February 14, 2007
Born In Flames
Bad Ass Praxis
For the record, this is a slightly more adult - meaning I use the word "shit" - version of a review I did for my place of employment that can be read here.
I suppose most folks go to movies for the fantasy of it all, so it only makes sense that V for Vendetta ranks with the top video rentals for a liberal oasis like Bellingham, WA. V gets our red1 blood pumping for that moment when the masses recognize the government for what it is — fascism — and surge to overthrow the State. Too bad this revolution is led by a computer-generated cartoon.2
Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames, released in 1983, precedes V for Vendetta by twenty years, and features a revolution made by real people: no cartoons, no Hollywood actors, but real women: black women, white women, butch, femme, working class, middle class, young and old, sex workers and social workers, artists and theorists, activists, slack-tivists and butt-crack-tivists (by which I mean to suggest this films got some nudity).3 Like V, Flames imagines a revolution targeted against an authoritarian government, but this time it's not a fascist state, but the State itself that's the target.
Here's how it goes down. Born In Flames is ingeniously set ten years after a socialist revolution in America, and while the labor movement is apparently in power, women and people of color are — surprise, surprise — still treated like shit. Flames follows the efforts of various factions of women to fight back against the discrimination and violence they face in their everyday lives. From the armed self-defense of the Women's Army, to the broadcasts of Phoenix Radio and Radio Regazza, direct action becomes the only effective course of action in face of the hollow promises of social democracy.4
Through it all, Flames becomes a veritable catalog of issues that real-world American radicals are always faced with. Never mind that it was released the year I was born (1983); its relevance to today is one of the most striking things about it. No other film that I know of mixes issues of anti-racism, anti-hierarchical organizing, armed struggle, anti-sexism, working class and queer politics, theory vs. action, State repression, internationalism, media (both corporate and alternative) in the same way. And it doesn't hurt that the soundtrack kicks ass — a sweet as hell mix of early punk and dub. The theme song alone will be stuck in your head for days, and you'll love it ("Borrrrrrrrrn in Flaaaa-ames…. Bornnnn in Flaaa-ames...").
Maybe the reason it feels so authentic is that Flames itself emerged out of radical feminist circles in NYC in the early 1980s. Director Borden interweaves her fictional characters into real political demonstrations, and puts real newscasts to use in her fictional narrative. Activists themselves constitute the cast, giving it a documentary feel while reminding us all the same that the "act" in activist has nothing to do with acting.5
Some might find the film's pace and inability to resolve a lot of issues irritating. This aint no Hollywood film, and for a lot of viewers that might make for a painful viewing experience. Unlike the comic book choreography of V for Vendetta, much of the "action" in Flames simply consists of debates over proper tactics, stuff like violence versus non-violence. Where V for Vendetta is pure fantasy, resolving its plot in an over-the-top revolution where all the cards fall into place and leave few questions unanswered, Flames puts its sci-fi conventions to use in asking barbed questions, at daggers drawn.
Flames is most humble too, more than aware of its inability to resolve everything it is putting to you. How else to explain its explosive, open-ended - and inflammatory — finale? "We are born in flaaaaaaaaaaames" wails the sound track. Now that we're born, the film leaves it up to us to start living again. And that's right where the power belongs — in the of the hands of those who lack it.6
NOTES:
1 Or blue, if you want to play the pointless two-party game
2 It also sounds suspiciously like an Eminem music video.
3Big up to my comrade Karim and the B-ham SDS crew for coining this one.
4some — like me - would call this sort of thing anarchism.
5They still manage to act Natalie Portman under the table. IMHO
6Not fools like me, I should note, who are up to their neck in privilege.
