJODA is still one of the very best radical publications in North America. Support.

A Murder of Crows has brought out a second issue, with lots of interesting writing and a shiny cover this time around. I'll have to admit to still having to finish my reading of this new issue - it's packed! - but the articles on repression (centering around the eco-sabotage cases in the Pacific Northwest) are all engaging and offer up a challenge to radicals to go beyond the liberalism of many efforts opposing state campaigns. The article dissing "animal liberation" is bound to ruffle some feathers (pardon the metaphor!) while an article on technology and "progress" adopts a class perspective so often lacking in debates on this subject. There are also critical articles on anti-high speed train struggles in Italy, the Six Nations land occupations in "Canada," and insurrection in Bangladesh. The journal remains influenced by insurrectionary anarchism, but also - as is spelled out in a brief article - takes a non-ideological position open to other perspectives. I really hope that it won't be another year until the next issue!

Green Anarchy hits issue 24 with its latest, a 100-page (civilization-crushing) monster. Expect the usual about getting rid of the whole stinking mess, with some interesting diversions into critiques of the Situationist International (some absurd, some pretty cool) as well as Elisée Reclus. The article "Overcoming the Spectacle of the Usual Counter-summit Banality" (what a title!) gives an interesting German perspective on campaigns against the upcoming G8 summit there. It provides some information I didn't know beforehand, plus it is seriously cranky in tone, in the absolute best way possible. Worth the purchase for this article alone.

The first thing to say about Principia Dialectica #2 is that it looks beautiful. Probably the best design of any radical journal I've ever seen. While I still don't fully "get" this journal's contention that class struggle necessarily keeps the system alive - although of course many class struggles certainly pose only partial demands and hence operate at the level of production for surplus value - there is a lot of worthwhile material in the publication. The Moishe Postone text gives a fairly concise version of his analysis, useful for those who have not ploughed through his Time, Labor and Social Domination yet. Alice McEwan's article "The Rotting Fruits of Revolution: William Morris Meets the Constructivists in the Work of David Mabb" is suburb, and has encouraged me to look further into its subject. Also, Len Bracken's lengthy article on modern China is fascinating, and is another highlight of the issue. Other than the discussion of nuclear power, which is chilling but also exactly the sort of stuff that belongs in a radical publication, the rest of the content is kinda hit-or-miss. However, even the articles I've mentioned make picking up a copy more than worth the cover price. I look forward to seeing this one developing - the publishers certainly have high ambitions, and even with the bits I'm not so sure of, at least they're serious about pushing the envelope.

The first three of these journals are distributed by Tarantula Distribution - expect listings to go up on the website soon - while we hope to get copies of Principia Dialectica in soon as well. But don't feel shy about ordering directly from the publishers or even - gasp! - taking out subscriptions.

PS - Honorable mention to Rolling Thunder, whose latest issue is in my possession but whose covers I haven't even had a chance to open yet.