Fascism and Contemporary Cinema: From Fantasy-Space to the Real

(Figure 1.1 The Blind Side)

The Blind Side (John Lee Hancock; 2009) tells the true story of Michael Oher

(Quinton Aaron), a near-mute, acquiescent black teenager from a broken home and family,

who is taken in by a white Christian family in Tennessee. Despite his rotund and powerful

figure, Oher is a very gentle human being, and in lieu of this fact, he is induced by his new

family to try out for the private school football team as an offensive lineman. At first, Oher’s

passiveness is too much; he is beaten often at the line of scrimmage by opposing defenders.

But no worry: the white mother (Sandra Bullock: Figure 1.1) instructs her ‘son’ to imagine

the quarterback “as [their] family in the backfield.” And sure enough he does so—becoming

such a great offensive tackle (and wonderful human being) that he now plays pro football for

the Baltimore Ravens of the NFL1.

The film so far has been largely celebrated for its “irresistible emotional appeal”

(Variety) and its being about “simple human decency and economic disadvantage than it is

about racial inequality” (James Berardinelli). Sandra Bullock has also been touted as a

sure-lock for an Oscar nomination. The film has struck with popular audiences, as well,

grossing $100,238,841 as of November 29th . In its third weekend, with a gross of $20.4

million in sales, the film re-claimed the number one spot over the recently-crowned Twilight:
New Moon, a rare feat for any contemporary release, let alone over a record-breaking teenage

vampire romance. All of this isn’t puzzling given the lucrative nature of “family” sports

pictures and, perhaps, the well-timed release of an inspirational, conservative movie amidst

an economic crisis and a purportedly socialist President with unpopular fiscal policies. Our

question is not why now is this film possible; but, instead, why at all? Specifically, why is it

that a film like The Blind Side is able to capture popular imagination by any means? I will

not attempt to answer this question entirely—it lies beyond critical method, a sort of farrago

of intricate philosophy and human behavior. Instead, I will answer it through an appeal to a

kind of fascism (in cinema) that is little understood, recognized. Fascism has historically

been positioned as a kind of ‘response to crisis’ associated with terrorizing regimes (Hitler,

Mussolini, Pinochet2) that sought to convert depreciated national spirit into something

horrific, but nonetheless perceivable and real. I will argue against such a limited reading, not

so much denying the realities of those fascisms but opening discussion to what Foucault

(describing Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus) has called “the fascism of the everyday.”

Fascist Cinema: Triumph of the Will

First, a quick audit of Fascist cinema as-we-know-it:

(Figure 2.1 Triumph of the Will)

This still (Figure 2.1) is from Leni Riefenstahl’s famous Nazi propaganda film

Triumph of the Will. The film depicts the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremburg and
excerpts of speeches from Adolph Hitler and various high-ranking Nazi leaders. Hitler

commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in

the opening titles. The overriding theme of the film is the return of Germany as a great

power, with Hitler as the True German Leader who will bring glory to the nation. I will now

break down the film in too separate categories: content and form. The two categories are

not exclusive, nor are they impermissible to readings that incorporate both to determine the

collective weight of fascism within Riefenstahl’s motion picture.

I have defined the content in Triumph of the Will through evident themes that are

universally recognized as fascist and therefore disgusting and reprehensible. The idea here is

that individual content that capture the distinct milieu of German Fascism (re: the exact

transcription of Hitler’s address, the plot of the Congress taking place, etc.) are less useful

than detecting widespread motifs and calculable imagery for all of fascisms that seem to

exist. Instead, I want to emphasize the perseverance of the latter term to the former—which

is often the contingent ideal of Nazism. As follows: (i.) Decadent appeals to transcendence

—a force or realm beyond us; (ii.) Notions of wholeness and unity—a noble turn away from

individualism for the sake of the Party; (iii.) The inauthenticity of the Other—the disgust of

“those against us, who are not with us”; (iv.) The incessant, undeniable need and desire to be

led—a sole figure who will administrate/ calibrate the national imaginary; (v.) The

unfinished ‘great’ history of the Romans fused with Nazi essentialism — the privileged

nexus of “the national situation” (Jameson) to the world-spirit.

Next, form: Riefenstahl accomplished the dramatic representation of power (and,

really, power deferred to an instrumental authority: the Führer) through a fetishization of

power-structures and power-images. Obviously, there is the omnipresence of Speer’s neo-

Speer, moreover, was listed as the architect of the film, collaborating with Riefenstahl to

design a majority of the sets used in the movie. These architectural marvels were Roman-

inspired, large rotundas and prominent columns that adorned enormous halls and gather areas

that looked much like the Pantheon and the Coliseum. Encapsulated in these buildings were

direct lines to a political imaginary that established itself in ancient Rome: the immaculate

formation of the modern individual and the demonstrative participation in a Nation-Empire

by all its people. Susan Sontag’s points out the elaborate fantasy of Triumph of the Will, it’s

innumerable seduction as a documentary. (Note: Whereas, Sontag thinks that anyone who

suggests the film is such is being “ingenuous”; but, rather, I would argue that this is the

ingenious temptation of Triumph of the Will, which situates Fantasy, after all, as the sublime

—that which, even when we are fully aware of its absurdity, does not relinquish its hold on

us and its ‘reality effects.’)

(Figure 2.2 Triumph of the Will)

Unquelled by geographical or historical singularities, Truth and Unity are inculcated

through what Habermas has called “common sense” (literally, ‘sense held in common’). One

of the presuppositions of neoliberalism is by its exposure—really, fostering—to

postmodernism and consumer society that it effectively destroys the possibilities of Fascism,
which is historically understood as a Modernist project. But consider the narrative described

by David Harvey:

“By the end of the 1960s embedded liberalism [the economic model of post-

WWII founded on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, namely strong ties to

stable currency and large-scale social services, government projects] began to

break down[…]Signs of a serious crisis of capital accumulation were

everywhere apparent.