Armchair Activism

Rikki's presentation really got me thinking about a theme which, as an activist of sorts… ha…, is incredibly important. That theme being the efficacy of activist- here documentarian- work. It seems that activists often work against themselves- or their stated goals- in their work and activities. Many projects, such as we have discussed: The Invisible War, The Cove, Food Inc., seem to advocate social change based on consumer choices, Facebook and text messages. The problem with these "avenues of change" is that they fail to really target the heart of these problems. Text message activism basically uses the number of hits (texts), the same as Facebook, so that a group of activists can petition some representative on the authority of numbers. The problems with this method is that active individual participation is substituted for abstract (numerical) representation. Not to mention the problem with having these numbers taken seriously and, of course, the questionable faith put in the small group of activists that are suppose to make your abstract representation mean something to someone who can change it.

Food Inc., urges the audience to be a more responsible consumer. The appeal to better spending fails to address the problem of information, legislation and class privilege. We- the first world- are terrible consumers for our health, but fantastic consumers for the corporations and capitalist class. Further along these lines, the film fails to account for those who can not afford to buy smarter- the problem of Finding North. The problem is a problem of legislation (or capitalism is general). Both on the level of poverty and social importance (do urban areas rank higher in social importance than the rural?), but also social spending. That is, what products a society will subsidize. No amount of petit bourgeoise spending is going to change the legislation. To conclude, the problems with such simplistic solutions as "vote with your dollar"is that they fail to recognize the principal contradiction- the main issue amongst the issue- of the problem. Here, legislation. (Mao Zedong is brilliant on this point, cf. On Contradiction. Available at: www.marxists.org). To act as though spending your money consciously will solve the problems raised in the documentary shows a lack of understanding in regards to our social systems.

The same could be said of The Invisible War. The problem with the United States Military system is the disavowed "Code Red" mentality which the system maintains, not the laws which it uses to justify itself. (Code Red is the illegal/unofficial rule where soldiers may/should beat a deviant comrade in the night to encourage behavioral change. cf. Full Metal Jacket and A Few Good Men). Slavoj Zizek makes this point sensationally in his work Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. Considering the problems of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, homosexuality and torture in the U.S. military, etc, Zizek concludes: "The Church as an institution should itself be investigated with regard to the way it systematically creates conditions for such crimes" (Zizek, 168). The idea being we, activists and concerted human beings, should not take the reactionary position of demanding mere legal changes. This attempts to treat the problem in the future- through deterrence- after the fact, while leaving in tact the system that produces the conditions of abuse. Instead we should assume an active critique in demanding-through protest, marches, rallies, petitions, violence(?)- that the U.S. Military, as an institution, should be subjected to rigorous investigation and held responsible for continually creating the conditions of this/these massive injustice(s). If you think, "yeah, but that will never happen," doesn't that point to a more oppressive problem?

The point of these reflections being that these problems which the documentaries propose cannot be solved by "armchair activism." It is- in my opinion- the duty of filmmakers to identify the principal contradiction in a problem if they are going to prescribe a solution or path of resistance. Assuming that the documentary provides any solution at all. In the films discussed above it is a movement of bad faith, in the Sartrean sense, to prescribe hollow solutions. In fact, as we discussed in class, the vacuous proposals of bad faith act to devalue the framed struggle by reducing the proposed solutions to marketing ploys. If we are going to hold the filmmakers to standards of integrity in terms of content, accurate data, actual participants, etc, I believe we should hold their proposed solutions to standards of reason and historical rigor, plausibility, historical merit, effectiveness, etc.