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Maoist movie reviews
"Sleeper" (1973)
Sleeper
Directed by Woody Allen
Rollins-Joffe Productions
PG
89 minutes
1973
2009 June
Here I was, talking about Godard's
"Alphaville," and I forgot about Woody Allen's science fiction
movie "Sleeper." It was a mistake, because MIWS is an
English-language site, and I should have thought of "Sleeper" first.
One of Allen's earliest films, "Sleeper" is in other ways reminiscent
of an early Godard film, making explicit references to Marxism.
"Sleeper" raises the question: What would a present-day New Yorker do
if he or she lived long enough to see the world become like New York,
complete with what was considered liberal sex, and an appreciation
for the artistic avante-garde? The thawing of cryogenically preserved
health food store owner and Greenwich Village resident Miles Monroe
(played by Woody Allen) is the premise of this story about
confronting the society that lifestyle-oriented Amerikans with
quasi-communist ideas seek. "Sleeper" is a comedy and deliberately
nonsensical, but its take on Liberalism and technology is unique in
comparison with some other movies depicting a totalitarian society
with futuristic technology.
"Teleological existential atheism"
Miles calls himself a "teleological existential atheist." "I believe
that there's an intelligence to the universe with the exception of
certain parts of New Jersey." Miles doesn't believe in God. But he
doesn't believe in science, "an intellectual dead end." And he
doesn't believe in "political solutions." Miles seems to be a
caricature of an apathetic urban hipster, but actually the character
sums up the majority of Amerikans, who are inward-gazing, fixated on
lifestyle and content to let others run the show. If they weren't
apathetic, they'd tend to go in the direction of fascism.
Miles doesn't believe in "God," as in Abrahamic monotheism, but he
believes that something superhuman is in control. It's an attitude
found in New Agers and reminiscent of comic books. For some,
Abrahamic religion is inconvenient for their lifestyle pursuits or
unsuitable for their high-energy, stressful life; something more
active or something addressing the stress of individuals more
concretely might be better. In particular, Catholicism has, in dense
cities with lots of people who don't do physically exerting work, an
image involving people doing dull repetitive motions and falling
asleep in pews -- lifelessness. Other religions, and no religion, are
more suitable for parasitic, decadent people's lives. Combined with
sentiments encouraging either apathy and disinterest or energetically
supporting a leader on the basis of style, the result can be
following a leader anywhere and everywhere while in a stupor of
lifestyle -- how fascism manifests among non-elites in a typical
modern imperialist country. It is enough that the leader addresses
the economic complaints of the parasites in a vague way.
Miles Monroe is not interested in politics. For Miles, science is not
a dead end because it is intellectual. It is a dead end
intellectually for Miles as an individual. There are intellectuals
who talk about art; there are intellectuals who talk about sex as
something for the sake of individual enjoyment; and there are
intellectuals who talk about eating and write whole books on the
topic for individuals to change their practices. None of this
necessarily has to do with groups of people or how things work in
society. In turn, many scientific ideas about society are useless for
individual purposes. "Sleeper" has a point. What are Amerikans
supposed to do with Marxism? If they take it up, it becomes
watered-down or distorted. It may appear "pseudo-intellectual," as
Miles accuses poet/socialite-turned-revolutionary Luna of being. Even
when lifestyle is replaced with Marxism, the result is lifestyle
still or Marxism degraded.
Though seemingly oxymoronic and nonsensical, "teleological
existentialist" suggests both apathy and individualism and is
fitting. There is a theme of the "absurd" in "Sleeper," but it's not
obvious that "Sleeper" agrees with existentialism. If Miles supported
a political solution as an existentialist, it would be as a meaning
created for himself that would neither be necessary (except as an
alternative to suicide) nor something that a group of people could
share on the basis of science. It would be conscious, based on the
recognition of the absurd. Miles ends up going along with resistance
to the government. In the real world, existentialists could support
revolution. It depends on class structure. Existentialist
petty-bourgeois people in the Third World might support revolution
despite seeing revolution as having a falseness, while in the First
World existentialists could support fascism. If Greenwich Village in
the real world had many people like Miles, "Sleeper" would seem to
connect First World existentialism to political decadence. Greenwich
Village culture and politics led to North America's becoming a police
state, implies "Sleeper."
Leadership and style
What Miles Monroe does believe in is "sex and death." This is an
allusion to Freudianism. But, it is suggestive of how people got to
be the way they are in "Sleeper." Sex and death are "two things that
come once in my lifetime." "But at least after death you're not
nauseous," says Miles. In "Sleeper," society seems organized around
sex. There are still children; at least some grow up to take courses
at universities in how to have sex. Luna has a Ph.D. in "oral sex."
She studied "sexual technique," and also "cosmetics" and "poetry,"
which might serve sexual purposes. People use technology to take care
of problems involving desire and excitement. After having sex, people
watch a serene pope-like figure on television, the Leader. The Leader
is not shown doing anything, and in fact he is easily replaceable;
the government wants to clone him. His function could be as a symbol
or to alleviate depressed feelings after having sex. In either of
those capacities, there is no substance to the Leader. Here,
"Sleeper," being set in the future, points to something in the real
world. It's as if at some point someone figured out the truth about
Amerikan leaders, that they are a holdover from struggles against
monarchs in feudal societies and now serve a style-related purpose
that is retrograde in a country with access to education and
information, and did away with real individual leaders. (The Amerikan
individual leader is part of an elitist sectarian system, which is
entrenched.) In the real world, since "Sleeper" suggests sexual
considerations, there are Democratic sex clubs (sometimes called
political organizations) and even Republican sex clubs, but
partisanship can get in the way of sex opportunities. Other
imperialist countries emphasize proportional representation. The
Amerikan mode is particularly obsolete, though in keeping with the
political decadence of the United $tates it will probably remain
until U.$. imperialism is overthrown or internal fascism comes.
After Miles emerges from cryogenic stasis, scientists interview him
about various historical objects and individuals. They show him a
picture of Stalin. Miles says he didn't like him, and comments on
Stalin's appearance and "bad habits." Miles' comment on Chiang
Kai-shek: "Very well known . . . who I was not too crazy about
either." In this scene, in which Miles also calls Charles de Gaulle a
French chef and lies about Dracula actor Bela Lugosi being a New York
mayor, Miles is only half-joking. It is typical of Amerikans to talk
about people with power the same way they do F. Scott Fitzgerald or
an actor: in terms of style. This is even more true in the First
World today than in 1973, when older leaders in general were opposed
with style ad hominem, represented as being conventional. Now,
particular leaders are. For some people, it came down to whom they
would rather have sex with, John McCain or Barack Obama. Amerikan
so-called radicals under the influence of pornography could be found
supporting Obama while taking superficial digs against Mao and
Stalin. Of course, any person living in the United $tates today would
be better than dead people for sexual fantasies. Barack Obama looks
better than Huey Newton, and it could be that Newton is dead or that
Obama exudes political correctness that has become more desirable. In
academia, postmodernism making stilted vacuous critiques of
Marxism-Leninism and revolutionary nationalism paves the way for
dulled, foggy thinking generally, style ad hominem, and character
assassination.
At this time, large numbers of people in the United $tates are not
going to take up upholding Huey Newton and Stalin regardless of what
communists do, primarily because of the class structure of the United
$tates. Still, "Sleeper's" suggestion that people rejecting Stalin in
Miles' way would bring about fascism isn't far off the mark. As time
passes, Huey Newton and Stalin become more distant, and living
imperialist country people like Newton and Stalin become rarer. There
is nothing stopping movement toward fascism except high living
standards -- based on exploitation of foreign workers -- the
sustainment of which during downturns itself leads to fascism.
Focusing on style speeds up the rise of fascism. Fascism is a type of
extreme reaction, and while not false consciousness on the part of
the majority of First Worlders, it seeks to preserve imperialism at
its most decadent. The execution of fascism requires a disconnect
from reality, even when it is directed primarily outward as it is
against Third World people today. Style facilitates adoption of
fascism.
The individuals whom elites put forward to be elected in the United
$tates as in a Presidential election have real power and may be
connected to particular elites, but the electing occurs on the basis
of style and whom the most demanding classes in imperialist society
(the labor aristocracy, the "middle class," etc.) will accept
style-wise. This benefits not just the careers of some people, but
also the maneuvering that needs to be done to prop up international
exploitation. This is not mainly a result of planning, but of the
parasitism of contemporary imperialist countries, with a lot of
scientifically lazy people and much money to spend on repression to
force a desired result. In this situation of power with no particular
substance (especially publicly), there is pressure to eliminate an
individual quirkiness factor from politics. In "Sleeper," people in
general are literally programmed (in a way bringing to mind
hypnotism) to behave in certain ways. In the real world, there is
vetting, among other things.
The Third World?
Except for autocracy, there is not much in the "Sleeper" world that
would specifically suggest fascism, as it has existed historically,
for some viewers. With non-monogamy of various kinds being the main
form of sex, a conspicuous sex device and sign of sex in every home
(the "orgasmatron" machine, as ubiquitous as the television), and
unabashed discussion of sex, the society in "Sleeper" is like a
Reichian dream come true. These people supposedly of the future
believe and do some silly things (like that tobacco is healthy), but
if the whole world is like this, what could be wrong, some viewers
may ask themselves. Actually, there is a semblance of a class society
still in the "Sleeper" world. While technicians service robots,
others who swim in swimming pools write poetry. Miles Monroe woke up
in "the American Federation," in "what you'd probably call the
southwestern United States," according to a scientist. "Sleeper" is
prescient for foreshadowing that the liberalism of the 1960s and
urban enclaves would be utterly assimilated by imperialism. Where the
Third World is in "Sleeper" or what happened to it is unclear,
though. There was a war connected to the acquisition of a nuclear
warhead by "a man named Albert Shanker." (The real-life Albert
Shanker was a New York teacher, union organizer and "socialist.")
Science fiction movies that depict advanced technology, but leave out
the Third World, are suspect as contributing to the myth of First
World living standards based on advanced productive forces, rather
than international exploitation. In isolation, the United $tates, the
former population of which "Sleeper" seems to depict, might appear to
have gotten rid of class antagonism, but in reality class structure
and class antagonism exist on a world scale.
There is no proletariat among U.$. citizens. Pseudo-revolutionary
struggle premised on the idea of an exploited working class in a
First World imperialist nation, and on the denial of the majority of
imperialist exploitation, leads to fascism. (Of course, the mention
of Albert Shanker in "Sleeper" is a joke, but Shanker's biography
illustrates the seriousness of the potential of even
imperialist-nation social-democracy to lead to fascism.) The
dictatorship of the proletariat requires a proletarian working class.
If there is no Third World in the "Sleeper" world, it does sound
ridiculous to talk about a "Marxist regime" and "government by the
workers and the downtrodden masses" as
Luna-as-Underground-revolutionary does. In a fantasy land with the
First World remaining as it is and no Third World except as something
like aliens from outer space, MIWS would have to change what it is
saying as a matter of understanding reality as it concretely exists.
The majority of "Marxists" in the First World live in that fantasy
land. Some intellectuals living in the same fantasy land reject
Marxism openly. In this context, it seems that Miles Monroe does not
object to the abuse of Marxist rhetoric per se, but to the use of
Marxism to replace the Leader with another head. "It doesn't matter
who's up there; they're all terrible."
There is the Albert Shanker reference, but what is the genuine
socialist alternative in the United $tates. Miles' critique of the
Leader and the leader of the Underground, Erno, is petty-bourgeois, a
distrust of all leaders. "Sleeper" portrays the culture of liberal
upper-class people in U.$. cities, or the culture of Greenwich
Village particularly, as vapid. The life of citizens in the "Sleeper"
society seems empty, but what would the director-writer of "Sleeper"
suggest as an alternative in that context, one wonders. Despite these
typical petty-bourgeois critiques -- and "Sleeper's" allusions to
totalitarianism, and references to Marxism, that could just mean
Amerikans are too ditsy and self-absorbed to get any politics right
-- this reviewer wondered if "Sleeper," might be saying something
different about gender. Is gender in "Sleeper" just pornography to
make Woody Allen's intellectual message more palatable and a way of
criticizing people by ad hominem, or is it something else.
First World privilege, sexual liberalism and Liberalism
Director/co-screenwriter/star Woody Allen's relationship with
psychoanalysis is well-known, and in fact many people's ideas about
psychoanalysis come from Woody Allen. Nonetheless, I will try to
avoid talking about Allen's biography. Miles says he was seeing a
"strict Freudian" before he went to the hospital and was put to
cryogenic sleep. Key to understanding gender in the First World is
knowing that patriarchy is a system that imperialist country people
have changed positions within over time. People privileged within
this system have not left patriarchy. So, there is more equality
between First World females and First World males than before, but
what is the relationship between First World people and Third World
people and First World children. Children sometimes seem to oppress
each other and so do Third World people, but so do the poor in a
property context. No Maoist would be caught dead saying that
capitalism is concentrated among poor people who steal from each
other more openly than rich people steal. There is still capitalism
in the First World, and there is still a patriarchal system in the
First World, in which the majority of First World adults of each sex
are oppressors.
Readers may have noticed that some apparently agreeing with MIWS on
the First World working class as a labor aristocracy and the majority
of First World adult females as not being gender-oppressed
painstakingly avoid addressing whether youth are gender-oppressed and
even whether First World adult females are gender oppressors. In some
case, there has been open opposition to the idea that First World
adult females are gender oppressors on a world scale and that Third
World male adults have less gender privilege than First World male
adults. To interpret this in the most generous way possible, the
reason could be an inability to separate gender from narrow lifestyle
questions. In the First World, more radicals are able to stomach
being viewed as bourgeois or petty-bourgeois than being viewed as
gender oppressors, because of gender oppression's association with
battery, sexual assault, harassment, prostitution, etc. Similarly,
saying that youth are gender-oppressed for many people is to say that
adults are doing something already outrageous or have a character
problem, and nobody wants to be seen as oppressing youth,
particularly when they are trying to recruit them. There is a failure
to separate group questions from individual questions. When class
oppression is seen as more tolerable than gender oppression or gender
questions are not treated the same way as class questions
methodologically, more often than not there is an underlying or
explicit gender Liberalism similar to saying that theft (usually
kinds criminalized in capitalist countries) is bad and the rest of
capitalism is fine. Another problem, rarely discussed, is that
oppressed nation males, whose masculinity however worthless is the
only thing they have left to lose, do not want to be seen as
feminine, so they are averse to the idea of white females oppressing
them.
A variety of so-called Maoists have raised the long-disproved idea
that capitalism destroys patriarchy to explain why there can be
progress in the United $tates -- rather than a transformation of U.$.
female adults into gender oppressors -- with hardly any "feminist"
movement outside academia, the State Department, and political
establishment circles. Gender oppression exists in capitalist
countries that are long past feudalism. Liberalism does not favor
equality in general. The sex (female-male) equality and not just
legal equality seen in the First World came after the playing field
for various things for expanded to include more Third World people
and there was an increase in First World gender privilege in general.
There is sex equality in the Third World, too, but it is equality
within a lack of privilege, so now First World females can lord it
over both Third World females and Third World males, for example, and
not just for class reasons like in the Bible story about Potiphar's
wife and the slave Joseph. Today, the idea that capitalism destroys
patriarchy dovetails with the idea that imperialism is progressive
for opposing Islamic governments in Muslim Third World countries,
prejudicially perceived as feudal. Given what so-called Maoists are
doing, it is hard for this reviewer, even from today's vantage point
thirty-five years after "Sleeper" came out and with the majority of
First World females' being gender oppressors, to criticize "Sleeper"
for focusing the viewer's gaze on sexual liberalism in the First
World and suggesting vaguely that there is something wrong about it.
This writer has more complaints about discussing "alienation" etc. in
the First World and not international exploitation. There is a
problem getting beyond Liberalism in gender questions particularly,
and gender in particular is used for racism and lynching and other
repression. In the communist movement, thinking about gender is far
behind thinking about class.
The word "feminist" is not said once in "Sleeper." Neither is
"liberation," "oppression," "sexism," "supremacy," "subjugation," or
"sisterhood," either. Those words are all used in the contemporaneous
Weather Underground book Prairie Fire: The Politics of
Revolutionary Anti-imperialism that came out in 1974, for
example, in relation to white females. The same book's discussion of
sterilization in the Third World, even under a heading with the word
"imperialism," is tied mainly to individual women's "choice." The
second of the two bulky parts of the sub-section "Imperialism means
sexism" in Prairie Fire deals with white males' and white male
soldiers' abuse of non-white females, the effect of which discussion
is to draw attention away from white females while stoking
competitive feelings in white females. Another part is a
paternalistic discussion of U.$. repression of Third World females as
if it were worse than U.$. repression of Third World males. Another
is a discussion of imperialism -- the context is U.$. investment in
the Third World -- as "foster[ing] the most reactionary (backward)
aspects) in feudal and colonized nations, including male supremacy,"
with no mention of Third World males' opposing sexism. The Weather
Underground Organization sought to tie Euro-Amerikan feminism to
anti-imperialism. In a weird way, Euro-Amerikan feminism did come
closer to anti-imperialism, to move away from it. Euro-Amerikan
feminism appropriated many of the Weather Underground's points
regarding Third World females while becoming more white-chauvinist
than it was in the early 1970s, and in fact it has become part of the
vanguard of U.$. international reaction in doing so. Euro-Amerikan
feminism has no problem talking about "brutal" sexism in the Third
World, suggesting throngs of Third World females opposing sexism as
if the popular feminist movement were concentrated in the Third
World, and even talking about U.$. corporate abuses of females in the
Third World, in tandem with the labor aristocracy bitching about
"globalization." What Euro-Amerikan feminism as part of that
reactionary vanguard cannot appropriate is a critique of sexual
liberalism, and it cannot challenge the privilege of Euro-Amerikan
females in connection to what is going on in the Third World, as
false labor internationalism cannot challenge the labor aristocracy.
Part of the goal is to demonstrate solidarity with Third World
females and finesse questions about First World females' position in
the world. Euro-Amerikan pseudo-feminism stabs Third World females in
the back.
The fierce ditz
Prairie Fire describes the U.$. women's movement as "imbued
with a unique spirit and the fierce beauty of masses of women
actively claiming our power and our futures." "Fierce beauty" could
be a good idea in Third World countries where, because of the
interference of imperialism with the Third World countries'
nationalism, people in general are less educated. In the First World,
"fierce beauty" is identity politics obscuring First World female
privilege and used to divide Third World people. It is particularly
bad identity politics, because it is based on physical appearance and
does not allow a change in identity of a group of people. One symbol
of "feminism" accentuates the female form and long hair, which is
associated with both First World females and Third World females. Of
course, there is an image of a proletarian worker involving developed
muscles and an accompanying image of a bourgeois as being effete, but
recognizing strong males as enemies has not been as difficult as
recognizing beautiful females as enemies. Given where "fierce beauty"
ended up in the First World, as the symbol of a warmongering
individualist female "owning" her attractiveness for career, romance
and political purposes, one has to appreciate what "Sleeper" does by
lampooning the fierce beauty and replacing her with the fierce ditz.
The sexual liberalism in "Sleeper" is not attached to any political
substance. Calling Miles jealous of Underground leader Erno, Luna
says, "Certainly you don't expect me to tie myself down to one man.
My love is a free gift to all the Bolshevik brothers." Luna
regurgitates Marxist rhetoric. She uses a language of liberation and
revolution to criticize one individual's sentiments and justify a
lifestyle. Luna goes from regurgitating Marxist rhetoric to singing
poetry, offensively bad: "Rebels are we, born to be free just like
the fish in the sea." Luna is militant, but unscientific and
understands revolution in terms of her own life and the lives of her
comrades, as something that they live and express continuously as
individuals. Miles wakes up in a society that practices the
Underground's sexuality, but which doesn't connect it to communist
rhetoric. From Miles' perspective as someone who lived in Greenwich
Village in the 1970s two hundred years ago, the sexuality of
Greenwich Village has spread to the rest of the world, but the
idealism of Greenwich Village is missing.
In the real world, there are those who look at places like Greenwich
Village and think that they represent in some way the United $tates
as a whole or at least large Democratic-voting U.$. cities. So it
seems to some people that the United $tates is on the verge of
revolution by energetic activists with liberal supporters and even
that the Democratic Party will have something to do with this
revolution. This is a kind of provincialism and leads to fascism,
even though -- and because -- some activists know better. There isn't
much going on politically in these urban enclaves in the first place,
except that they are sources of inspiration for exploiter unity
projects, international accommodation projects, and training in
Liberal and Marxist rhetoric for reactionary diplomatic and spying
purposes. Without progress on the socialism front in the United
$tates, some of the activist and intellectual energy turns inward,
and as a result there is more emphasis on refining lifestyle and
changing other people's lifestyle. "Sleeper" signals clearly that
there is nothing inherently progressive about free love. In
actuality, linking politics to romance when females already have
college education is backward.
Free love
In one way, "Sleeper's" critique of free love is quite typical, the
idea that the free love of the 1960s was male-oriented. In the midst
of trying to find the Aires Project, believed to be a plot to destroy
the Underground, Miles is caught and programmed to be a citizen.
After Miles' programming is undone by the Underground, Luna, now with
the Underground, enthusiastically discusses how she has been living.
"All of us in the Underground, we all live day to day on our cunning
and our instinct. We're all a pack of wild animals." A male
Underground member throws a piece of meat on the floor for her, the
implication (in the context of the later revelation about sharing
herself among the "Bolshevik brothers") being that she is the
Underground's bitch. Miles is suspicious when Luna says, "While you
were being a pawn in a capitalistic society, Erno's been teaching me
the beauty of Karl Marx." Miles: "Who's been teaching you?" Luna:
"Erno. Oh, Miles, you absolutely must meet him. He's wonderful."
Here, the similarity with typical feminist critiques of free love
ends. "Sleeper" raises: Is there not something Christian about being
in love with a leader's personality while making a big deal about
lifestyle, either shoving one's lifestyle in other people's face or
disparaging others for having a seemingly conservative lifestyle? And
doing so in a parochial way, focusing on the people in one's locality
or with whom one is already familiar? There is no reason Luna has to
go back for Miles after he was captured and programmed. Before Miles
showed up, what really was the difference between the Underground and
the non-outlaw citizens in terms of action? Was it just a lifestyle
with revolutionary rhetoric? Miles says Luna reminds him of "a
Trotskyite who became a Jesus freak and who was arrested for selling
pornographic connect-the-dots books."
There are two occurrences of "Freudian" in "Sleeper" and several
allusions to Catholicism. One obvious interpretation is that
"Sleeper" links psychoanalysis to Catholicism. Miles confesses a
sexual transgression to a machine, which declares absolution and
dispenses a useless object, for example. It seems that people have
managed to eliminate a certain pornographic aspect of confession,
involving third parties. In 2009, it seems pointless to criticize
Catholics in particular and not other sects in the First World, but
to the extent that Catholicism is for some a symbol of structure in
sex in general, "Sleeper" raises that free love can exist
simultaneously with structure and unconscious structure. Luna when
she is still a poet hosts a party. She says to someone, "I think we
should have had sex, but there weren't enough people." For Luna,
having enough people is a condition of having sex. Luna seems unable
to have sex other than in an orgy. For the person with whom she is
speaking, the orgasmatron machine is enough. It seems that free love
would be an advance by removing an element of inequality, if everyone
has sex with everyone, but in actuality the sex attaches to certain
styles. As a poet, Luna has sex with artists with exaggerated style;
one wears an inexplicable swastika, now existing purely as style.
Luna seems drawn to one man, Harold, who brings a painting that Luna
admires with meaningless future synonyms for "cool." As a
revolutionary, Luna has sex with people with a "rebel" style, and
within that she is again drawn to one man, a hunk who is the leader.
What Miles confesses to the absolution machine is having sex with a
co-worker when they were supposed to be eating lunch -- a failure to
abstain from sex -- suggesting that free love contradicts social
reproduction on a social scale. Remarking on the co-worker's hair and
breasts, Miles' confession is almost masturbatory. Miles' confession
introduces a new factor into his relationship with his co-worker.
Whether or not a person is listening to Miles' confession, Miles
discusses the relationship without the co-worker present, and by
verbalizing the relationship reinforces a certain perception of it
that his co-worker might not share. This may affect desire, for
example.
For a movement like the Underground, which faces police killings,
free love might be preferable to forever-monogamy. However, something
that is good for horny people in one organization is not necessarily
the best for ending gender oppression. The distinction between the
lifestyle preferences of people and what billions of people are going
to do needs to be maintained, not obscured with progressive rhetoric.
One of the reasons Luna appears as a whore for the Underground is
that there are more male Underground members than female underground
members, the musical chairs problem. Rather than wonder why the
Underground has a skewed sex ratio, one should recognize that there
is potential musical chairs problem in the whole population. Contrary
to a diversity training presumption, there is no reason to expect
various groups (political groups, hobby clubs, etc.) to all have
equal numbers of females and males. Certain groups may be based on
gender differences in the first place, and outreach to females may
result in including females for nothing inside their brains (or
physique, in the case of athletic groups), perpetuating a sexual role
for females. There may be an increase in female street racers -- a
sex ratio closer to 1:1, but which does not overlap with
capability/participation in the street racing. The females may end up
being girlfriends of street racers. The Underground could
alternatively practice free love with females outside the Underground
in the first place, but these females may be part of other
communities or networks. By upholding sexual liberalism and not
addressing either Euro-Amerikan females or Euro-Amerikan males as
gender oppressors (not just during illegal sexual assaults etc.), the
Weathermen, a real-life underground, left the impression of using
feminist rhetoric to recruit females for orgies. If because of
discrimination resulting in educational inequality some females don't
have what it takes to be in a First World communist organization,
including them could result in sex-related problems degrading the
organization's work. Lifestyle preferences of revolutionaries may
conflict with their organization's goals. Actually, more college
students in the United $tates are female than male today, so there
has been a reversal in one respect and at the same time there are
additional reasons to be concerned about the dynamics of mostly-male
groups supposedly requiring the use of intelligence (do they
encourage dumbness, for example). There are other ways in which
avoiding the musical chairs problem is not straightforward. There is
no reason to believe that the percentage of females in the population
who are lesbian has to be the same as the percentage of males in the
population who are gay. Even having equal numbers of capable females
and capable males in a group does not solve the musical chairs
problem, and making a group more representative in terms of both
anatomy and sexual orientation doesn't either.
From frigidity to desire
The government Leader is evocative of a Catholic pope, and there is
an idea of resurrecting the Leader after death. There is a point
there about the relationship between individuals and how sex is
ordered. Certain particularly desirable individuals come and go, but
style and authority hierarchies remain. The Catholic church has a
style and an authority structure. Popes die, and while Pope John Paul
II is associated with particular qualities, the Catholic church
survives. Michael Jackson comes to mind, but even Michael Jackson is
dispensable. There are alternative candidates to be the king of pop.
Michael Jackson also illustrates that style does not have to be
something that one individual can ruin. (Believe it or not, I wrote
this before Jackson died this month as if to test these points, so I
mean no particular offense to Jackson fans.)
Confession itself implies structure, of an informal kind. Miles
mentions "rules" he has broken, but if structure was such that it
wouldn't have been possible to sneak into the slide projection room
during his lunch hour, Miles wouldn't be in the automated
confessional. In contrast with some Islamic legal practices,
Catholicism represents an absence of structure, not prohibitions.
Confession is based on guilt. The reason there is a confessional in
the "Sleeper" world is that a certain type of structure is absent,
and self-monitoring is necessary to prevent conflicts. Yet, in the
midst of seeming structurelessness, another type of structure exists,
informal structure. Even as he confesses, Miles says, "I can't help
it."
"Sleeper" suggests that sexual enjoyment is a problem, which people
have partially overcome in the "Sleeper" future. In one scene, Luna
asks Miles if he wants to have sex with her. Miles tells Luna that he
needs to be "warmed up" and "romanced." Luna says, "Sex is different
today . . . . We don't have any problems. Everybody's frigid." Not
all, but most, men are "impotent." If there is no enjoyment outside
the orgasmatron, and inside the orgasmatron everyone has an orgasm,
it seems that many problems in sex, involving different levels of
enjoyment, would be gone. However, there is a difference between
enjoyment and desire, and even people who do not have sex are
affected by both desire and enjoyment.
The realism or non-realism of "Sleeper" is beside the point. Luna's
and Miles' discussion of frigidity and impotence could be a joke
about psychoanalysis. Irrespective of psychoanalysis, "Sleeper"
highlights the difference between enjoyment and desire. Luna is
"frigid," but she asks Miles he if would like to have sex with her.
Even if Luna has no true desire herself, someone does. "Sleeper" is
more interesting if one understands "problems" as referring not just
to sexual dysfunction and psychological problems, but also to gender
oppression, and considers "frigidity" and "impotence" as metaphors.
Erectile dysfunction in particular is often discussed as involving
arousal, but an inability to perform; the man is aroused, but he
can't get or keep an erection. Female sexual dysfunction is discussed
as involving both enjoyment and desire issues; too little desire in
females is pathologized. Nonetheless, one could ask: How does desire
come to be accompanied by a lack of enjoyment in the same people on a
social scale? And, how is the transition from no desire to desire
made on a social scale?
"Sleeper" implicates style through a joke. According to Luna, the men
who aren't impotent are "the one whose ancestors are Italian." Miles'
response is "I knew there was something in that pasta." There is no
indication that Italian-descended people have a particular position
in the "Sleeper" world, but the culmination of individual style
(individual style being how Euro-Amerikan heterosexual females relate
to males of particular non-Euro-Amerikan descent) is sexual desire.
Those with power are more able to control their style (individual or
group style) and representations of themselves. Over time, power
acquires a sexuality, as does the relative powerlessness of the
people who have sex with the powerful. The effect of the orgasm is to
tie the power difference to sexuality. Even if the powerful does not
enjoy the sex at first, he or she benefits from it. Third parties who
do not participate in the sex still attach value to the sex others
have as a result of coveting the power associated with the sex. This
is made easier in contemporary society by pornography in its
different forms.
That is an abstract representation of a process that happens
concretely with intersecting processes and mediations. The origin of
the initial sex act could be accidental, or it could be reproduction.
Once it happens, a dynamic of sex and power begins to accumulate. The
origin of individual style is in capitalism, and the origin of
pornography on the scale that it currently exists is in capitalism.
Despite the origin of these things, the phantasmagoria of power, sex
and style that exists is autonomous of class and nation.
In terms of places in New York, Greenwich Village could be a problem;
Madison Avenue could be another. If Madison Avenue is the place where
art meets fashion, Greenwich Village is the place where art meets
sex, and Madison Avenue is also the place where fashion meets
pornography. The location of MTV studios, Times Square is another
area of interest. The place in the MTV reality TV show "The Real
World" where housemates speak privately to the viewer is called "the
confessional," but "The Real World" has achieved something in
pornography that the whole Catholic church and a million
psychoanalysis sessions could never accomplish. In this context, one
should not forget that one of the long-time goals of the free love
movement is the ability to discuss sex publicly. This goal has been
achieved in big coastal U.$. cities, and for others pornography
saturates the media, so people not in the large coastal U.$. cities
can still consume pornography. Playboy literally appears in
"Sleeper." Seemingly unfamiliar with the concept of a magazine like
Playboy, a scientist asks Miles to explain an issue, which
Miles opens to a centerfold. Playboy appears only as an
artifact. There is conspicuous and unrestrained sexuality in the
society depicted in "Sleeper," but there are no pornographic images
other than as archaeological images, suggesting that pornography is a
transit point on the way to something else.
To take "Sleeper" literally, what that destination is is a police
state, but this writer suggests that the end point is gender
oppression, and not gender oppression in terms of exploitive
pornography-production, violence, "objectification," etc. Whether or
not those who consume pornography in its myriad forms themselves have
sex, the consumption of pornography reinforces the power differences
and relationships attached explicitly or implicitly to pornography.
Pornography both sexualizes style -- connecting style to sex and
completing via orgasm the cognitive disarmament that style begins --
and stylizes sex -- connecting sex to style and mystifying the orgasm
by encapsulating it with an intellectual or artistic milieu.
Pornography plays a dual role in the convergence of style and power.
In this way, even children who are not involved in the production of
pornography or its consumption directly can be affected by
pornography. Pornography plays a role in the reproduction of gender
oppression in general in contemporary society, including the gender
oppression of children.
Kollontai is rumored to have compared sex to water as something that
should be "free." However, Maoists speak of "eroticization of power,"
not "aquafication of power." This writer does not talk about sex for
Catholic, Freudian or pornographic reasons, but because there is a
specific relationship between sex and power in contemporary society.
At the same time, gender oppression exists in more than sex, but in
leisure time. Depicting an affluent society, "Sleeper" helps clarify
that the dynamics of leisure time are autonomous of class. There are
still sexual problems of some nature in the "Sleeper" society, and
for this writer it is significant that children as a social group
still exist. In raising the autonomy of gender in the First World and
some of its concrete attributes, the point is not that Luna in
"Sleeper" reflects an oppressed majority of First World females, and
nor is it that there is only gender oppression and no class or
national oppression as some alleged feminists say.
A scientist tells Miles that the robots he sees are "infinitely more
sophisticated than any previously manufactured labor-saving devices."
In the real world, though exploiters, a majority of First World
adults do some work. They work to exploit foreign workers, as
unproductive sector workers or productive sector workers receiving
wages greater than the money equivalent of labor-time. "Sleeper"
poses a what-if question about leisure time, robots possibly having
made all work unnecessary. A minimum of leisure time is needed for
leisure time dynamics to exist. Yet, infinite productivity does not
entail an infinite amount of available leisure time. In between the
necessary minimum amount of leisure time for gender and the maximum
amount hypothetically possible is the amount that exists in richer
capitalist countries with a high level of development of capitalism
in the world. In pre-capitalist countries, the importance of style is
submerged. The role of style is more expressed in imperialist
countries, but the majority of First World female adults have so much
gender privilege that they have joined the majority of First World
males as gender oppressors. This gender aristocracy occupies a
foremost position in the construction and maintenance of domestic
style hierarchies and the global style hierarchy. The majority of
imperialist country females' style is no longer connected to a
subordinate sexual role or to improving social and economic terms for
females within that role, but to seeking more favorable terms as
gender oppressors. Third World nations' disdaining of style and
opposition to pornography paves the way for gender liberation.
There seems to be a dialogue between "Sleeper" and "THX 1138" (1971).
In "THX 1138," technology is used to control sexual desire. In
contrast, "Sleeper" raises the idea of robots being used for sex, and
citizens in the "Sleeper" society are themselves programmed. The
presence of the orgasmatron leads to its being used. Not only is
there the orgasmatron; the orgasmatron complements the orgy as the
default mode of sex. Rather than critique societies with highly
socialized production for allegedly opposing sexual Liberalism,
"Sleeper" metaphorically attacks the individualist aspects of
Liberalism. There is no anarchist complaint or lamentation about
structure in general in the present review. There is a matrix of
specific causes and effects behind sex, and sex itself is involved in
non-sexual gender oppression in particular ways at this time. These
dynamics are present in both the First World and the Third World
despite the gender structure of the First World, analogous to how
capitalist relations of production exist in both the First World and
the Third World despite the class structure of the First World.
Within class relations as they exist -- globally, among other ways --
the majority of First Worlds are class oppressors. Within gender
relations, the majority of First World adult females and First World
adult males, each, are gender oppressors.
Free love and the communist party
Romance as it exists in capitalist and post-capitalist (socialist)
society is bound up with individual style. Romance culture is the
last chapter of neither the class nor the gender struggle. Even
Chinese communists who grew up under feudalism opposed romance
culture when China was a socialist country. Class oppression and
patriarchy were restored in China relative to the farthest advances
against them.
Talking about free love as if there has not been any change in a
century is ridiculous. Almost all of the legal and cultural goals of
free love proponents who lived decades ago have been realized in big
cities in the First World. There are still wars, and in fact free
love ideas in U.$. executive branch circles are used to carry out
wars. In the big cities, the free love movement now exists as
something opposing gay marriage and attacking Third World nations. In
small towns and suburbs, houses still exist meant for families. These
are a material basis for a new kind of marital prostitution, because
people will get married to live in houses with falling values. In
other ways, the forms of intimate relationships historically present
in small towns and suburbs have inertia. The free love movement in
these places leads to adultery, child-molesting, hustling, and going
to psychologists for solutions to these things and others because the
houses are filled with families still and not communes. In addition,
U.$. military recruits are still concentrated in less-urbanized
areas. The free love movement contributes to the fantasies of
potential recruits regarding sex opportunities during military
service. In other ways, the free love movement has no progressive
thrust in places where one might expect that there could be free love
advances. In the short term, the free love movement pulls people
toward the CIA/State Department/Peace Corps politics of urban areas.
If the free love movement led to permanent political paralysis among
Amerikans or self-defeating ignorance and stupidity, it could be
worth supporting, but in the long term the tendency is to return to
alternating between deference to elites and labor aristocracy
movements. The United $tates is on a permanent politically decadent
course.
The only benefit in supporting free love before winning state power
would be to have a party image useful for recruiting or leading.
However, as free love goals are achieved, what counts as free love
becomes relative. In "Sleeper," Miles Monroe, who takes the
Playboy magazine from the scientist for his own use, actually
represents monogamy in comparison to Luna. Strictly, free love does
not exclude all monogamy. At one point, people like Miles in the real
world were the free love vanguard. Today, others are, and even Luna
represents nothing too controversial or uncommon today, just casual
sex. For a First World communist party to make free love part of its
image, not just an image opposed to Third World sexual conservatism,
it would have to make things like spouse-swapping and dogging part of
its image and risk compromising science by falsely supporting a
particular lifestyle. Some would argue that it is not necessary to
have a free love image, that not appearing more conservative than the
average organization is enough. However, while the First World
communist party does not oppose particular lifestyles, it does oppose
Liberal ideology, and it opposes the linking of lifestyle change in
the First World to political progress. An asexual image is
unavoidable in the First World communist party's writing. Asexuality
is neither sexually conservative, nor sexually liberal in any usual
sense, but if asexuality appears conservative because of surrounding
Catholicism, a sexually conservative image is unavoidable in the
First World. If MIWS wanted to, it could put gay porn conveying
disagreement with Catholicism at the top of a Web page critiquing
Liberalism, but the question there has nothing to do with what is in
MIWS's writing.
Some alleged communist parties exhibit an opportunist combination of
sexual conservatism and sexual liberalism. They say one thing in
front of educated females and another thing in front of male
teenagers and young adults both while bashing the Third World and
encouraging individualism, nihilism and subjectivism on First World
gender questions. Others, consciously opportunist, target just the
males, and the result is still sexual Liberalism and cult dynamics
occupying the space that a scientific gender line should occupy.
Freudianism
Perhaps an existentialist would say that this writer takes "Sleeper"
too seriously, that I go too far in trying to make sense out of the
movie. Of course, so far I have mostly ignored the Freudian themes of
the movie in using "Sleeper" to illustrate certain points of theory.
(That is despite a reference to Freudianism right in the beginning of
the movie.) Comedy fans and science fiction fans still watch this
1973 movie. The objective impact of the movie today is probably to
attack Christianity to replace it with Freudianism.
It is 2009, and there is Viagra, a technological solution to
impotence. There is nothing in Christianity that is obviously
inconsistent with using Viagra per se. In "Sleeper," the orgasmatron,
an object of aversion for Miles, is juxtaposed with papal imagery.
The message of the movie could be, "You have solved impotence
temporarily in a Catholic way, but you have not dealt with the
unconscious." Freudianism provides opportunities to talk about sex
that Catholicism doesn't.
Dr. Nero, the "orientation advisor" who introduces Miles to his new
life as a citizen, tells Miles, "I'm here to supervise the initial
phase of your assimilation into society, the society that will take
care of your needs and desires more efficiently than any you might
have thought possible." When Miles was pretending to be a robot, he
sexually assaulted one of Luna's guests, unwitting. As part of his
assimilation into the society, Miles is put in a trance and prompted
to behave as he is a Miss America contestant. Miles' deprogramming by
the Underground is by causing him to "re-experience some of the major
traumas of his life" to "shatter his recent personality" (his ego).
"Sleeper" is suggestive of the contradiction between the id and the
super-ego. The Miles that wakes up from cryogenic stasis represents
the ego. Miles' psychoanalytic therapy was interrupted by his
hospital visit for an ulcer and subsequent cryogenic preservation.
That Miles is not without his own problems. However, more viewers may
come away from "Sleeper" with the idea that males are in danger of
developing the sexuality of the female, who has less sexual desire,
or that males are at risk of losing masculinity without
psychoanalysis. I'm not sure most viewers would recognize the
implication in terms of feminism of Miles' needing to be made to
think he is Miss America. On the other hand, viewers might think that
there is no alternative to being like Miles, a man exuding sexual
desire, but being like females oppressed by the Miss America pageant,
in which case males can stay where they are and females just need to
catch up males in terms of sexual desire, become men.
It is apparent to this writer that First World males have an unease
with asexuality, and by "asexuality" I mean not masturbation, but
low-to-nonexistent sexual desire. There is less pornographic
discussion of sexual activity in the Third World, so asexuality poses
less of a problem in the Third World. The appearance of having sexual
desire (not just being sexually attractive) is a part of many styles,
and this appearance is maintained even when desire is low or absent.
It is not uncommon to find two people who have sex for style reasons
in monogamous and non-monogamous relationship despite both people
finding the sex tedious. Both people in a monogamous relationship
might not want to confront the possibility of being asexual. They lie
to each other, themselves, and third parties. One or both may have
desired sex at first, but desire was replaced with false desire, and
desire with enjoyment was replaced with desire without enjoyment.
This in turn influences other people. Non-desire and non-enjoyment
are replaced with desire and non-enjoyment, or desire and enjoyment.
All these things, the lies included, happen on both small and large
scales.
Gender oppressors can have sex, find it tedious, and have the same
levels of desire and enjoyment. They are still gender oppressors
because gender oppression is not just about sex. Gender oppression
does not have to take place within the sex had by gender oppressors.
There can be leisure-time privilege connected to the sex via style.
Gender oppressors who are similar, have sex, and find it boring or
tiresome, engage in leisure-time oppression of children and Third
World adults, not necessarily by having sex with children or Third
World adults. In the First World, heterosexual females as a group and
heterosexual males as a group have sex with each other, and this sex
could be either an exercise of gender privilege or involved in
maintaining gender privilege.
Contrary to "Sleeper," the downward equalization of sexual desire
between females and males, not upward equalization to the average
male level, is an advance. Historically, females have put up with sex
or not enjoyed it as much as males. A problem for females is how to
go from that condition to having a higher level of desire without
perpetuating subservience. It requires some maneuvering. A problem
for males is how to move to a lower level of desire without
compromising their style or developing new problems relating to
females. For both females and males, the function of
Freudianism-influenced therapy in some cases seems to be to finesse
the transition. Yet, most people even in the First World do not
undergo any kind of talk therapy, and more females undergo any kind
of therapy than males.
MIWS has discussed downward equalization in the context of surplus
value; upward equalization to the First World level is an
impossibility, because the First World living standard is based on
exploitation. This writer does not see an exact analogy here between
desire and surplus value. Equalization to the First World level of
desire could be possible, but not an advance. In addition, surplus
value equalization within the First World comes with further
exploitation of the Third World, while equalization of desire within
the First World could in a certain context be an advance in the
struggle against gender oppression globally, though the average level
of desire in the area now called the First World will fall. Not only
is it backward for males to clutch desire (in different ways) when it
is going to decline; it is backward for females to grasp at
strategies involving pretenses of desire and not actual desire. This
is different from what other Maoist revolutionary feminists may have
emphasized.
The issue is that being a man-socially does not require having a high
level of sexual desire. Rather, it involves having sex, or using
sexuality, to exercise or reproduce gender privilege. First World
females actually take advantage of males' desire and can do so
because of the gains First World females have made. The gender
aristocracy senses this and is at the forefront of spreading
pornography in the Third World; it benefits First World females
leisure-time-wise for Third World males to be in a pornography
stupor. First World males sense their own vulnerability, and some
seek a way out of sexual desire. In seeking equality with males,
First World females pursue the sexual desire with which males are
associated. However, First World females have a certain interest in
staying at a low level of sexual desire as a way of maintaining a
more advantageous position relative to males, a chip used to
negotiate the disposition of leisure time. In this way, the First
World female adult gender aristocracy may lead propping up patriarchy
in connection to desire. Obviously, First World males still express
sexuality more (in particular ways), but the gender aristocracy's
leadership takes place at the margin; the gender aristocracy isn't
making revolution, so what is it doing. Even though it does not have
to, the gender aristocracy has sex to access some leisure-time
opportunities and also to project sexuality to influence others it
won't have sex with. The gender aristocracy props up both desire, and
sexuality without enjoyment. The obstacle to First World males'
letting go of desire is style. Sometimes, it is discomfort with
having a sexual image but no desire or less desire of their own. In
general, desire needs to wind down. The gender aristocracy gravitates
toward a higher level of desire in seeking equality with males, and
this is one opposing tendency. At the same time, the gender
aristocracy employs strategies involving differential male desire.
Freud has been criticized for ignoring female desire, including by
people wanting to use Freudianism for First World female advancement.
Ironically, one male pop culture sensation has done more to draw
attention to female desire recently than a legion of gender
aristocracy intellectuals. One of the questions that Jamie Foxx's
album Intuition is supposed to address is literally, "What
does a woman want?"(1) The other -- strangely missing in some
quotations of the source Independent interview -- is: "What
does a man have to do?" It is ironic because Foxx is creating
himself, holding onto style, and shoring up the gender privilege of
First World males (including white ones represented in the "Blame It"
video), but he comes off as some kind of feminist in one context --
and merely polite or even calculating in another context. Knowledge
of what the other sex wants could be used to scheme against the other
sex, or it could be used to accommodate the other sex as in a
subservient position (of course, females have known what men want for
centuries and what they "have" to do: sex, comfort, etc.). Knowing
what the other sex wants and just talking doesn't lead to gender
liberation in First World countries. Gender liberation requires
leadership that is missing in the decadent First World. Instead of
gender liberation in the First World, there is renegotiation of
gender privilege and drifting toward gender oppressor status for
females. There is a drifting toward various accommodations in which
females and males as groups play con games and execute strategies
against each other while uniting against children and people in the
Third World. Foxx's Intuition intuits that First World females
are becoming like First World males in one way in terms of desire,
and that First World females and First World males deceive each
other. Also, Foxx functions as a spokesperson for the gender
aristocracy, giving expression to things that First World females
might want to tell each other, but may be uncomfortable sharing
publicly. ("We females want to meet people at bars for sex and have
fun like the males. What about it?") With males, Foxx teaches
political correctness: don't say females are hussies, they're players
like you.
Miles Monroe opposes all leaders, but he has a little, kind of
psychology session with Luna. By not immediately having sex with Luna
and trying to make the idea of sex outside the orgasmatron
tantalizing, Miles elicits desire in Luna. Miles is initially
resistant to the Miss America programming, one message possibly
being, "Would you males want to be treated like that?" Before, during
his interview with the scientists who revived him, Miles makes a
comment on a photo, related to Miss America: "This is some girls
burning a brassiere. You notice it's a very small fire." This could
mean that radical feminism was too short-lived, or that First World
females have moved on from radical feminism. Miles' comment on
Playboy: "These girls didn't exist in actual life. . . . You
had to blow them up, and then you'd fasten it, and you could spread
ointment on them or anything else." Miles is reminiscent of the
outlook of someone who wants an agreement to be reached between
females and males without rocking the boat to much.
Consider that "Sleeper" came out between the 1968 Miss America
protest and Farrah Fawcett's rise to "Charlie's Angels" and pin-up
fame. Euro-Amerikan "feminism" went from criticizing Miss America to
upholding Farrah Fawcett's Jill Munroe character as a model for
females. Euro-Amerikan females upheld Jill Munroe, and so did
Euro-Amerikan males, not just Fawcett as a pin-up star. Fawcett is
deceased, but now Euro-Amerikan females and politically correct
Euro-Amerikan males can make genocidal threats against Third World
nations for rejecting Angelina Jolie. Pornography no longer oppresses
Euro-Amerikan females. It oppresses children and Third World people.
Notes
1. "Jamie Foxx: King of the castle," 2007 October 2,
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/jamie-f
oxx-king-of-the-castle-394166.html
Bibliography
"Betty Friedan's work,"
http://web.archive.org/web/20071203072839/www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/b
ookstore/books/gender/friedan.html
"To the author of the Demon Lover and that generation,"
http://web.archive.org/web/20071227012119/www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/b
ookstore/books/gender/robinmorgan.html