There's not much to note about this review-blurb of Robert Stone's SLA documentary other than the fact that it appears in the Socialist Worker.
Because of the deadpan irony I discussed in my pseudo-review a ways back, this film has managed to play all sides against the middle to a degree: those attempting to discern an editorial position on the part of the filmmaker have come to quite different conclusions. Some felt Stone was too indulgent and sympathetic to his subjects, that he let them off the hook too easily. I believed that the ironic technique of simply displaying them without comment against the TV and film footage was a fairly devastating indictment in itself. Others seemed to feel that the film's criticism of the SLA was not clear or pointed enough to distinguish their particular brand of idiocy and depravity from that of more beloved 60s radical terrorists like the Weather Underground. (This sort of unspoken agenda, I believe, often lies behind criticism of the SLA by those who are generally sympathetic to or nostalgic for the "armed struggle" facet of 60s radical chic. Such criticism can be quite harsh, but the intention is to assert that the SLA were wholly alien and unconnected to the supposedly more cuddly hey-you-had-to-be-there tradition of 60s radical "political" violence. Some of the criticism of Stone falls into this category, I believe. I'm planning a more extensive post with links to examples - I really find it fascinating.)
At any rate, the Socialist Worker has its own take: Stone "remains sympathetic to their aims whilst showing up their limitations."
Limitations!
Posted by Dr. Frank at June 8, 2005 01:58 AM | TrackBackI haven't seen the SLA flick though I watched the WU one last year (back to back with Henry Kissinger -- it was like a slumber party from hell). But if it's at all the same style, I can't imagine anyone comes out smelling like roses.
By the way, just for fun I googled "60s radical chic" and came up with the following rant:
"The greatest tribute to America's military came this last election cycle. The silence imposed on the Vietnam veteran has been broken. The silence created by 60s radical chic, the sincere but misguided, the ideologues who promoted the notion that all America stood for is a horror, the terminally self-righteous, defeatist; all of it lifted like a fog in the morning sun."
So you're in, uh, rarefied company, with a twist of phrase like that.
Posted by: Wes at June 8, 2005 03:37 AMRarefied? How? As in "rare"? No.
"Radical chic" is a now-common phrase, coined back in the day. I suppose Frank meant to distinguish it from some other radical chic. 80s radical chic, for example. Now I'm trying to imagine an 80s radical chic. It's in _Bobos in Paradise_, I suppose.
Posted by: Angie Schultz at June 8, 2005 07:10 PMAngie-- Rarefied as in distinguished. Though meant sarcastically in this instance, of course.
And (not to put too fine a point on it) there's a linguistic difference between the general form of "radical chic", i.e. the popular adoration of things radical, viz, the Che Guavara T-Shirt sold at one's local Hot Topic or Urban Outfitters, and "60s radical chic", the strange belief I think Frank is getting at whereby one is convinced that the world would be a better place if the (Symbionese Liberation Army|Weather Underground|Black Panthers|Manson Family, pick one) had only been allowed (by The Man, one supposes) to achieve its goals.