4. analysis of the development of capitalism and the role of class struggle in a systemic
economic change.
Marxist Approach to Filmmaking
Marxism is very recurrent theme in cinema and many contemporary filmmakers apply a
Marxist approach to filmmaking. It is good to note that the Marxist approach to filmmaking
is known as Marxist film theory which has gained popularity throughout the second half of
the 20th
Century and it’s now very common in more recent films. Marxist film theory is one
of the oldest forms of film theory, Sergei Eisenstein and many other Soviet filmmakers in the
1920s expressed ideas of Marxism through film. While this approach to Marxism and
filmmaking was used, the more loud complaint that the Russian filmmakers had was with
the narrative structure of Hollywood filmmaking, which reflected an individualistic and
capitalist perspective where a single individual had every other thing centred on him/her.
Eisenstein's solution was to shun narrative structure by eliminating the individual
protagonist and tell stories where the action is moved by the group and the story is told
through a clash of one image against the next (whether in composition, motion, or idea) so
that the audience is never lulled into believing that they are watching something that has
not been worked over. This could be clearly considered as a socialist manner of film
narration.
Marxism and Film Theory
The notion that American mass popular art in general and cinema in particular work as a
means to support the cultural status quo and keep the capitalist economic system in motion
has been a basic belief of Marxist theory for the last half-century. In Film Form, his
compilation of ground-breaking essays on the nature of the filmic medium, Russian director
Sergei Eisenstein wrote that "production, art and literature reflect the capitalist scope and
5. construction of the United States of America...... American capitalism finds its sharpest and
most expressive reflection in the American cinema”. (Eisenstein, 1969)
Noel Carroll divided the problems facing Marxist performers of art into two areas: First, they
need to answer the question of whether "art can perform an emancipatory role in the class
struggle, and, if it can, by what means can this role be affected" (Carroll, 1996). Second,
Marxists are faced with the question of why workers in the industrial West have not yet
revolted against the capitalist system and made progress toward communism; in other
words, why haven't Karl Marx's prophecies about the uprising of the proletariat and the
disintegration of the class structure come true? Carroll suggested one possible answer to
this question, which relates to the ideology indoctrinated by mass Western culture:
"Capitalism, through its mass popular art industry—the movies, TV, radio, popular music,
and so on—confuses, mystifies, and manipulates our minds in such a way as to impede the
development of emancipatory consciousness" (Carroll, 1996).
For a long time, this aspect of Western culture was ignored by Marxist critics specifically
because it did not fit their fundamental interpretations of Karl Marx's writings. However, it
proved impossible to ignore mass art forms like the movies forever because these forms
represent the vast majority of the cultural material for which the working class of Western
capitalism provide the audience. Some American critics in the early 1930s recognized the
potential power of the cinema, and even suggested that the superiority of Russian films was
indicative of the superiority of Russian society.
There has been little development in the production and marketing of motion pictures in
the last sixty years to suggest that anything has changed since the first half of the century in
terms of the ideology reflected in motion pictures produced in the United States. Although
the Studio era has ended, consequently allowing smaller, independent features with more
radical political stances, though there is still a great deal of cultural control exerted over
movies—what they may depict and in what manner. One reason for this is that, despite the
fact that movies are an art form, they are still a business. As the average cost of producing
and marketing a movie rises to more than $45 million, and it is no longer unheard of or even
particularly surprising for a movie to cost more than $100 million, producers and directors
find themselves having to adhere to traditional plotlines, characters, and ideologies that will
6. not only avoid insulting the convictions of the movie viewers, but will draw record numbers
of viewers through the door. Thus, there is little room for overt displays of hostility toward
capitalism in the American cinema.
Case Study of Films Applying Marxism
One of the strongest and most informative themes running throughout the films of a film
director like James Cameron or Ridley Scott, which might be seen as a "formal
contradiction," is the Marxist struggle between classes, which is often embodied in power
struggles between two or more characters. In fact, the power struggle between class-
representational characters is so strong in Cameron's films that it can almost be considered
the defining characteristic of his work. In this way, the majority of Cameron's films
immediately function as a counterargument to what some film critics call ‘the notion of the
disappearance of class’. In Scott’s films like Aliens, the class system is present and well
depicted in numerous forms in his other pictures like Abyss, and Avatar.
The capitalist at the heart of Aliens, is the perfect example of the evil capitalist, the one who
is the ultimate exploiter of the working class. If anyone continues to insist on the legitimacy
of Marx's predictions about the proletariat uprising, Aliens responds that it is still hasn't
happened by the mid-twenty-first century. In the film, Burke is the antithesis of Ellen Ripley
(Sigourney Weaver), the hero. Ripley is a traditional labourer, earthy, natural, strong, and
motherly, she is both an attractive and a powerful woman who can fight and labour
alongside the tough marines with whom she travels to the planet LB-426 to investigate an
apparent alien invasion into a colonial settlement.
Aliens is even more insistent than on the omnipresence of an all-powerful global capitalist
"Company." The irony is that the company is not building better worlds. Its vaguely insulting
term for the terra-formers—the labourers who set up atmosphere processors to build these
"better worlds". Burke is consumed with the notion of making money for the company,
whereas everyone else in the outfit, with whom he is stranded on the planet and trapped by
aliens, is worried only about simply staying alive. This is also depicted in an earlier scene
7. when Ripley recommends destroying the entire complex as the only way to be sure all the
aliens are killed. Burke's immediate response, informed only by his capitalist instinct, is:
"Hold on, hold on, wait a second. This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to
it ... this is a multimillion dollar installation. ..." Ripley sums up Burke and his obsession with
monetary wealth—and, therefore, Cameron's filmic conception of capitalism run amok—
perfectly when she says: "I don't know which species is worse, us or them [the aliens]. You
don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamned percentage. (Scott, 1979)
Similar expositions can be observed in James Cameron 2009 Avatar where humans, after
severely depleting Earth’s natural resources, leading to severe energy crisis have embarked
on the search of valuable minerals in outer space. The RDA (Resources Development
Administration) is the capitalist giant and is ready to decimate an entire civilisation, the
Na’avi, for their own interest.
Similar Marxist overtones can be observed in other contemporary works:
The Hunger Games
Here, false consciousness and ideology are ruling class affects people's consciousness by
giving them certain ideas of which the wealthy, who benefit the most from the social
arrangements, maintain the status quo. The ruling class creates an ideology that justifies its
status and makes it difficult for ordinary people to recognize that they are being exploited
and victimized.
A Bug's Life
Alienation, class revolution, exploitation, worker empowerment between the grasshoppers
as the bourgeoisie, and the ants as the proletariat.
Titanic
Ship is embodiment of class struggle; Rose represents the bourgeoisie while Jack represents
the proletariat.
8. End Word
As earlier mentioned in this paper, the theory of Marxism has always being ubiquitous in
film. Film, together with mass communication media has evolved to become powerful
instruments of propaganda and indoctrination. The Marxist approach to film can be viewed
as a means bringing the proletariat of the modern society to a state of consciousness, which
must not have them change ideology, but have them limit their level of reliance to the
capitalist-consumption mentalities.
Bibliography
Carroll, N. (1996). Theorizing the Moving Image. Cambridge University Press.
Eisenstein, S. (1969). Film Form. Harvest Book.
Scott, R. (Director). (1979). Aliens [Motion Picture].
