Frank Miller and the rise of cryptofascist

Interesting article in the Guardian press.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/nov/24/frank-miller-hollywood-fascism

A sturdy corollary emerges in the wake of the graphic artist Frank Miller’s recent diatribe against the Occupy Wall Street movement (“A pack of louts, thieves, and rapists … Wake up, pond scum, America is at war against a ruthless enemy”), available for perusal at frankmillerink.com). That corollary, of which we should be reminded from time to time, is this: popular entertainment from Hollywood is – to greater or lesser extent – propaganda. And Miller has his part in that, thanks to films such as 300 and Sin City.

Perhaps you have had this thought before. Perhaps you have had it often. I can remember politics dawning on me while watching a Steven Seagal vehicle, Under Siege, in 1992. I was in my early 30s. The film was without redeeming merit – there’s no other way to put it – and it was about a “ruthless enemy” and the reimposition of the American social order through violence and rugged individualism. Why had I paid hard-earned money for it? Good question. Before Under Siege, I had a tendency to think action films were funny. I had a sort of Brechtian relationship to their awfulness. And I was amused when films themselves recognised the level to which they stooped, as Under Siege assuredly did.

The moment of revelation could have come at any time. It could have come earlier, and it did among my more astute friends. Had I watched any of the later Rocky pictures, for example, or had I watched Rambo, I might have registered that there was little depicted in these frames but feel-good, reactionary message-deployment. But there were, apparently, films too embarrassing for me to see, Rocky IV and Rambo among them. I remember thinking True Lies, the abominable 1994 James Cameron film (featuring Republican governor-to-be Arnold Schwarzenegger), with its big, concluding nuclear blast – the nuclear blast we were meant to want to see – was, well, more than suspect. (I could never again watch a Cameron film without disgust. And that includes the racist, New Age blather of Avatar.) Or what about the expensive and aesthetically pretentious Gladiator (2000), which I still contend is an allegory about George W Bush’s candidacy for president, despite the fact that director and principal actor were not US citizens. Is it possible to think of a film such as Gladiator outside of its political subtext? Are Ridley Scott’s falling petals, which he seems to like so much that he puts them in his films over and over again, anything more than a way to gussy up the triumph of oligarchy, corporate capital and globalisation?

The types of men (almost always men) who have historically favoured the action film genre, it’s safe to say, are often, if not always, politically conservative: Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson, even Clint Eastwood (former Republican mayor of Carmel, California), all proud defenders of a conservative agenda, and/or justifiers of vigilantism. With some of these celebrities, the kneejerk qualities of their politics are self-evident, and in other cases (Eastwood), the reactionary part of their world view is more nuanced. But the brand of politics is the same.

And yet with action films, the moral and political ideas in play are surpassingly easy to spot. What about the entertainment films that came later, during the era of CGI – the big-budget films primarily generated from more imaginary fare, such as the apparently numberless comic book franchises of Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Captain America, et al? In these cases, the moral framework of the product is just as simplistic as in action films, if not more so, and the triumph of the social order is just as violent, and just as relentless, though the films are couched in a sugary glaze of graphics and “wow” moments that distract from ideological branding. The CGI sheen is seductive enough that it’s sometimes difficult to divine the message at first. You are too busy being bludgeoned by the sounds and lights. Nevertheless, the message is there. Might is right, the global economy will be restored, America is exceptional, homely people deserve political disenfranchisement, and so on. It bears mentioning that these are films that are in many cases being marketed to children. When I was a kid, you could not gain admission to a film such as Dirty Harry or The French Connection. But an American adolescent can now see Batman in The Dark Knight, rated PG-13, without much difficulty.

The film 300, directed by Zack Snyder, based on a Frank Miller graphic novel of the same name, is just what you would expect from the heavily freighted right-wing filmic propaganda of the post-9/11 period: the Greeks, from which our own putative democracies are descended, must fight to the death against a vast but incompetent army of Persians (those hordes of the Middle East), who are considered here unworthy of characterisation – in fact, every character in the film is unworthy of characterisation – and the noble Spartans (the Greeks in question) achieve heroism despite their glorious deaths on the field at Thermopylae, by virtue of the moral superiority of their belief system and their unmatched courage. Ruthless enemy! From the Middle East! Heroic, rugged individualists! A big, sentimental score! Lots and lots of blue-screen! Endless amounts of body parts spewing theatrical blood!

It’s a barely watchable film, but what from Hollywood these days is not similarly unwatchable, when so many high-profile releases are based on a medium, the comic book, made expressly to engage the attentions of pre- and just post-pubescent boys. At least comic books themselves are so politically dim-witted, so pie-in-the-sky idealistic as to be hard to take seriously. But in the films of this era, the Marvel and DC era of Hollywood, even when the work is not self-evidently shilling for large corporations (with product placement) or militating for a libertarian and oligarchical political status quo (which makes a fine environment for large, multinational corporations), the work is doing nothing at all to oppose these things. Paying your $12.50, these days, is not unlike doing a few lines of cocaine and pretending you don’t know about the headless bodies in Juarez.

With this in mind, an honest recognition of cinematic propaganda, we shouldn’t be shocked by Frank Miller’s comments about Occupy Wall Street. It is naive to be shocked by them. But let’s evaluate the particulars of his remarks just the same. Miller tries to repel the OWS message (“Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty titbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism”) by reminding us that we are at war. This despite the fact that OWS is focused primarily on income inequality, and thus mainly taken up with domestic politics, such that OWS doesn’t really take a position on the “ruthless enemy” and doesn’t need to. Miller’s particular approach, the warmongering approach, is self-evidently reminiscent of the Bush/Cheney years, in which any domestic reversal was followed by an elevated level on the colour-coded risk-assessment wheel. But in this post-Iraq war moment – when the most aggravated conspiracies we seem to have in New York City involve, for example, a lone Dominican guy who advertises his hatred of the government on Facebook and who may have been entrapped by local police – our “ruthless enemy” just doesn’t seem quite as numerous as Miller’s Persian hordes.

Beyond Bush-Cheney fear-mongering, Miller’s further complaint seems to be that people who camped outdoors in Zuccotti Park for two months were not terribly clean. (The Spartans were no doubt tidier in Thermopylae.) But if the crowd of 32,000 who turned up to march in NYC last Thursday – after the “pond scum” had been ejected from the park – are any indication, this hygiene issue is no longer a reliable talking point for Miller (or for Newt Gingrich, the rightwing posterboy of the late 80s who has now entered the race for the Republican presidential noimination). The 32,000 included some professional types, at least one retired police officer and lots of elderly people, many of whom had recently showered. Same thing at UC Davis, and at Berkeley. Those college kids usually have showers in their dorms.

Miller also accuses the OWS protesters of being too technologically savvy. For example, he accuses them of playing Lords of Warcraft. Now, I admit it, I know nothing of multiplayer online role-playing games, nor do I own an iPhone nor an iPad. Nevertheless, I maintain I am correct in imagining that what Miller actually means here is World of Warcraft. This superficial mistake (suggests what should be plain: that Miller wrote his jeremiad quickly, perhaps late at night, when a lack of restraint is often linked with the onset of unconsciousness. He didn’t bother to reread it. He therefore overlooks at least one obvious point. Namely, no one is more likely to play World of Warcraft than the kind of adolescent boy who also thinks 300 is quality cinematic product.

Miller’s hard-right, pro-military point of view is not only accounted for in his own work, but in the larger project of mainstream Hollywood cinema. American movies, in the main, often agree with Frank Miller, that endless war against a ruthless enemy is good, and military service is good, that killing makes you a man, that capitalism must prevail, that if you would just get a job (preferably a corporate job, for all honest work is corporate) you would quit complaining. American movies say these things, but they are more polite about it, lest they should offend. The kind of comic-book-oriented cinema that has afflicted Hollywood for 10 years now, since Spider-Man, has degraded the cinematic art, and has varnished over what was once a humanist form, so Hollywood can do little but repeat the platitudes of the 1%. And yet Hollywood tries still not to offend.

Does that make American cinema cryptofascist? Is “cryptofascist” a word that you can use in an essay like this? I keep trying to find a space somewhere between “propagandistic” and “cryptofascist” to describe my feelings about Miller’s screed. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say the following: whatever mainstream Hollywood cinema is now, Frank Miller is part of it. And Frank Miller has done Occupy Wall Street a service by reminding us that our allegedly democratic political system, which increases inequality and decreases class mobility, which is mostly interested in keeping the disenfranchised where they are, requires a mindless, propagandistic (or “cryptofascist”) storytelling medium to distract its citizenry. We should be grateful for the reminder. And we might repay the favor by avoiding purchase of tickets to Miller’s films.

I won’t stop seeing Woody Allen films becuase he’s marraige came about in a creepy way. I won’t even stop seeing Roman Polanski films becuase he once raped a young girl. I certainly won’t stop seeing Frank Miller films because he’s (gasp!) a Republican.

Film can cover all ends of the political spectrum and we don’t have to agree with their politics to support it. Liberalism is certainly well represented in Hollywood, so let’s not get too upset when conservatives want to have a say as well. Shouldn’t art be about the open exchange of ideas?

I’ve always felt that the acclaim Frank Miller received during the 1980s was more a result of the sorry state of the medium (Batman, particularly) at the time than of his the man’s talent. To me he has always been a second-rate author who confused “grittiness” and shock value with depth. He should never, ever, ever, ever be mentioned in the same breath as Neil Gaiman or, especially, Alan Moore.

Lack of quality aside, his writing has itself often been an apologia for fascism but it is the rampant misogyny that has always gotten to me. He turned Catwoman into a prostitute/dominatrix in “Batman: Year One” (and given how inexplicably skilled she is at martial arts and thievery she seemingly hooks because she likes it), Karen Page became a porn star and drug addict who sold her former lover’s idenity for a fix in “Daredevil: Born Again”, most of the women in “Sin City” are either strippers, hookers, helpless victims or a combination…

@Brad S.

I disagree that liberalism is well represented in Hollywood. Unless we define it with a very, very narrow spectrum…

Since you ask.

Re: “Is it possible to think of a film such as Gladiator outside of its political subtext?”

Yes. I have done so many times.

Re: “Are Ridley Scott’s falling petals, which he seems to like so much that he puts them in his films over and over again, anything more than a way to gussy up the triumph of oligarchy, corporate capital and globalisation.”

Yes. They are more than that. Possibly anything but that.

Re: “…requires a mindless, propagandistic (or “cryptofascist”) storytelling medium to distract its citizenry.”

It’s readily apparent that Al Gore, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, and Aaron Sorkin require the same.
There are all kinds of ways to be a fascist.
Being fabulously opposed to the free expression of ideas, as Al Gore is, might be one of the most obvious ways.

Long story short, I am not persuaded or alarmed by the facile machinations of agenda-rich filmmakers, Cameron or Miller, Stone or Moore. Along the same line, I find both the tea-party-rally folks and the occupy crowd just a wee bit off bubble.
Can’t quite put my finger on what bugs me, other than my intrinsic aversion to zealotry.

It’s not as simple as saying Miller is a republican and we should respect his viewpoint. James Cameron, from what I know, is an environmentalist, atheist liberal and yet his films push some of the most conservative leaning ideals seen in cinema history.

The point the essay is making is that popular entertainment has moved from a presentation, or representation of multiple, varied viewpoints into a machine that spews what is necessary to continue sociopolitical ignorance in favour of explosions, tits and blood.

The greatness of The Searchers, and much of old Hollywood, is the ending is ambiguous enough to be read conservatively or liberally, but always humanistically. That’s a loss in current Hollywood cinema that leads to the this kind of acceptance of so-called “cryptofascist” propaganda.

The far right is certainly cryptofascist, but I don’t believe American cinema is.

There’s a key difference between action films and the Bush/Cheney doctrine. In American action films, people are responding to a real threat which will definitely kill millions of people if somebody doesn’t act. In Bush/Cheney politics, people are responding to an imagined, exaggerated threat that has been extrapolated from an actual threat.

Earlier today I watched the movie Ace In The Hole, and it’s really just like that. A man is trapped in a hole, so we must drill in from the top, which will draw out the spectacle for a week. It was the same with Bush and Cheney. Terrorists blew up our towers, so we have to attack Iraq.

The movie: “Why should we drill in from the top when we can just shore and brace the cave?” “YOU WANT HIM TO DIE!”
Bush/Cheney: “What does Iraq have to do with Osama Bin Laden?” “YOU WANT THE TERRORISTS TO WIN!”

But, in 24 and movies like 300, there is a real, definite threat, and the protagonists are the only ones addressing the real threat. It’s a fantasy, but it’s a benign fantasy.

I wouldn’t lump Al Gore or Aaron Sorkin in with Michael Moore.

In American action films, people are responding to a real threat which will definitely kill millions of people if somebody doesn’t act

oh god oh god. those years of childhood nightmares when the bad things were coming out of the screen and you couldn’t turn the tv off. thanks jirin. how’m i going to sleep tonight? happy thanksgiving.

Um, yeah, I mean real in the world of the movie, not real in real life.

Duh.

phew.

Visual artists:
Occupy wall space not wall street !

All movements rankle. I’m spending the holidays re-reading Houllebecq and the lesser Franco-Irish nihilists.

Anyway, I like the basic principles of the Occupy movement, but they not only have no clear goals: they actively resist having clear goals. Also, they seem to base all their economic philosophy on the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, and the government is solely in control of the distribution of that fixed amount of wealth. It’d be nice if they applied their good intentions to a more solid grasp of finance.

A lot of them have majors in things like art restoration, which they followed under the misapprehension that after graduation they’d get a career as easily as buying candy, and now they’re mad they didn’t get one. I’m all for making it easier for them to go back and get a real degree, but we shouldn’t be rewarding bad career decisions.

Left wingers tend to be terrible political strategists, for the reason that they think even having a political strategy is immoral, and that’s why the republicans always win the PR battle, even when they’re doing something disgusting.

This is painting Hollywood with a exceptional broad brush. No reason to take 300 (which, for the record, Miller published in 1998, partially inspired by Rudolph Maté’s 1963 film The 300 Spartans, which itself was inspired by a well-known historical event involving the Spartans, who were indeed fascist—no crypto about it—so the 9/11 connection is tenuous at best . . . at let’s not confuse bad filmmaking with considering the Persians “unworthy of characterisation” ) as any more representative of “popular entertainment” in 2007 than Into the Wild, No Country For Old Men (with its explicit refusal of justice/vengence), Atonement, Zodiac (that killer doesn’t get caught, either), I’m Not There, The Darjeeling Limited, Michael Clayton, Charlie Wilson’s War, Rendition, My Blueberry Nights, Lions for Lambs, In the Valley of Elah, A Mighty Heart Reservation Road, or Redacted.

And as for that “rise of” business, there’s been a healthy strain of cryptofascism in American film since the very beginning.

What? A superhero comic book writer a crypto-fascist?! No, I don’t believe it. I can’t think of anybody like that being in the business before, since comic book writing seems to attract only the most well balanced and even keeled people . On the plus side, this might give everyone a chance to see Miller and Mamet work together and really show us poor deluded fools what’s really going on in the world.

“Visual artists:
Occupy wall space not wall street !”

They have done something similar in Detroit.

Heidelberg Project.

“On the plus side, this might give everyone a chance to see Miller and Mamet work together and really show us poor deluded fools what’s really going on in the world.”

Mamet adapting Ronin for the screen—now we’re talkin’!

Keeper of the Flame is a not-bad film about a cryptofascist.

I knew something was up with Avatar when Werner Herzog didn’t like it, he also praised the Dark Knight.

Are there any movies where the hero loses? (Not the same as the bad guy winning)

Frank Miller is a reactionary crank who made some visually impressive graphic novels a while ago. The writing is adolescent and, in the case of 300, wildly inaccurate. His directorial effort, the Spirit, was one of the worst reviewed films of the year and did poorly at the box office. In terms of credibility, I doubt that his views on anyone are going to be embraced by the rest of the industry. He doesn’t have the clout of someone like John Millius or Jack Webb in their day. Both are better examples of hard-right leaning individuals who put out work that espoused similar a viewpoint. Conan the Barbarian (the original) is a swipe at the sixties generation while most of Webb’s work was a paranoiac’s vision of America at the mercy of permissive officials who let crime run rampant through the streets and the layabout kids who indulged themselves on drugs and sex with their comeuppance at the conclusion of the episode.

Speaking of Woody Allen and Frank Miller:

Frank Miller is so jejeune.

Frank Miller jumped the shark right after the first Sin City book about 20 years ago. He has been running in circles since. 300 must be one of the worse graphic novels ever. And that is A LOT to say.

And here’s another thing about the Occupy movement.

150 years ago in America, being a political activist meant you dug tunnels from your basement to the nearby woods so you could hide slaves from their masters, and they could escape on short notice.

In many parts of the middle east, being a political activist means putting your life in danger to stand up to a dictator.

Tents and picket signs do not a political activist make.

This is the Occupy movement:

@JIRIN- “In many parts of the middle east, being a political activist means putting your life in danger to stand up to a dictator.”

Agree. In fact, that principle is practiced and embraced by activists all over the world, not just in the Middle East. Those folks knew the risk. If one thinks American cops are hard on protesters, they’re choir boys compared to riot police in Brasil, India or the Philippines. If you provoke the police to a certain point, expect some pain. No, violent police response may not be justifiable, but activists also have a responsibility to face the consequences. That’s just common sense.

“This is the Occupy movement”

So . . . everyone in the entire movement is in it with the same motivations? And even if we assume this is the case, isn’t something like Miller is doing by simply tossing up an obviously off-the-cuff response just more of the same?

“Tents and picket signs do not a political activist make.”

Except sometimes they do . . .

Good activism has to find the most appropriate form to bring about the changes it seeks to bring about. But before you can do that you have find a way of identifying and gather together those who are looking to do similar things. At this point the Occupy movement is less the former and more the latter.

You need only look at Miller’s putrid film version of Will Eisner’s, “The Spirit”, to see some fascistic elements rise up, and which had nothing to do with the combination of elegance and grit of Eisner’s famous comic.

Batman when portrayed correctly has nothing to do with fascistic politics. Batman is and has always been about an emotionally disturbed man. Conservatives seems to thrive off of his vigilantism and refuse to acknowledge that he is mentally ill. Leftists find his approach to be fascistic due to his less than “normal” behavior when approaching morality ( He goes out of his way to not kill people) is not the case.

Batman isn’t about far-right politics as much as people would like to believe. Putting Dirty Harry and Batman anywhere near each other is insulting.

Dirty Harry was not a right winger or fascist. Watch Magnum Force, the scene when the death squad confronts him. He may be closer to your vision of Batman than you believe.

The International Court should arrest and judge Frank Miller for crimes against humanity- The Spirit.

“Batman is and has always been about an emotionally disturbed man.”

Sure, but just because he’s crazy doesn’t necessarily preclude him from being fascist, or crypto-fascist (depending on how we choose to define these terms), or whatever. For the most part, Batman is still portrayed heroically, even if (particularly in some of the more contemporary versions) he has some strong antihero shadings, so there is some celebration of vigilantism to some degree, even if it’s often a qualified celebration. But that’s just the nature of superheroes.

Even Dirty Harry in 1971 makes a certain amount of sense if you look at in terms of some of the recent history at the time—the Zodiac murders, the Manson Family, the Altamont Free Concert, etc.

Batman isn’t a “hero” and he would be the first to tell you that.

Batman more recently has become something far more important than left-right politics. People’s reactionary comments further prove how well they don’t get it. People assign political ideologies to things they disagree with and refuse to acknowledge the bigger picture. It’s not about whether or not you agree with Batman and it never has been.