If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost.
Marvelously–clever musical
constantly exploring and variously suggesting the psychological links between emotional repression and fascism – especially as this relates to White culture; eerily matching the Nazi rally–like atmosphere of a typical Western
popular–music concert.
Externally, these political rallies (instead of cultural festivals) match the constant to‑ing and fro‑ing in the West between the belief that Whites are superior to everyone else and, simultaneously, the fear that they have of everyone else, expressed through such behaviours as scapegoating and human sacrifice.
Given the sexually‑repressed nature of White culture, recurrent bouts of White supremacist rage are inevitable and their causes – but not their preventives – are shown here. White people do not want solutions, anyway, since there will always be mountains of sacrificial victims for Whites to fear and it is always
easier to hate oneself than to love others; making hate easier to incentivize than love.
The vicious cycle of White culture lies in the fact that to prove that they are the
Master Race, Whites have to repress their humanity to give the false impression that they are somehow more than merely human; trapping them into never being happy. (White culture is all about acting and appearing, not about any essential values.)
This self‑repression perpetuates itself since White people are unable to learn from the so‑called lesser ethnic groups precisely because Whites are radicalized to believe that those others are lesser and because their emotional repression makes them unable to learn how to be fully‑human from each other – in the same way that someone who does not know how to play the piano cannot teach anyone else how to play a piano.
This blind‑leading‑the‑blind tendency of White culture reduces the social options of White people to only three. In order of preference:
- Mental suicide: Keeping their feelings locked‑up behind a façade of tranquility; leading to various neuroses and psychoses;
- searching for scapegoats and human sacrifices outside of their ethnic groups and social classes; &,
- physical suicide.
Usually, as here, a combination of all three is selected.
Here, a culture in permanent crisis (replete with vast swathes of psychologically‑damaged people) is presented
as scintillating rock opera, where a simple decision (to be human) has to be made at the level of the individual that rarely is. That is, to repeat the pathology of one’s childhood, as an adult, or to grow‑up by tearing down the emotional wall of inevitable madness which separates alienated neurotics from self‑esteem. The film makes clear that this requires precisely the kind of moral courage that is so sorely lacking in the West.
The only real problem with this movie is that it has no real characters that you can empathize with (in a traditional, narrative‑cinema sense) as well as almost no dialog, since it is more about ideas‑about‑people than it is about people, themselves. Inevitably, therefore, no actor gets the chance to develop their portrayals beyond the
obvious; the music and lyrics being everything here. It is not visually‑cinematic enough to be a truly great film, because the style is not quite as important
as the musical content – even though the style is undoubtedly impressive in offering very to‑the‑point images.
Alan Parker was the
natural choice of director for this because of his previously‑successful musicals – especially Bugsy Malone. And he has managed
to visually capture the spirit, at least, of the greatest concept album of
all time, in that it took the form as far as it could possibly go.
Overall, a fine effort that manages not to be as White whiny as the source material should, by
rights, have made it. (After all, when Whites sing the blues, it is rarely uplifting, soulful or joyous.) Nevertheless, this movie never
really escapes the confines of the lunatic asylum in which the White characters choose to
live, but it is entertaining and – in its own way – just as good as Yellow Submarine.
