MovieChat Forums > Punishment Park (1972) Discussion > Is this film helpful or harmful?

Is this film helpful or harmful?

posted 16 years ago by Mean_Joe_Weeks
9 replies | jump to latest

I've just seen the film, and while I have to admit it's a spectacularly made and profoundly gripping film to watch, I also kind of wonder if it makes the situation its depicting worse instead of better. The film obviously favors the leftists, setting up a fairly black-and-white evil group of demagouges and brutes to persecute them. It's impossible to root against the leftists while all the power is leveled against them by people who have their demise as a foregone conclusion.

Now, to some extent this is a sort of paranoid fantasy of the left. Obviously, there were never any such things as punishment parks, no one was sentenced to ten years prison for writing "Seditious songs," there were no military tribunals to arbitrarily decide punishment (well, ok, there were -- but not on this sort of scale). Still, the film's depiction of police brutality and the hateful zeal of the commission are plenty realistic - think of the murder of Fred Hampton or the gleeful promise of George Wallace to imprison and punish "traitors" to the country. So This is not just some excersize in leftist self-gratification; it represents at least an aspect of the real situation on the ground (some of the people playing leftists had already been arrested for their views prior to filming). And indeed, while there was never anything like a Punishment Park, I'm quite certain that certain aspects of the population would have loved to bring this idea into reality.

Still, even if the film is honest about the polarization of the nation and the right's domination of power, I'm not sure it's especially helpful to depict this in the trial scenes the way the film does -- it ultimately just boils down to people shouting slogans at each other. Realistic, certainly, but I get the feeling director Watkins is actually trying to use the leftists to make real points... which doesn't really happen. Rather, I think watching these "debates" is more likely to make both sides further entrenched in their own dogma and paranoia. But then again, maybe that's the lesson we should be taking away from the film. It makes it difficult to gauge if the film is helping to present a reality and asking us to debate or if it is only interested in showing how mean "the man" can be. If the latter, I'm not sure its of much value considering who the audience is likely to be. I don't want to minimize the harsh measures taken against percieved radicals during this time, but I also tend to think people watching this movie would have learned nothing new.

What does everyone else think? A harshly realistic view of a troubled time or a cheap-shot pat on the back to paranoid leftists? Or a little of both?

[–] teejay6682 16 years ago

i think to more then some extent this is a paranoid fantasy of the left. it's a leftist persecution fantasy. i watched this film recently cause i loved the directors other film the edvard munch biopic but i didn't like this anywhere near as much as that film. i think some version of this kind of goverment control is certainly possible if we're not careful (i'm not that naive). but all the debate scenes just show how bad these type of leftist activists are at getting their message to other people. when they're not shouting they're being condescending (granted "the man" as portrayed in this film deserves some of this disrespect but some of the interviewers were making some kind of attempt to listen and understand these kids). i think the film is a great time capsule for the late 60s early 70s even though its supposed to be some kinda future dystopian thing but as far as being an interesting political satire, it fails for me. but having said that it's still a very well made film in some ways. i loved the documentary look and feel and the use of real kids playing the roles of the radicals. it's certainly interesting enough that i dont' regret watching it.

[–] andrewwjohnson 16 years ago

...I think "Punishment Park" reflects the fears of many people during the late sixties and early seventies. This was during the Nixon era when government violation of law were all to common leading to the Watergate scandal two years after this movie was released. There was the violence at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago and the shootings of students at Kent State. The real life trial of the leaders of the Chicago unrest was also an inspiration for this movie. The urban unrest in the inner cities also made a crack down of some kind...Also there are cases, in the past of government over stepping it's bounds. During the Civil War Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and during World War Two Japanese Americans, on the west coasts, were forced into camps. Many people think the Patriot Act goes to far. If the public is fearful of some threat, real or imagined, there is alway the danger they will choose safty over personal freedom. This movie is a warning about what the result might be.
People are just getting dumber, but more opinionated-Ernestine (Silks) in "The Human Stain"

[–] Bice404 16 years ago

I think the question is what happens when people really start to challenge the state? What will it do? And Punishment Park probably shows us one likely thing that will happen and that is that state repression will rise dramatically against the ones that it percieves as "enemies of the state". And the movie is based on the very real 1950 internal security act, and now there is the patriot act and so on. And all throughout the west politicians are playing on peoples fear of terrorism to enable more of these acts or laws. Laws which sole purpose is not to protect us against terrorist but to control us. Control what we can do or say or who we can symphatize with.

For example, the US is the only country that has put the Somali resistance organisation al-Shabab on a terrorist list. Still Sweden, my own country, follows the dictates from Washington and our secret police starts arresting Swedish citizens with Somali background on charges that they support this organisation. So the Somali community here are frightned of what they can do or say. Can they for example send home money to their, by the US and Ethopia wartorn country? Somalians are dependent on relatives from the outside to survive. Now this says something about the repressive power that the state engages in without a real threat to it and without a revolotionary situation in it. Just imagine what will happen if a sort of summer 1968 starts again?

Btw, the US is also the only country that still thinks Nelson Mandelas ANC is a terrorist organisation.

[–] hateisgreatok 15 years ago

The United States has the blood of millions of people around the word on it's hands, mainly in Central and South America. The apple doesn't fall to far from the tree. Read " Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower " by William Blum.

[–] cableaddict 15 years ago

Mean Joe,

Stuff like this happens every day, in many countries. North Korea would be a good place to start, with tens of thousands of people imprisoned & tortured in unimaginable ways. Sometimes whole families are imprisoned, just because the father wrote a single line in an editorial, or the mother said something negative in the park. Most of those people never get out alive.

It hasn't happended yet, to that extent, in the USA, but it certainly could. Hitler & Mussolini both came to power in democracies. The poeple in those countries were no different from the people living in the USA today. In fact, they were more politically aware.

Wake up.

Movies like this show us what could possiby happen if we, as voters, are not constantly aware & vigilant.

[–] emmaemmaem 13 years ago

Mean Joe, and the other repliers, I do believe that this film is realistic - I think Guantanamo Bay definitely acts as a modern Punishment Park.

People are sent there with NO trial at all, including children, and many people are found to have done nothing wrong once they have suffered torture, interrogations, thirst and being treated like animals in a hot desert for years. Google some of people's stories who were incarcerated in there and then found to be not guilty of being a 'threat to America's national security". At least in Punishment Park, they had a trial of sorts.

I really don't see much difference.
.....
"No time for the old in-out,love-I'm just here to check the metre"

[–] Squeeth2 9 years ago

It might have seemed like a paranoid fantasy in 1971 but it's the reality now.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

[–] PoppyTransfusion 8 years ago

A harshly realistic view of a troubled time or a cheap-shot pat on the back to paranoid leftists?

I really hate the reduction of the activists to "paranoid leftists".

A bird sings and the mountain's silence deepens.

[–] st-shot 8 years ago

More silly than anything else. Kind of a leftist Reefer Madness, complete with paranoid ravings and harsh blow back. Both play heavily to righteous paranoids but absurdists can get a ton of laffs out of both given they are each jokes to begin with.