[Marxism] (fwd) on why make a film about Jesse James was Financial crisis....

[Les Schaffer]

[fwd for Gary, came in HTML-only]



Schact wrote

Not having seen the film, I probably shouldn't comment. But since
acting on limited information with the corrrect theory seems to be
genuine Trotskyist tradition, I'll go ahead anyway. The question is,
why make a film about Jesse James anyway? Certainly he doesn't fit the
definition of "social banditry" in Hobsbaum's sense.




My response: LOL.  I used to say that as an academic I never had to
see the film to do a critique of it. Often viewing got in the way of a
good analysis.  As to why continue to make a film about James, I
really think it is the compulsion towards negativity and negation and
absence.  These are all explored at great length in /The Assassination
of Jesse James/.

Also I think Hobsbawm' category of the social bandit has to be
extended to include the Right wing doer of the dirty work of Capital
such as /Breaker Morant/, and /Mistah Kurtz/ in /Heart of Darkness/
and Colonel Kurtz in /Apocalypse Now/. it is admittedly very arguable
whether that paradigm fits/ The Assassination of Jesse James. / In
this case I am more inclined to see the film as I wrote as an exercise
in the death of the subject a la Heartfield.

best regards

Gary