Monday, May 11, 2015
"The Shock Doctrine": documentary feature seems to wander from Naomi Klein's book
“The Shock Doctrine” (2009), based on the book by that name
by Naomi Klein, and directed by Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom,
explores the idea that capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and other
instability.
The film draws a curious analogy to medicine, particularly shock
treatment for mental illness in the past, along with sensory deprivation
treatment, tried in the early 60s, depicted in Montreal in this film. (The idea
of being “dulled” actually came up in my personal therapy at NIH in 1962.)
The film then moves on to major historical examples,
starting with the right-wing coup that kicked out a Marxist government in
Chile. Economist Milton Friedman, from
the University of Chicago, was called on to help implement economic “reforms”.
It then covers the confluence of Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher (“The Iron Lady”), leading to the conservative revolutions of the
1980s, where privatization of many government functions occurred and unions
were attacked (as with the airline traffic controllers strike in 1982). In time, the ratio of CEO pay to average
worker pay rose from 40 to 1 to over 400 to 1, and hostile takeovers became
common. The film covers Thatcher’s
Falklands War.
The film goes on to cover the fall of the Soviet Union, and
the consolidation of Boris Yeltsin’s power in the 1990s, with footage of the
attack on the Moscow “White House”. The
film covers the end of the Cold War in a negative light, claiming that it
knocked many or most Russians into poverty, while allowing a few oligarchs to
become billionaires and flash their wealth.
The was all “pre-Putin”. But does
it set up the aggression of Russia today, as well as the anti-gay climate (with
the law passed in 2013)?
The film covers 9/11, but noting that on Sept. 10, 2001
Rumsfeld had announced “bureaucracy” as the new enemy. But then, 9/11 created a “Before and After”
(as had AIDS 15 years before) and a “clash of civilizations”. We had totally misunderstood our world (as it
seems we do now, given ISIS). We spoke
of a “clash of civilizations”. The documentary moves on to the war in Iraq, and
notes that most Iraqi people are worse off today than they were under Saddam
Hussein.
That may be true because of the weak government and power
vacuum, allowing ISIS to rampage, but remember that much of the ISIS military
comes from Saddam Hussein’s former secular generals.
The film concludes with coverage of the 2008 financial
crisis, following on to the Russian and Asian financial crisis of the late
1990s (subject of a big Esquire issue in 1999 about young men without girl
friends).
Naomi Klein also has a short film “The Shock Doctrine: The
Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, on a page here. Klein is reported to have serious
differences with the filmmakers as to content, link here.
The feature can be rented from Netflix.
I need to mention “Deep Web” by Alex Winter, distribution by
“Bond Influence” (or Bond/360) which I missed at the Maryland Film
Festival. There seems to be an issue
with availability on cable, which I discuss on my Network Neutrality blog
yesterday. I will review it as soon as I
can get a DVD or legal link.
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