David Davis

Mr Eugenides, here, lauds The Devil, who did it here, about some film review or other for some “picture” about Che Guevara (and no, you T-shirt still it not cool, you juvenile wannabe-murdering-scumbag.)

All we know about Ernesto “Chè” Guevara, on this blog here, is this. It’s a good picture for Christmas:-

But the whole spat does raise an interesting point (interesting to me anyway…). The vast majority of the “film” “industry’s” stuff, described very seriously as “output”, seems to be what we on the liberal wing of politics would call “counter-cultural” – which is to say: it glorifies persons who either are authoritarian, or who would become so at the drop of a hat. We only rarely get something like “The Lord of the Rings” which even Gramsci himself would have difficulty politicising against his own culture. Here’s a list off the top of my head:-

Che Guevara

Lenin (a long time ago, in I think “Nicholas and Alexandra”)

Ghandi

William Wallace (a terrorist who got what he deserved, and no he was NOT the father of Edward III.)

Those journalists whose names I can’t remember who shafted poor Richard Nixon

Titanic (all that s*** about the poor thrid class Irish being locked in to drown….reprehensible, and if I was the legatees of the Shipping Line, I would have sued.

And many others.

The people who do this gear should try making the films in North Korea, or Cuba, about Kim or Fidel.

I guess the other point is that, well, we all want to be able in this cyber-age to be “up with it”, though what “it” is with which we have to be “with”, is ill-defined. We all want to flag useful and interetsing stuff to others, i guess.