Life Lessons on the ‘Res’: War Pony (2022) A movie review

War pony is an extraordinary new film based around two young Lakota boys living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The film shows the difficulties faced by Native Americans surrounded by poverty and drugs and their attempts to rise above the many social problems of their families.

 

 

Bill is a guy in his twenties with two children by two different mothers. One of them is in prison while the other is cynical of his attempts to try and make his, and by extension, her life better. He finds a poodle in his garden and subsequently decides to buy the dog so that he can make money from its puppies. Later he stops his car on the road to assist a breakdown. It turns out to be a white turkey farmer with one of many native girls he has been having affairs with. After helping the turkey farmer, Bill asks for a job and is soon shown around the facilities.

His boss has a Halloween fancy dress party which is attended by a white guy dressed up in native American costume and war paint. This transfixes Bill as he stares at the representation of his own culture, seemingly disturbed by it and yet attracted to its meaning at the same time, like a memory deep in his subconsciousness that is soon recalled before the end of the film. Another symbol from his past heritage, a buffalo, appears and disappears somewhat mysteriously throughout the film. The language issue is also marked as a significant part of his alienation from his own native culture and when he says to his relatives and friends: “I dont speak Lakota”.

In the meantime Matho, who is a 12-year-old boy who hangs out with his smoking and drinking friends, gets involved in selling some of his fathers drugs which ultimately has dire consequences for his father. He is kicked out of his father’s house and ends up moving from relatives to staying with drug-pushers as he tries to seek some basic stability in his life.

In one scene, Matho falls asleep with a figurine that is holding a tiny American flag, a scene symbolic of Matho’s desire to be part of the American Dream yet the size of the flag signifying the practical realities of the poverty and desperation in his young life and his growing distance from the benefits of American society.

Bill’s life is also affected by a growing distance from general society as his money-making scheme to breed poodles backfires when his white boss shoots the dog for worrying his flock of turkeys. Furthermore, he is sacked and his boss refuses to pay him for work done.

At this low point for Bill, he decides to get his revenge on the turkey farmer. He gathers up his friends and organises a raid of the turkey farm in the middle of the night. They steal turkey products and live turkeys which are then redistributed among the local people the next day.

This makes for an extraordinary ‘tableau vivant’ (living picture) scene with turkeys wandering slowly around in the snow along with a buffalo with a ‘res’ (reservation) house and its inhabitants in the background. The peace and purity of the snow contrasts with the film’s hectic, hot life of the two main protagonists, and combined with the turkeys and the buffalo, it has a timeless feel. A symbolic projection of nature back to an earlier pre-colonial time? Or to a post-revolutionary future with redistribution of wealth combined with nature respected and free from centuries of colonial oppression?

That timelessness is reflected in the quote attributed to Crazy Horse: “Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.”

War Pony was directed and produced by Riley Keough and Gina Gammell with a screenplay by Keough, Gammell, Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy. Keough met Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, while filming in South Dakota in 2015 and introduced them to Gina Gammell.

The film then took shape “through writing workshops, improvisation sessions, and meeting hundreds of locals in the community, to make the story authentic. The group began discussing an idea for a film revolving around two indigenous locals growing up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. They began writing the script based upon Bob and Reddy’s life experiences and stories they had heard, ending up with too much material, and decided to split the story between two characters, and collaborated with local producer Willi White.”

While the style is realistic, even naturalistic in places, the close-up photography of many scenes gives the film an intimate feel. The mood is always hopeful despite the many difficulties and setbacks that both Bill and Matho face in their lives.

War Pony is a combination of two progressive aspects of culture (that I have written about before): resistance to slavery, and respect for nature. The raid on the turkey farm forms a type of symbolic resistance to capitalism and exploitation of nature as Bill engages in the ‘redistribution’ of the factory goods while at the same time letting the turkeys roam free.

Bill learns slowly that he is living in a system where the odds are stacked against him, but eventually takes an activist stance, not to get personal revenge, but to avenge his community for the expropriation of the practical and symbolic aspects of his people that left him and his friends constantly scrabbling around in the dirt to make a living. It is possible, too, that the ‘Red Indian’ costume and war paint from the party, triggered an ancient ‘memory’ in Bill of the dignity of his ancestors who fought desperate odds to try and retain their independence.

The Counter-Enlightenment: the origin of conservative politics?

 
The Counter-Enlightenment is the name given to the oppositional forces that formed during the Enlightenment that fought against the philosophes' writings on democracy, republicanism and toleration. These forces were known as the anti-philosophes and sought to maintain the dominance of the monarchy and the church.

The philosophes (French for 'philosophers') were eighteenth century intellectuals who "applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics and social issues." Most importantly, they believed in progress and tolerance and in many different ways sought to highlight injustice and seek ways of changing society for the better.

The anti-philosophes rose up to defend 'throne and altar' and over time many of the ideals of the anti-philosophes were taken over by Romanticism in the nineteenth century, and the conservative politics of the twentieth century, for example, in Western culture, "depending on the particular nation, conservatives seek to promote a range of social institutions such as the nuclear family, organized religion, the military, property rights, and monarchy."

Caricature of the Third Estate carrying the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) on its back. "You should hope that this game will be over soon."

The origins of right-wing politics in Europe are often attributed to Edmund Burke (1729–1797), the Irish philosopher, who is seen as the philosophical father of modern conservatism. His book, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a criticism of the French Revolution, which itself was partly fueled by the writings of the philosophes, thus setting up the dividing lines between the supporters of radical republicanism and revolution, in opposition to the supporters of the older monarchy and church of the ancien régime.

The idea of the Counter-Enlightenment is itself controversial as some academics argue that an organised force against the Enlightenment was non-existent, or at the very least, a complex debate. For example, Jeremy L. Caradonna ('There Was No Counter-Enlightenment') and Robert E. Norton ('The Myth of the Counter-Enlightenment') both look at contradictory aspects of the individuals called anti-philosophes. As has been noted the thinkers of the Counter-Enlightenment "did not necessarily agree to a set of counter-doctrines but instead each challenged specific elements of Enlightenment thinking, such as the belief in progress, the rationality of all humans, liberal democracy, and the increasing secularisation of society."

It was Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997), the Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas who popularised the term in his essay 'The Counter-Enlightenment'. Berlin was critical of the irrationalism of the early conservative figures from the 1700s such as Joseph de Maistre, Giambattista Vico, and J. G. Hamann. He also examined the German reaction to the French Enlightenment and Revolution as the main source of reaction to the Enlightenment in general and which eventually led to the Romanticist movement. Berlin noted that:

"Such influential writers such as Voltaire, d'Alembert and Condorcet believed that the development of the arts and sciences was the most powerful human weapon in attaining these ends [e.g. satisfaction of basic physical and biological needs, peace, happiness, justice etc] and the sharpest weapon in the fight against ignorance, superstition, fanaticism, oppression and barbarism, which crippled human effort and frustrated man's search for truth and self-direction." [1]

Writers like Darrin M. McMahon have looked at the early opponents of the Enlightenment in pre-Revolutionary France, while Graeme Garrard has shown in detail the conservative counter-Enlightenment ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a very different perspective on one of the heroes of the French Revolution.

In this essay I will look at the individuals and groups who took a stand against the philosophes through their movements, books, and journals in support of the church and monarchy.


Early opposition to the Enlightenment

Opposition to the philosophes of the Enlightenment did not start with the French Revolution. According to McMahon in his book Enemies of the Enlightenment:

"Only recently have scholars begun to acknowledge that conservative salons existed in the eighteenth century in which the philosophes' ideas were regarded with horror..." [2]

Many writers in France mocked the progressive ideas of the philosophes in "a host of satirical plays, libels, and novels published in the late 1750s, 1760s and early 1770s". [3]  McMahon comments that: "It stands to reason that the reaction to the Enlightenment should also have occurred first in the place of its birth and been spearheaded by the very institution - the Catholic Church charged with maintaining the faith and morals of the realm". [4]

This can be seen, for example, in the Frontispiece to the physician Claude-Marie Giraud's Epistle from the Devil to M. Voltaire which chronicled Voltaire's 'traffic with Satan', and was republished over thirty times between 1760 and the outbreak of the Revolution.

"Frontispiece to the physician Claude-Marie Giraud's Epistle from the Devil to M. Voltaire. This brief work, chronicling Voltaire's traffic with Satan, was republished over thirty times between 1760 and the outbreak of the Revolution."
(Image: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Text: Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.20)

The adverse reaction to the ideas of the philosophes was evident in the hundreds of books, pamphlets, sermons, essays, and poems written against them, as well as becoming the raison d'être of journals such as the Anée littéraire, the Journal historique et littéraire, and the Journal ecclésiastique. [5] McMahon writes about how the enemies of 'throne and altar' and their 'treasonous' activities were perceived by the anti-philosophes :

"The anti-philosophes saw the philosophes as 'enemies of the state', 'evil citizens', 'declared adversaries of throne and altar', and unpatriotic subjects guilty of human and divine treason. [...] Thus, the anti-philosophes frequently accused their opponents of spreading "republican" and "democratic" ideas. The philosophes, they claimed, preached the sovereignty of the people, advocated "perfect equality," and spoke endlessly of "social contracts." They lauded the political institutions of the United Kingdom, spreading a contagious "Anglomania" that held up Parliament and the limitations placed on the powers of the English crown as models to be emulated in France. And they talked ad nauseum of "liberty and equality," natural rights and the "rights of the people" without ever mentioning duties and obligations." [6]

They even appealed to the new dauphin [The distinctive title (originally Dauphin of Viennois) of the eldest son of the king of France, from 1349 till the revolution of 1830] to be wary of the new anti-religious attitude that was being spread by the philosophes: "From this anarchy of the physical and moral universe results, necessarily, the overthrow of thrones, the extinction of sovereigns, and the dissolution of all societies. Oh Kings! Oh Sovereigns! Will you be strong enough to stay on your thrones if this principle ever prevails?" [7]

"The 1757 frontispiece to the first volume of Jean Soret and Jean-Nicolas-Hubert Hayer's anti-philosophe journal, La Religion vengée, ou Réfutation des auteurs impies. True philosophy, in possession of the keys to the church, presents a copy of the work to the dauphin, Louis Ferdinand, who looks on approvingly as religion and wisdom trample false philosophy under foot. The latter bears a sign which reads in Latin, "He said that there is no God."" 

(Image: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Text: Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.22)

The power of the philosophes' ideas could be seen in their influence on the French Revolution of 1789 and in particular on the human civil rights document, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen de 1789) which was adopted on the 26 of August 1789 by the National Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution.


Ultra-Royalist reaction

However, the Ultra-Royalist reaction, the nobility of high society who strongly supported Roman Catholicism as the state and only legal religion of France, as well as the Bourbon monarchy, initiated what became known as the Second White Terror, a counter-revolution against the French Revolution.

It provided an opportunity for the counter-Enlightenment conservatives to get their revenge on the revolutionaries, taking the form of militant struggle that resulted in bloody consequences. For example:

"the Ultra-Royalist assembly returned after the upheaval of the Hundred Days, this conservative revolution set out to cleanse France of the men and spirits of 1789. Throughout the country, exceptional courts and special jurisdictions tried and punished revolutionary criminals. In the civil service and royal administration as many as fifty thousand to eighty thousand former officials were stripped of their positions, and in the church, the army, and the universities, similar purges were encouraged, although on a smaller scale. In the provinces, particularly in the Midi, marauding gangs took matters into their own hands, hunting down revolutionary collaborators and settling old scores in a great bloodletting known as the White Terror." [8]

However, the Terror worried even the king himself as in 1816 Louis XVIII dissolved the chambre introuvable, to the great horror of the Catholic Right: "Louis feared its intransigent refusal to compromise with any vestige of the Revolution, its exaggerated religiosity, and its resolute efforts to exact retribution from the "criminals" who had sullied France." Thus the conservative pro-monarchy forces had become even more royalist than the king himself. [9]

The Chambre introuvable (French for "Unobtainable Chamber") was the first "Chamber of Deputies elected after the Second Bourbon Restoration in 1815. It was dominated by Ultra-royalists who completely refused to accept the results of the French Revolution."

The conservative ideas of the Ultras, for example, "the weight of history, the primacy of the social whole, the centrality of the family, the necessity of religion, and the dangers of tolerance" found their way into many right-wing and conservative ideologies of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [10]


Rousseau's turn against reason and science

Similarly, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's conservative turn laid the groundwork for the future irrationalist Romanticist movement. Despite  Rousseau's popularity as a philosopher of the French Revolution, Rousseau ultimately went against the rationalism and intellectualism of the eighteenth century and moved towards a philosophy based on emotion, imagination and religion.

"Flee, vile imposters, no longer sully this temple", the frontispiece to Pierre-Victor-Jean Berthre de Bourniseaux, Le Charlatanisme dans tous les âges dévoilé (Paris, 1807). Angels of the Lord banish the philosophes from the Temple of Truth. In the foreground, Voltaire, Rousseau, La Mettrie, Plato,and other philosophes flee in despair.
(Image: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Text: Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) book cover).

According to Graham Garrard in Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment:

"Rousseau's "unequivocal preference was for the "happy ignorance" of Sparta over Athens, that "fatherland of the Sciences and the Arts" the philosophes so much admired. He regarded virtue as much more important than knowledge or cognitive ability; a good heart is worth inestimable more than the possession of knowledge or a cultivated intellect, he thought" and concludes that "relying on reason - as philosophers do - "far from delivering me from my useless doubts, would only cause those which tormented me to multiply and would resolve none of them. Therefore, I took another guide, and I said to myself, 'Let us consult the inner light'"." [11]

Rousseau's inward looking attitude and distrust of reason resulted in a very different kind of politics than the philosophes had imagined, as Garrard writes:

"Unlike the foundation of political society envisaged by Hobbes and Locke, [Rousseau] stresses the need for a legislator who relies principally on religion and myth rather than reason, self interest, or fear to "bind the citizens to the fatherland and to one another." [...] For Rousseau, religion substitutes for reason as the cement of society and the means of inducing respect for the laws. [...] Rousseau's legislator is a prophet and (perhaps) a poet, whose "magic" produces a nation, rather than a philosopher who appeals to reason." [12]

For Rousseau the spread of knowledge was to be controlled and funnelled into localist communities and beliefs, away from modern conceptions of the nation state:

"Rousseau was opposed to the popularization of knowledge, not to knowledge per se. In his final reply to critics of his first Discourse, he clarifies position by stressing this distinction between knowledge and its dissemination. "[I]t is good for there to be Philosophers, "he writes, "provided that the People doesn't get mixed up in being Philosophers"." [13]

Leo Strauss's sentiments exactly! Knowledge as a set of myths that would keep the masses happy but not the kind of universalist knowledge that might lead them to revolt:

"The key to Rousseau's patriotic program is what he referred to as a "truly national education." Unlike the "party of humanity," [the philosophes] he called for education to be put entirely in the service of particular national communities in order to prevent the corrosive spread of universal ideas and beliefs. He rejected the view put forth by the philosophes that the universal arts and sciences are an adequate basis for political community." [14]

"The Despair of the philosophes. Frontispiece to the 1817 edition of the prolific anti-philosophe Élie Harel's Voltaire: Particularités curieuses de sa vie et de sa mort, new ed. (Paris, 1817). Christ reigns supreme over a fallen medusa, who vomits up the Encyclopédie, Rousseau's Émile, Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique, and other key Enlightenment texts."
(Text: Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.161)

Moreover, Rousseau advocated the use of catharsis and 'bread and circuses' to maintain loyalty to the patriotic fatherland (and thereby stymieing any type of burgeoning class consciousness):

"Rousseau also advised would-be legislators to establish "exclusive and national" religious ceremonies; games which "[keep] the Citizen frequently assembled;" exercises that increase their national "pride and self esteem;" and spectacles which, by reminding citizens of their glorious past, "stirred their hearts, fired them with a lively spirit of emulation, and strongly attached them to the fatherland with which they were being kept constantly occupied"." [15]

Rousseau opens one of his most famous books, The Social Contract, with the words 'Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains' yet this was a far cry from Marx's 'You have nothing to lose but your chains', as Rousseau refers to rising up against a tyrant, not rising up against one's own slavery. Especially not the 'respectable rights' of 'masters over their servants':

"The Protestant, republican Rousseau bristled with indignation at the thought of his hardy, virtuous Genevans watching the cynical comedies of Moliere who, "for the sake of multiplying his jokes, shakes the whole order of society; how scandalously he overturns all the most sacred relations on which it is founded; how ridiculous he makes the respectable rights of fathers over their children, of husbands over their wives, of masters over their servants!"" [16]

Rousseau's move away from enlightened humanism to authoritarianism can be seen in his attitude towards the state whereby any "attempt to liberate a prisoner, even if unjustly arrested, amounts to rebellion, which the state has a right to punish." [17]

If we compare this to Voltaire's involvement in L'affair Calas we see a very different attitude, as Voltaire fought in defence of a Huguenot merchant who was broken on the wheel for a crime that he had not committed. 

Furthermore, Rousseau believed that "The taste for letters, philosophy, and the fine arts softens bodies and souls. Work in the study renders men delicate, weakens their temperament, and the soul retains its vigour with difficulty when the body has lost its vigour. Study uses up the machine, consumes spirits, destroys strength, enervates courage. ... Study corrupts his morals, impairs his health, destroys his temperament, and often spoils his reason." [18]

The Enlightenment philosophes thought the opposite: "The less men reason, the more wicked they are," wrote the Baron d'Holbach. "Savages, princes, nobles and the dregs of the people, are commonly the worst of men, because they reason the least." [19]


The Counter-Enlightenment and Romanticist ideas today

The Enlightenment seems to get blamed for everything these days. In an article titled  'Enlightenment rationality is not enough: we need a new Romanticism', the author Jim Kozubek writes:

"From the use of GMO seeds and aquaculture to assert control over the food chain to military strategies for gene-engineering bioweapons, power is asserted through patents and financial control over basic aspects of life. The French philosopher Michel Foucault in The Will to Knowledge (1976) referred to such advancements as ‘techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations’."

Foucault does at least remark on a basic aspect of the problem: subjugation and control.

Kozubek comments that "science is exploited into dystopian realities – such fraught areas as neo-eugenics through gene engineering and unequal access to drugs and medical care" but notes that "The biggest tug-of-war is not between science and religious institutional power, but rather between the primal connection to nature and scientific institutional power."

Historically, the Enlightenment was a battle between the church and the new scientific approaches to knowledge in the 18th century. The philosophes wrote against the power of the church and the monarchies and developed progressive ideas about democracy and republicanism, torture and the death penalty, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

In the frontispiece to Voltaire's book on Newton's philosophy, Émilie du Châtelet appears as Voltaire's muse, reflecting Newton's heavenly insights down to Voltaire.

 

However, this universalising philosophy and writing against injustice of the Enlightenment philosophes is missing from modern analyses of Romanticism, that by the 19th century those battles had developed into the Romanticist 'primal connection to nature' versus capitalist technocracy. Yet, what the Romanticists and the technocrats did have in common was that neither questioned slavery: whether it be the slavery of feudalism (which the Romanticists liked to hark back to), or the wage slavery of modern capitalism (which the technocrats prefer to ignore).

In fact, the Romanticists and the technocrats helped each other in a reactionary symbiotic relationship that perpetuated the status quo: the Romanticists had always used technology (to indulge their fantasies, for example, train technology brought them to gaze in awe at the 'mystical' Alps), while the technocrats used Romanticism to create diversion and escapism for the masses (thereby avoiding mass uprisings and revolution). This can be seen in the almost wholly Romanticist culture of fantasy, terror, horror, superheroes etc that dominates global modern culture today in the era of global monopoly capitalism.

The Enlightenment and its opposing counter-Enlightenment, represented the main ideological battles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but as people became less and less religious over the ensuing century, Romanticism took over from the irrationalism of the church as the main counter-progressive force in society.

This can be seen also in the 'suspicion of reason' contained in the definitions of the post-Romanticist ideologies of Modernism and Postmodernism, and the outright return to Romanticism of Metamodernism. Once the bourgeois revolutions of 'liberté, égalité, fraternité'  had been carried through, the universalist ideas of the philosophes were quietly dropped and the anti- (wage) slavery torch passed on to the revolutionary socialists.  

It seems that the role of Romanticist movements (including Modernism, Postmodernism, and Metamodernism) is to react to any burgeoning progressive movement, to suck the life blood out of it and while not necessarily killing it, to at least leave it extremely weakened and non-threatening.

Meanwhile, any obvious lack of consistency in Romanticist movements merely points to, and demonstrates its reactive nature. For example, Romanticist neo-Gothic is full of decoration, yet Romanticist (Modernist) Minimalism, in the form of Bauhaus, for example, is completely devoid of decoration.

McMahons description of the anti-philosophes confirms that reactive view:

"If the philosophes assailed religion, then the anti-philosophes must protect it. If the philosophes attacked the king, then his authority must be upheld. If the philosophes vaunted the individual, then the social whole must be defended. If the philosophes corrupted the family, then its importance must be reaffirmed. And if the philosophes advocated change, then the anti-philosophes must prevent it". [20]

While the Right may not be able to get away with arguments for the re-establishment of monarchies these days, their ideology is still rooted in organized religion and the social teachings of the church, (combined with the military, and property rights).

The philosophes were progressive thinkers who struggled for radical changes against the injustices of their time. Their universalist writings on liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state are just as important in the world today as they have ever been, especially in an era of increasing globalised poverty where one  billion people worldwide live in slums (and yet this figure is projected to grow to 2 billion by 2030) and which is exacerbated by rising inflation and the impacts of war. It is time now for new thinking that is not dominated by the selfish political and war agendas of the billionaire media machine.

Notes:

[1] Isaiah Berlin,'The Counter-Enlightenment', Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (Pimlico, 1997) p.3

[2] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.24

[3] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.24

[4] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.9

[5] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.27

[6] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.41/42

[7] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.43

[8] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.156

[9] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.157
[10] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.200

[11] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.84

[12] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.59

[13] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.91

[14] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.62

[15] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.62

[16] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.64

[17] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.80

[18] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.88

[19] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.88

[20] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.53

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.

The Art of Deception: Learning to Speak One-Percent

Title screen for the HBO series, Succession.

Review of Succession (contains spoilers)

by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin 

 

 

"In ancient Rome, at one point, they wanted to make all the slaves wear something so they could identify them. Like a cloak or whatever. But then they decided not to do it. And do you know why? Hmm? Because they realized if all the slaves dressed the same, they would see how many of them there were, and they'd rise up and kill their masters. But the point is, if-if we wanna survive, you and I, then... we need a hell of a lot of little folks running around shitting us data, you know, for the eyeballs, for the revenue, for the scale."
(Succession S03 E09)

Introduction

The popular series Succession is nearing its final episodes as the battle for control of a conglomerate heats up. The story centres around an ageing father and his children who are in a battle for succession. The series is well made with sharp dialogue that demonstrates the ruthless attitudes of the Roy family. The use of deception in their struggle for power is straight out of the Sun Tzu and Machiavelli playbooks of old. However, differences arise over who should have access to these playbooks when we examine the political ideas and philosophy of Leo Strauss who has a very different perspective on what the public should know and not know.

"Tom: Greg, this is not fucking Charles Dickens world, okay? You don't go around talking about principles. We're all trying to do the right thing, of course we are. But come on, man! Man the fuck up!"
(Succession S02 E02)

Succession
Succession is into its fourth and final season now and has proved to be a very successful series showing the life of a billionaire family in the USA. The family is headed up by Logan Roy ("king") who is aging but cannot decide which of his offspring he wants to take over his position in the company.

Brian Denis Cox in 2016 who plays Logan Roy

Three of Logan's children, Kendall, Roman, and Siobhan (Shiv), are employed by the company, Waystar RoyCo, a global media and entertainment conglomerate.

There is also Connor, Logan's oldest son; Marcia Roy, Logan's third and current wife; Tom Wambsgans, Shiv's husband and Waystar executive; and Greg Hirsch, Logan's grandnephew who is also employed by the company.

The family has an extraordinarily rich lifestyle with 'PJs' (Private Jets), helicopters and fast boats taking them to their meetings, offices and houses around the world. They have their every whim catered to and take it all for granted as they maneuver and jockey for position to be the next leader of the company.

Their emotional and physical distance from ordinary people and their own workers is shown by their callous attitudes and obnoxious language that is demonstrated repeatedly throughout the series. The other characters of this series Connor, Tom, and Greg, are shown to regularly vacillate from greed to obsequiousness as they also try to retain their powerful positions in the constantly changing battle scenarios of the corporate wars.

Thus, none of the main characters of Succession are sympathetic. The audience may briefly empathise with some of the personal aspects of their lives but then their egoistic behaviour and ruthless attitudes soon destroy what little pity and care they may have aroused in the viewers.  

The Roy kids have learned every trick in the book on how to manipulate, deceive, and use divide and rule tactics from their merciless father.

The rich dialogue of Succession is full of the language of the one-percent. For example, Roman tries to impress his father in a meeting with a combination of the latest jargon and his familiarity with the methods of elite maneuvering for profit:

"Rom: I actually do have a pitch on this, Dad. Financialization. Float hot. I mean, keep news for political power, for market manipulation capability. But the rest, we play the markets with you and me up in a little pod above the city, fucking start ups and shitting on pension funds. Highly maneuverable, highly mobile.
Logan: And in terms of getting rid of Sandy and Stewy?
Rom: Oh, fuck 'em. Scare 'em off.
Logan: As in?
Rom: As in, you know...Scooby Doo it, Dad. You just dress up as ghosts in the theme park. Um, you know, we just use the lawyers, the PIs, the honey-trap hookers, all the unpleasant people at our disposal. Call in all the favors. Fucking President Raisin, all the Senate cock sucks who owe us. Fucking kill, kill, kill." (Succession S02 E01)

The professionals and unprofessionals that they have 'at their disposal' are due to the use of unlimited wealth to determine a positive outcome for their ambitions.

Apart from the obvious bully boy tactics, deception is a major element in their strategies to maintain and grow their influence and power.

For example in the case of Vaulter, a media website that is acquired by Waystar RoyCo, Kendall and Roman are tasked by their father to review Vaulter's performance. They use different types of deception to learn about the company. Roman 'slums' it and goes drinking with some of the staff:

"ROM: Speaking of hiding shit, I took a couple of their staffers out, I got them shitfaced, and apparently, they're looking to unionize, and fucking soon.
-Oh, yeah?
ROM: Pay transparency, bargaining rights. Just nasty, tangly shit. And it's not a body pit, whatever the fuck a body pit is. It's a fucking muesli pit, and doesn't fit with our core, you know... values. So now I'm thinking we just shutter the fucker."
(Succession S02 E02)

Ken pretends all is fine to Lawrence Yee, the founder of Vaulter, but then suddenly announces to the floor his real intentions:

"KEN: Yeah. You're... You're all fired. So, if you can leave your laptops where they are, and hand in your passes, security will be coming around now. I've been through everything you've shown me. Food and weed, those are the only two verticals driving revenue, so we're folding them in and, uh, yeah, you're all free to leave.
-This is a joke.
KEN: You have 15 minutes to gather your belongings and exit the building. Separation agreements will be handed around shortly. One week of severance per year served, with full non-disclosure. Post your little videos. You get three days.
-What the f...
KEN: Unused vacation days will not be reimbursed. Health benefits will be terminated at the end of the month. That's it. I'd like to thank you all for your hard work.
YEE: What the fuck is going on?
KEN: Yeah, sorry about the, uh, cloak and dagger. I just needed some time to untangle all your shit, find the profit centers, keep the union off our back. We're already fully operational on seven.
YEE: Why?
KEN: Because my dad told me to." (Succession S02 E02)

Suddenly the real side of Kendall is exposed as his familiarity with the language of corporate tricks and laws  rolls off his tongue. The patriarchal, hierarchical aspect is interesting to note as he tells Yee he did it because his dad told him too.

Reporting his deed back to Logan, he discusses his deception of the Vaulter staff and dealing with press coverage:

"KEN: Okay, it's done. Vaulter's dead. Four-hundred and seventy-six off the payroll, full-timers, freelance... I, uh, negotiated an early break from the lease and hired an editor and five interns for the two remaining verticals, the rest will be user-generated, reviews, upload pics, all that stuff.
Also, I harvested a ton of ideas from the Vaulter staff before they left. IP and start-up ideas. Most of it's, you know, bullshit but... you never know.
Logan: We'll say you tried to keep it alive. Valiant efforts, et cetera.
KEN: I'm good. I'll wear it." (Succession S02 E02)

All in a day's work, with very little consideration of the disastrous effects that sudden unemployment could have on the Vaulter staff. The consolidation of profit and power is primary, and the ruthlessness of the process does not enter into the minds of Logan and Kendall.

Thus, we are shown how the one percent operate and any empathy with the characters is pointless. Some reviewers criticised the series because there were no sympathetic characters, missing the point that Succession is a kind of exposé of contemporary elite behaviour, similar in some ways to Machievelli's sixteenth century book, The Prince (1513).

"In his loafers made from the skin of... I don't know, what is that? Human rights activists?"
(Succession S02 E06)

Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527), was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. He wrote The Prince (Il Principe) around 1513 as a political treatise on how to gain and retain power.

Portrait of Machiavelli (1469-1527) by Santi di Tito

Machiavelli's advocacy of fraud and deceit in the process of gaining power ensured his fame as a ruthless advisor to the elite classes. However, while many would see Machiavelli as a self-serving immoral opportunist, this may not have been the case. Erica Benner writes:

“Just a year before he finished the first draft of his “little book”, the Medici swept into Florence in a foreign-backed coup after spending years in exile. They were deeply suspicious of his loyalties, dismissed him from his posts, then had him imprisoned and tortured under suspicion of plotting against them.”

She notes that “Machiavelli’s writings speak in different voices at different times” and that “Francis Bacon [1561–1626)], Spinoza [1632–1677] and Rousseau [1712–1778] – had no doubt the book was a cunning exposé of princely snares, a self-defence manual for citizens. “The book of republicans,” Rousseau dubbed it.”

Machiaveli emphasized the importance of deception in the tactical toolbox of the power-hungry elites. He urges never to "attempt to win by force what can be won by deception” and that the "vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

But deception is only part of the strategy, it is also important that "people should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.”

In Succession, the careful planning of the Roy boys is climaxed with a sudden coup de grace ensuring that the Vaulter staff are reeling and have no avenue left open for action.

"Logan: Will you sit out front today, Kerry? I need to know what the temperature is amongst the shit-munchers."
(Succession S03 E05)

Sun Tzu

Machiavelli updated elite strategies that had been around a long time. For example, writing in The Art of War, Sun Tzu declared that "All warfare is based on deception."

Qing-era representation of Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer who lived during the Eastern Zhou period of 771 to 256 BCE.

He is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, "an influential work of military strategy that has affected both Western and East Asian philosophy and military thinking. Sun Tzu is revered in Chinese and East Asian culture as a legendary historical and military figure."

While there has been much debate over the historicity of Sun Tzu, there is no doubt over the influence of The Art of War over the centuries on generals and theorists like, for example, the influence it had on Mao's writings about guerrilla warfare.

Sun Tzu's advice on deception is comprehensive: "Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him."

Whoever Sun Tzu was, he was writing at a time when knowledge was pretty much the monopoly of the elites. Machiavelli, on the other hand, lived during a revolutionary time for knowledge dissemination. For example, "before the invention of printing, the number of manuscript books in Europe could be counted in thousands. By 1500, after only 50 years of printing, there were more than 9,000,000 books."

This was why the philosophers of the The Scientific Revolution (c16-c17) and the Age of Enlightenment/Reason (c17-c19)  saw The Prince as 'a cunning exposé of princely snares, a self-defence manual for citizens'.

However, this exposé did not go down well with Leo Strauss, the most popular twentieth century philosopher of the new conservative elites.

"CONNOR: Oh, no, no, no, no. I can pull out the old megaphone anytime I want and I can say, "Hey! Guess what? I recall my father was a nasty, racist, neglectful individual. What was it that they used to say around here? No Blacks, no Jews, no women above the fourth floor."
(Succession S03 E04)

Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) was a German professor who emigrated from Germany to the United States where he wrote many books on philosophy, and taught classical political philosophy, mainly at the University of Chicago. His conservative ideas struck a chord with many public intellectuals, politicians and think tank professionals, some of whom were ex-students of his. His work has been the subject of much debate on his ideas and intentions.

For example, Shadia Drury, analyses his work and style of writing as intentionally obscure to ensure that his ideas on political power would only be understood by the few. In The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, Drury writes that Strauss was "an atheist and moral nihilist who advocated the use of religion, morality, and family values as useful political tools by which to placate and manipulate the masses [and] believed that the best form of government is the absolute but covert rule of a 'wise' elite independent of the law". [1]

Photo of Leo Strauss (1899–1973)

To do this Strauss called for "a reconsideration of the "distinction between exoteric (or public) and esoteric (or secret) teaching". He argued "that serious writers write esoterically, that is, with multiple or layered meanings, often disguised within irony or paradox, obscure references, even deliberate self-contradiction." He believed that this protected the philosopher from "the retribution of the regime", but it could be argued that it was more likely to protect the philosopher from the retribution of the masses - as Drury sets out to show.

Drury notes that Strauss is critical of Machiavelli because "by abandoning the esoteric nature of philosophy, Machiavelli undermines philosophy itself" and turns "it into an object of mass consumption". [2]

This opened the way to the Enlightenment which Strauss is critical of because enlightenment leads people to think for themselves and this is not good for the powers-that-be. Drury writes:

"Machiavelli's dissemination of philosophy to the masses opens the way to the Enlightenment, nay, it is identical with the Enlightenment. Enlightenment is 'the project' of modernity par excellence: its goal is to fight against the Kingdom of Darkness. It believes falsely, that mass enlightenment is the solution to man's political dilemmas. Moreover,this modern project is conceived as a conscious and heroic effort on man's part to take control of his destiny and to master Fortuna. According to Strauss, Machiavelli replaces the biblical God with Fortuna, and the Christian idea of providence with the modern idea of not trusting to chance, and taking one's fate in one's own hands." [3]

Even though Strauss rejected revelation he did not want to undermine religion because "religion is necessary to maintain order by ensuring that citizens obey the laws". [4]

For Strauss religion and philosophy are two opposites with very different aims:

"[I]n Strauss's view religion and philosophy are opposites that cannot and should not be reconciled. The life of faith is the life of blind unquestioning surrender, whereas the life of philosophy is that of free enquiry. The faithful are steeped in delusions whereas the philosophers rejoice in the truth. Religion prohibits contemplation because it knows as soon as one reflects, one will recognize that religion is a fraud. However, if one reflects further, one will realise the necessity of such swindles and the wisdom of the prophets who create them for love of mankind. Realizing this, the philosophers must keep their atheistic truth hidden; they must live a dual life endorsing publicly what they know is a noble fiction. [...] [T]his dual life causes them no grief; on the contrary it fills their life with laughter, inside jokes, subtle winks and pregnant pauses." [5]

Thus, it seems that while Machiavelli wrote to reveal power, Strauss wrote to conceal power. Strauss criticises Machiavelli for making public the strategies of the elites, risking the enlightenment and possible revolt of the people.

Strauss liked to keep it simple. Adam Curtis shows in his documentary, The Power of Nightmares, that Strauss liked the TV series Gunsmoke because: "The hero has a white hat; he's faster on the draw than the bad man; the good guy wins. And it's not just that the good guy wins, but that values are clear. [...] Good and evil." [Professor Stanley Rosen, Pupil of Leo Strauss 1949]

Strauss also liked Perry Mason, the TV series about a lawyer: "The extremely cunning man who, as far as we can see, is very virtuous and uses his great intelligence and quickness of mind to rescue his clients from dangers, but who could be fooling us—because he's cleverer than we are. Is he really telling the truth? Maybe his client is guilty!" [Rosen]

Therefore the masses could be taught to unite "against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy", which in the USA, for example, under Reagan was the Soviet Union, while at the same time never really knowing if what they are being told is the full story.

Drury argues that Strauss teaches that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them".

The creation of myths that divert the anger of the masses away from their own elite perpetrators is balanced by positive myths that puff up the nation's pride in the very same elites. This is the rule of the wise, and revealing its inner workings was frowned upon by Strauss.

"ROM: Hail, my fellow toilerman. I have returned from real America, bearing the gift of sight.
SHIV: How was summer camp?
ROM: Hmm? What's that? Didn't catch that. I've been down in the salt mines so long with my fellow Johnny Lunchpails, I no longer speak One-Percent."
(Succession S02 E05)

Conclusion

Succession is one story about the real America. It shows the workings of a society at its highest levels. It is self conscious in that it has no illusions about the American Dream. Instead it shows a society that is brutalised by its own successes that are leading to a greater disparity between wealth and poverty. It shows the growing distance between the masses and the elites that has developed over the last few decades, the contradiction between the idea of the nation and its reality. The ideal nation promoted by the elites is being split apart by global agendas that are consuming more and more of the nations resources to the detriment of its citizens:

"SHIV LAUGHS: Okay, big picture... we're at the end of a long American century. Our company is a declining empire
- inside a declining empire.
- Amen, brother." (Succession S03 E02)

Nobody knows where this is all leading but one can be sure that the wise men are working on it in a race to stop the masses from becoming completely fed up and taking matters into their own hands.

The verdict on Succession? Machiavelli would probably have loved it; Strauss would most likely have hated it.

Notes:
[1] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. ix
[2] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 130
[3] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 131
[4] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 52
[5] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 60

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.

Changing Society: Nature, Life, and Resistance in Culture Today

Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022) and White Tiger (2021)   (Spoiler alert)

Book cover of The White Tiger (2008)

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free”
― Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe,  (Elective Affinities, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 1809)

What kind of culture do we want? What kind of culture do we need? Our culture reflects our fundamental ideologies and these ideologies are rooted in patriarchal religion and neoliberal politics in the main.

It's a culture that depicts the class system, war, and in general, people dealing with the system in its many different facets, through drama, adventure, comedy, terror, horror, etc.

The origins of our culture are thought to go back thousands of years when, for example, (in the ideas of James DeMeo) "climatic changes caused drought, desertification and famine in North Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia (collectively Saharasia) and this trauma caused the development of patriarchal, authoritarian and violent characteristics" about six thousand years ago.  

The coming of the Kurgan peoples across Europe from c. 4000 to 1000 BC is believed to have been a tumultuous and disastrous time for the peoples of Old Europe. The Old European culture is believed to have centred around nature-based pagan ideologies.

Some believe the rise of patriarchy was due to the sexual division of labour about 2 million years ago, while others believe it was due to the later development of agriculture and private property.

Christ as Martyr and Master
Jan van Eyck (before c. 1390 – 9 July 1441)
Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych, c. 1430–1440.

However, these changes led to the growth of patriarchal religions that underpinned the ambitions of warring rulers, for example:

"In Christianity the rulers had a religion that assured their objectives. The warring adventurism of the new rulers needed soldiers for their campaigns and slaves to produce their food and mine their metals for their armaments and wealth. Thus, Christ was portrayed as Martyr and Master. In his own crucifixion as Martyr he provided a brave example to the soldiers, and as Master he would reward or punish the slaves according to how well they had behaved."

The privatisation of property, extractivism, the necessity for food-producing slaves and a warrior class sustained and further extended the aims of elites throughout feudalism and capitalism up to the wars of today, and who are now competing for power and resources on a global scale. The terminology has changed but the fundamentals have not.

The exploitation of nature continues unabated with the ongoing destruction of the Amazon and wildlife, the global and mass use and abuse of animals, transnational polluting industries, chemical-driven industrial crop land, and factory ship over-fishing emptying our seas. The wars have also gotten greater with two world wars in the twentieth century and a third one hanging over our heads constantly threatening our very existence. The elites are a smaller group of people now but control ever-growing global monopolies.

Thus, looking at culture in general from this perspective, there are two important aspects of modern culture: the destruction of nature combined with death (war) and a culture of slavery (escapism, diversion, etc.).

The antithesis of these two aspects are respect for nature and life, and resistance to slavery in all of its forms. While we are surrounded by the culture of war and escapism, it is not easy to find an oppositional culture.

Yet it does exist, and two good recent examples are the Korean TV series Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022) (pro-nature), and White Tiger (2021) (anti-slavery), a film based on an adaptation of Aravind Adiga's 2008 novel of the same name. These two fine dramas show us that alternatives to the current system and ideology can be produced.

“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”
― William Drummond  (Academical Questions, 1805)

Nature and life - Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022)

Extraordinary Attorney Woo is the story of Woo Young-woo, an autistic lawyer who is raised by her single father. She finds it difficult to get a job despite graduating with the highest distinction. However, she eventually gets a job in a top Seoul law firm, Hanbada, using her father's connections. Over time she learns to become an excellent lawyer and her colleagues grow to respect her. The series becomes a platform for progressive social, political, environmental and ethical issues fought out through the courts. Furthermore, the environmental theme is highlighted by her love of whales and dolphins especially when she "analogizes situations she faces in her professional and private life with the lives and characteristics of whales and dolphins [that] often surprises and confounds the people who surround her."

Promotional poster for Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022)
By Naver, Fair use.

 

 
These situations are often combined with beautiful, if surreal, photography of whales swimming past windows or combined with court scenes. Woo is also seen demonstrating with a colleague against the treatment of dolphins in a local aquarium.

However, Attorney Woo's fellow rookie colleague, Kwon Min-woo, approaches their supervising lawyer Jung Myung-seok, angry at her sometimes unorthodox behaviour which he feels she is getting away with because of her disability. Jung Myung-seok reacts in a slightly annoyed tone:

"Attorney Kwon, you must really like penalties. [...] When you experience a difference of opinion or a conflict at work, you need to talk with your colleagues and solve it.  Giving rewards or punishment over who is right or wrong for every single thing, that's not like how I like to work."

Here Myung-seok advises that conflict in life must be resolved through discussion, not by 'giving rewards or penalties', moving away from the authoritarian methods of the master.  

Attorney Woo naturally reacts to selfishness, corruption and discrimination but she gradually learns that the pursuit of truth is a difficult path to carve out. Apart from Woo being a symbol of logic and reasoning in the service of truth, her connection with nature is direct and not mediated by a negative, consumer-orientated culture.


“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau (from his journals, 1847)

Resistance to slavery - White Tiger (2021)

White Tiger tells the story of Balram Halwai who relates the ups and downs of his life in a letter to Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. Balram was an intelligent young boy in an isolated village who aspires to work as a chauffeur for the son of the rich village landowner, Ashok, who has just returned from America with his American-Indian wife, Pinky. Ashok and Pinky go to Delhi to bribe politicians to reduce his family's taxes and Balram joins them as their driver. Although they have liberal ideas about their servants, as soon as things turn bad they treat him like any other wealthy, entitled masters. Balram is asked to drive Ashok with a huge sum of money for a bribe and then decides to escape his servitude by murdering Ashok and stealing the money to make a better life for himself. He then sets up a taxi company in a different city where he treats his drivers well and helps them when they get into the kind of troubles he experienced himself as a servant.

Promotional poster for White Tiger (2021)

Balram believes "that the Indian underclass is trapped in a perpetual state of servitude, like chickens in a chicken coop."

He states that "The greatest thing to come out of this country in its ten thousand year history: The Rooster Coop. They can see and smell the blood. They know they’re next. Yet they don’t rebel, they don’t try and get out of the coop." He asks why the workers are so honest in their relations with their masters. "Why? Because Indians are the world’s most honest and spiritual people? No. It’s because 99.9 percent of us are caught in the Rooster Coop. The trustworthiness of servants is so strong that you can put the key of emancipation in a man’s hand and he will throw it back at you with a curse." He describes the main problem of Indian society: "In the old days, when India was the richest nation on earth, there were one thousand castes and destinies. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies."

The writer of the original novel (The White Tiger, p254, 2008) Aravind Adiga, noted in the novel that:

"I won't be saying anything new if I say that the history of the world is the history of a ten-thousand-year war of brains between the rich and the poor. Each side is eternally trying to hoodwink the other side: and it has been this way since the start of time. The poor win a few battles (the peeing in the potted plants, the kicking of the pet dogs, etc.) but of course the rich have won the war for ten thousand years."

Balram's escape from slavery, his resistance to the master, comes with tragedy as his extended family is murdered by the village landlord. He believes that he is a White Tiger, a symbol of freedom, because he escaped slavery and ultimately encourages his own employees to do the same:
(monologue and description from the screenplay)

"Balram speaks directly to his Drivers as he gathers them and brings them outside to the front of his business.
BALRAM - Now, what happens in your typical Hindi film about murder? A poor man kills a rich man and then gets nightmares of the dead man pursuing him screaming: “Murderer! Shame!” It doesn’t happen like that. The real nightmare is the other kind - where you didn’t do it, that you didn’t kill your master, that you
lost your nerve, and that you’re still a servant to another man. But then you wake up, the sweating
stops, your heartbeat slows. The nightmare is over. You did do it. You killed your master.
Balram steps away from them and speaks directly into the camera:
BALRAM (TO CAMERA) - I have switched sides. I’ve made it. I’ve broken out of the coop.
He exits frame, leaving a wall of drivers, servants, perhaps new White Tigers, ready to strike, confronting the camera, confronting the audience..."

Balram takes chances and resists slavery. He may be wealthy now but he does not feel part of the wealthy class. He has broken out of the coop and 'switched sides', and he has no problem enlightening and even encouraging his drivers to do the same. In a way he plays the rich at their own game: using their tactics of murder and disloyalty to escape from their binds.


“Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom.”
― Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (Aphorisms, 1880/1893)

 

 Of diets and glaciers

Given the current state of the political and financial crises of late capitalism. i.e., the possibility of an all-out global war and the worsening destruction of the environment (upon which our sustenance is based), the constant re-examination of our culture is of utmost importance. For many people the movement for change seems glacial and leads them to live out their lives on the cultural diet created mainly by producers whose primary motive is profit, not social and political change.

However, the illusion of peace and freedom created by this timeless culture is situated in real historical conditions that are constantly changing. Over time and with different forces underneath, even the slowest of glaciers can suddenly break apart and form cracks. The greatest aspiration of cultural producers today would be to show that happiness does not consist in diversion from worry but in confronting the sources of our current ills instead, and to remember what Leonard Cohen wrote, "Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in."

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.