Proper Gander: Manipulated by the Monoform (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The mass media is a ‘systematically organised, one-way path from the producer to the spectator. Constantly. Constantly. And that is not communication. We should try and find some other word for it. And it’s certainly manipulation’, according to film-maker and theorist Peter Watkins, who has died at the age of 90. His words come from a 2001 video interview following the release of his film La Commune, through which he aimed to use the medium of film-making to communicate, rather than just present one interpretation. The film re-enacts the Paris Commune of 1871 and was made in a less hierarchical, more democratic way than found in the mass media’s usual output, by having non-professional actors improvising scenes and shown discussing the views of both their characters and themselves.

La Commune was the last film Watkins made, after which he honed his theories about how the media industry functions for his 2004 book The Media Crisis. His films, in one way or another, focus on conflict between states and between classes. Their subject matter includes nuclear war (The War Game, The Journey), oppression of political activists (Punishment Park, Evening Land) and historical flashpoints (Culloden, La Commune). His two productions of the late 1960s, Privilege and The Gladiators, share the theme of the elite using the media to divert and channel working class dissent. These films employ a setting of the near-future to examine this, while his theories about film-making investigate how this happens in real life.

Watkins argued that the mass audio-visual media (MAVM) industry moulds the reactions of its audience through the style and arrangement of its products. He called the prevailing template for films and programmes the ‘Monoform’. This is defined as ‘a formatted and repetitive TV language form of rapidly edited and fragmented images accompanied by a dense bombardment of sound, all held together by the classical narrative structure’ (Notes on the Media Crisis, Peter Watkins, 2010). This is a familiar description of dramas and documentaries with predictably linear plots, scenes too short to explore details and mood-accentuating soundtracks. This style is particularly noticeable in the common practice of documentaries starting with a quick summary of the programme to come, reducing what could be a complex subject into a couple of minutes (before then reducing the subject into only forty-or-so minutes for the rest of the duration). Watkins continues ‘Because of its extreme rapidity (especially the version developed over the past 20 years [ie, from circa 1990]), the Monoform gives no time for interaction, reflection or questioning […]. It is organised to create pre-determined responses, which means that before the audience sees any Monoform film or television programme, its producers already know how they (the audience) will react – or at least such is the intention’ (ibid). In emphasising how the format or approach adopted by film-makers can be used to push an agenda, Watkins is echoing Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan, who said ‘the medium is the message’ in his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. As the MAVM is owned by corporations, their films and programmes are intended to reinforce acceptance of the social framework of which the MAVM is a part, as well as make a profit for their shareholders. The Monoform followed by the MAVM’s products reinforces this acceptance by discouraging critical thinking about that social framework. Here, Watkins’ views have similarities with those of Frankfurt School luminary Herbert Marcuse, who described how capitalism utilises the mass media as a means of social control, including by stifling anti-capitalist thought.

A film or programme’s style, music and editing support the priorities of the media industry even if its content appears to criticise society. Watkins says ‘The fact that many filmmakers and media intellectuals believe that a radical subject or a powerful theme in themselves create an ‘alternative’ cinema is another paradox. In most cases it is only the content that could be considered alternative: a radical theme per se does not challenge the over-riding problem of hierarchical form, process and structure. In fact, it only confuses the issue, and is a prime reason why critical thinking on the role of the MAVM has not developed beyond a limited point’ (ibid). This may explain why films and TV programmes haven’t prompted truly radical political action, even when they often depict capitalism’s failings.

Another way that programme-making is shaped by its capitalist context is what Watkins called ‘the universal clock’. This refers to how television shows are made in uniform lengths to allow time for adverts within and between them on a fixed schedule. The prerogatives of the marketing industry are important enough to limit the running times of programmes, chiefly those on traditional broadcast channels. YouTube has its own norms for how advertising affects content, with commercials intruding upon videos mid-sentence, and vloggers interrupting their spiel to promote their sponsors, both in a crass way which makes the scheduling of TV commercial breaks almost seem polite in comparison.

Watkins gave a cogent, class-conscious account of how the media industry’s role in capitalist society impacts on the nature of its products. Films and TV programmes project the hierarchical structure of capitalism through the way they are edited and paced, regardless of their content. The template followed by MAVM output is intended to present a one-sided view, reinforcing acceptance of the status quo and discouraging critical discussion among the audience. In his own films, such as La Commune, Watkins tried to counter these tendencies through his collaborative, improvisational methods, with the consequence that his work became unattractive to major studios, distributors and broadcasters. His marginalisation, to some extent, proves his theories right. He has left us with not only a set of challenging, passionate films but also a valuable contribution to explaining how capitalism’s media industry has to operate, by manipulating us, its consumers.

Mike Foster

Blogger's Note:

Further reading on Peter Watkins from the Socialist Standard archives

• Oct 2015: Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker - Part 1
• Nov 2015: Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker - Part 2
• Jul 1966: Review of The War Game
• Oct 1980: Review of The War Game

SPGB Meetings (1984)

Party News from the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

There's an audio recording of the debate with the Communist Workers' Organisation at the following link.

Update:

Just realised that there's also an audio recording of the 12th October 1984 Islington Branch meeting, The Miners' Strike — a Marxist analysis. The speaker was Steve Coleman.

Letter: The War Game (1966)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The War Game

I read the review of the film The War Game (Socialist Standard, July) with great interest and found that it made many points which I would agree with.

In addition, I would like to say that the film shows how the institutions which are so dear to capitalism such as the church, law and government, become very trivial in a time of great disaster. Authority cannot work under such conditions and as a result people have to co-operate in order to survive. However. Peter Watkins does not seem to show this consciously.

Yours for Socialism,

Edwin Walters

London, N.W.6

SPGB Meetings (1981)

Party News from the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Proper Gander: Whatever Happened To Political Drama? (2016)

The Proper Gander column from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The phrase ‘cops ‘n’ frocks’ has been used to sum up the current state of British TV drama, with its lazy reliance on crime (Happy Valley, Silent Witness etc.) and the past (Call The Midwife, Downton Abbey). The range of dramas has narrowed considerably from previous decades, and the idea of televised drama being used to voice radical political ideas or critique social trends is sadly now more old-fashioned than a cathode ray tube.

From the 1960s, many plays found their homes in anthology series, a format which is as obsolete as political drama itself. Theatre 625 (1964–1968) featured dramatisations of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and works by George Orwell, August Strindberg and Franz Kafka. More widely remembered are The Wednesday Play (1964–1970) and its successor, Play For Today (1970–1984). Their emphasis was on original screenplays rather than adaptations, and therefore they concentrated on more immediate issues which otherwise might not have received much public attention. Around 600 plays were produced in these three BBC series, many of which were lost when their tapes were wiped in the belief that they had exhausted their economic potential. Notable productions include two plays about homelessness written by Jeremy Sandford, who slept rough as part of his research: Cathy Come Home (1966) showed a young family’s downward spiral into homelessness, while Edna The Inebriate Woman (1971) followed a woman’s life on the streets and in hostels, prison and a psychiatric hospital. The Spongers (1978) showed the devastating effects of welfare cuts on services for disabled people. The Black Stuff (1980) by Alan Bleasdale told the story of five Liverpudlian tarmac layers whose struggles with unemployment were subsequently described in its sequel series The Boys From The Blackstuff (1982).

As well as Bleasdale and Sandford, other prominent film-makers included director Ken Loach, producer Tony Garnett and writer Jim Allen. Outside the anthology strands, Loach worked with them on The Rank And File (1971), based on the Pilkington Glass strike which took place in a climate of trade union leaders being seen as too close to a government proposing laws against unofficial strikes, Days Of Hope (1975), which followed a family in the years after the First World War, and The Price Of Coal (1977) about a Yorkshire colliery community.

These plays are remembered as being ‘gritty’, focusing on hardship and aiming for realism by being filmed as if they were documentaries. However, the anthology format allowed for differing styles and messages, and even Ken Loach made an offbeat musical for The Wednesday Play. Other BBC series were thought experiments offering ‘what if…’ scenarios about possible drastic changes to society. Doomwatch (1970–1972) was set in a fictional government department which investigated threats from scientific developments, such as genetic engineering and behaviour modification. Distrust of the notion of scientific progress runs through Doomwatch like words in a stick of rock. ‘Progress’ has connotations of continual improvements, but science exists in a changing political and social context which shapes how it develops. In this series, politicians and scientists are depicted as secretive, self-serving and blinkered, suppressing awareness of unwanted side effects to further their own interests. Survivors (1975–1977) used the starting point of a pandemic wiping out most of the population to explore themes of replacing capitalist institutions, communal living and self-sufficiency. These dramas are less overtly political, perhaps because they aren’t based in real situations. The scenario described in nuclear war dramas The War Game (1965) and Threads (1984) fortunately hasn’t happened either, although these plays clearly criticised real-life government policies about preparing for and supposedly coping with armageddon.

Even children’s programmes occasionally tackled serious matters without talking down to their audience. Noah’s Castle (1980) was set in a near future where rocketing inflation leads to scarcity of basic commodities. The school-based Grange Hill (1978-2008) examined issues such as drug addiction and bullying as well as criticising the effects of funding cuts to education.

By the mid-‘80s, Grange Hill became less vocal about government education policies and Play For Today had had its day. Television drama was no longer a place to consciously voice political ideas, and instead the emphasis shifted to discussing more personal issues through soap operas such as EastEnders and Brookside. Soaps are more about juggling characters’ relationships than ideas, so the format doesn’t lend itself to exploring the impact of political and economic forces.

The mid-‘90s saw the final flowering of political TV drama. By this time, the documentary style of previous decades was going out of fashion, although the sense of anger remained. Cardiac Arrest (1994–1996) was a serial based on the experiences of writer Jed Mercurio when he worked in hospital. He describes a health service where staff have to rely on cynicism and cutting corners to cope with the hierarchies and impossible workloads. Our Friends In The North (1996) was Peter Flannery’s ‘state of the nation’ play, spanning thirty years in the lives of four people shaped by changing housing policy, police corruption and the miners’ strike. The plot of Alan Bleasdale’s GBH (1992) echoed events in the early ‘80s when Militant influenced the Labour Party and Liverpool city council. The other political dramas of the 1990s also had their roots in previous decades; Tony Garnett was an executive producer of Cardiac Arrest, and attempts to bring Our Friends In The North to the screen began since it was performed as a stage play in 1982.

All these plays passionately examine how people with little power or influence react to wider economic and political forces. They tend to be from a left-wing, rather than a revolutionary viewpoint, but still present experiences and situations from which we can draw our own conclusions. Why is television no longer an outlet for this kind of expression? These days, the BBC doesn’t want to alienate the government in case this leads to further funding cuts. It places more weight than it used to on its supposed ‘impartiality’. Any programme which presents a different viewpoint to acceptance of the status quo would be seen as ‘partial’, and therefore would not be produced. Even documentaries which expose injustices and corruption presuppose that the basic set-up of society is sound. This doesn’t mean that successors of Loach, Garnett, Allen and the others are clamouring to make political dramas and getting knocked back by conservative TV executives. What few successors they have probably realise that it’s not even worth trying.

Mike Foster

The War Game (1966)

Film Review from the July 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is a film which depicts what this country would be like during and after a nuclear attack. Peter Watkins has spared no effort to convince us that the situation would be one of unspeakable suffering, death and destruction.

There is a fire storm and a commentator tells us the gruesome details of what happens to people when oxygen is burnt out of the air they breathe. The hopelessness of so-called Civil Defence in trying to cope with such havoc is shown. Everywhere there are people with flash and radiation burns who might have been creatures from some monster film.

There are three categories of survivors. The last of these with 50 per cent body bums or more are given up; medical facilities are practically nil. The police, who are armed, put them out of their misery. About here a parson says he favours a war for law and order. In fact, religious hypocrisy comes in for much attention. The Vatican is recorded as saying they know “our nuclear bombs will be used with wisdom.” An American church leader advises survivors to “think twice before letting a neighbour into your shelter.” In the midst of all the carnage, in the background is heard the strains of Christ the Saviour is Born. There are food riots where armed survivors kill government guards and raid the food stores.

A commentator remarks that morality goes by the board when people have been reduced to this level. Almost as though they were expected to behave as if nothing had happened.

A man-in-the-street says he was offered £1 for a loaf of bread but refused it because “you can’t eat money.” This is one point worth dwelling on, as it illustrates the whole absurdity of capitalism. It is surely the things of life such as food, clothing and shelter which people need. Money stands in the way of the fulfilment of social needs. What good would a cupboard full of pound notes be if there were no food? Yet it takes a situation of social chaos and complete breakdown of effective control before it is dimly seen that food is important but money is obsolete.

One man was interviewed among the survivors, who had some young children. He helplessly pleaded that he did not want the radioactive poison working in their bones.

It has been said that in 15 years time at least 12 more nations will have nuclear bombs: that the present stock-pile will have doubled in five years and that there is already enough for everyone on earth to have the equivalent of 20 tons of T.N.T. all to themselves. What a damning indictment of the system under which we live that it can only operate in such a way.

The main object of The War Game seems to be to make the point that there is not nearly enough publicity given to the facts about nuclear weapons and their effects. Information is at a minimum, the public are not being told. They partly defeat their own purpose by telling us in the film that scenes of a similar kind did, in fact, take place in Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two. The fact remains that although the working-class had close personal contact with these horrors it did not produce an attitude against such madness which is obviously to be hoped for. All the widely known suffering and slaughter of World War One did not prevent the occurrence of World War Two some 20 years later. This recalls another film, All Quiet On The Western Front, which showed the useless butchery of the First World War.

The War Game makes no criticism of capitalism as a system, and the idea emerges that hut for the menace of nuclear bombs everything would be just fine. This fallacy is something common to all piecemeal thinking. It leaves out of account the inter-relation of all the major social problems and ignores their common origin. When we are confronted with two-thirds of humanity starving and charity organisations passing the hat round, while in the same week there is an appeal for cancer research, and we know that there are still millions of ugly slums all over the world, it is ludicrous to think of problems in isolation. Neither should it be forgotten that so-called conventional weapons serve no working class interest. While all the attention is focused on one end product—the Bomb—capitalism grinds its sinister way from one crisis to another with war lurking as an ever-present possibility.

It is the questions left unanswered by such films which hold the key to the whole problem. What is the cause of war? How can it be abolished? To publicise the effects of nuclear weapons is useful but not in itself an answer to war.

The concept of nationalism is one of the attitudes which makes war acceptable to workers. This is not referred to in the film. While the idea of “the nation” survives, workers will continue to think of themselves as British or Russian etc.; and, therefore, when their ruling-classes clash over markets, oil or investments, they will wrongly believe they have something at stake.

The vital thing is to replace such fallacies with Socialist understanding, which points to the unity of working class interests all over the world. Then from the basis of a sound understanding of the world they live in, they will take the necessary political action to end the nightmare of capitalism and replace it with a world community of production for use, where the conditions out of which wars arise will cease to exist

Harry Baldwin

The War Game (1980)

From the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

This BBC documentary film, made in 1965, shows the possible effects of nuclear attack, and was banned from television screening. It is currently being used quite widely by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as a recruiting film. The effects of the winds and heat of fire-storms, of the displacement of oxygen by carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and of radiation itself are portrayed to horrific effect. Mass neurosis and widespread mental debilitation are evident, and those who survive are driven to violent rioting over meagre food supplies. Evacuation and other civil defence provisions are shown as tragically futile, and it is suggested that Britain, with its NATO bases, would be the worst hit area in the world in the event of war. Armed police are shown prowling the streets and supervising the burning of bodies and there is a pervasive chaos of devastation.

The film was based on the supposition of a “minimal” attack; today the effects of nuclear weaponry would be many times more destructive. (Sigvard Eklund, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency estimates the number of warheads in the world today to be 50,000, with the power of 1,000,000 Hiroshimas.) All the same, the film is essential viewing for anyone who is concerned to get even a vague idea of what the threat of war really amounts to. The War Game also ridicules the attitudes of the clergy, quoting one minister who has said that he trusts nuclear bombs will be used “with wisdom”, and another who defends their use provided that the war they are to be used in is a “just war”.

One important irony in the film’s use as propaganda by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, is that it is based in part on the effects suffered at the bombing of Dresden in 1945, when no nuclear weapons were used. The fact is that it is not just nuclear weapons which can be responsible for unspeakable human suffering and universal devastation; “conventional” arms are quite sufficient for the purpose, to say nothing of the horrors of chemical and biological warfare. So that if CND were in some miraculous way able to persuade governments to start dismantling some of their immense nuclear stock, there would still remain all manner of other terrible weaponry. The problem is that these people, however genuinely concerned they may be about the threat of war, have responded by considering the tools with which war is waged, instead of the cause of war itself (of whatever kind) and removing that once and for all.

The cause of war was stated by Joseph Chamberlain nearly a century ago when he said that

All the great offices of state are occupied with commercial affairs. The Foreign Office and the Colonial Office are chiefly engaged in finding new markets and in defending old ones

and by W M Hughes, ex-Prime Minister of Australia:

The increasing intensity of competition for economic markets must lead to armed conflict unless an economic settlement is found. This, however, is hardly to be hoped for. Talk about peace in a world armed to the teeth is utterly futile.

So what are these “markets” over which so much blood is spilt? They are simply the areas in which capitalist enterprises, including that monster enterprise, the USSR, try to sell commodities in order to realise a profit. The markets, materials, territories and trade routes fought over in wars all represent profit, which belongs to the property-owning, capital-controlling class in society. The working class have no reason to fight over the property and profit of the various sections of the world’s ruling class.

The cause of war is world capitalism, the profit system, and it is that which will have to be removed. If it is not acceptable to see welfare services cut back while a minor nation like Britain spends more than a million pounds an hour on arms, then we must withdraw our support not just from Conservative politicians, but from all of the representatives of the profit system. And that applies equally to the Labour Party and the USSR patriots of the Communist Party who want nuclear bombs to defend state capitalist Russia.

It should not be forgotten, though, that war is just one particularly destructive aspect of the capitalist system. Capitalism’s converse of “peace” in some ways holds in store just as many horrors.

The expressive faces of despair which feature in The War Game are by no means uncommon in the world today. The problems of starvation or malnourishment are rife in capitalism, and sometimes unemployment is all that the working class can hope for from this system of wage-labour and capital, whether the state of affairs is officially described as “peace” or as “war”.

Clifford Slapper

Between the Lines: Forbidden moments (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the May 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

FORBIDDEN MOMENTS

Under capitalism the best things are forbidden. Access to the best things in life are denied to most of us because of lack of money. Other things are removed from us by the forbidding state. News and information, plays and films, jokes and songs: any of these images of life can be censored if they are considered liable to disturb the passivity of the wage slaves' minds. The Banned season on Channel Four has shown a number of programmes previously censored for TV audiences and has produced some first class discussion on the theme of censorship in its many forms. It has been a revealing few weeks of TV. Pathetic little voyeurs, hoping for a bit of naked flesh in their living rooms, will have been disappointed by the Banned season; the majority of censored TV is denied to viewers on grounds that to show it would be politically insensitive. The ruling class can live happily with the daily Page Three, but when it comes to exposing scrutiny of its precious, oppressive values it is time to pull the plugs.

The Truth About Lies (C4, 9pm, Monday, 8 April) offered a valuable survey of how the British ruling class has used censorship to keep workers in the dark. It documented how the BBC was used to attack the 1926 strikers, to serve as an appendage to military propaganda in the Second World War, to ban numerous programmes about the Army's current operations in Ireland, and to prevent life and death information — such as the coming of US Cruise missiles to British soil — from being communicated to the public. The liars who rule Britain came across as very scared people. They are afraid that the workers might see too much of what they are up to. They forbid speech on certain mailers because they know that they could not win the argument if they discussed them openly. In short, they confirm the socialist claim that when the working class understand what is going on in society it will be an explosively and unstoppably potent force.

John Pilger's excellent Frontline - The Search For Truth In Wartime (C4, 8pm, Saturday, 13 April) presented a survey of how TV coverage has been used to drive the millions into the frenzy of war fever. Pilger, whose own journalistic standards are in marked contrast to most of his cringeing, knee-bending colleagues, showed how war reporters, from Vietnam to the Gulf, have simply served the propaganda needs of the militarists who gave them the briefings.

News is not the only victim of the censors. Numerous films and plays have been censored from TV audiences. For years The War Game, which was commissioned by the BBC, was banned from being shown on the grounds that it depicted loo realistically what the effects of a nuclear bomb would be. In the late 1970s the BBC commissioned a play on the legalised brutality of the borstal system: the play Scum, was banned from being shown to us until it appeared in the Banned season (C4. 10.30pm. Sunday, 14 April). Even comedy has been the victim of the censor. No TV station would show Monty Python's Life of Brian (C4, 10.30pm, Tuesday, 16 April) and in several British cities local government outlawed the showing of the film which superbly sends up the myths of Christianity. Only Joking? (C4, 11pm, Friday, 12 April) was about comedy and the limits of "public taste". To be sure, there are lots of comedians, notably in the current US "comedy of hate" vogue, whose unfunny racist rambling! can appeal to to those with Sun-reader mentalities. The documentary showed a performance by a racist creep called The Dice Man whose New Year's Eve show in the USA attracted an audience of 17 million cable viewers. But who needs the state to tell us what is unacceptably unfunny? If we are unamused by Bernard Manning or Gerry Sadowitz, then we need not watch them. The price of any kind of free speech is that you cannot set up a dogma called Good Taste and then ban those who transgress it. The alternative price to be paid was well illustrated in two documentaries about Christian bigots and their efforts to "clean up" (for which read censor) TV output: Damned in the USA (C4. 10.30pm, Sunday, 14 April) and Dancing With the Devil (C4, 11pm, Friday, 19 April). When the superbly produced Thirtysomething showed a scene with two male lovers in bed together fifteen major advertisers pulled their money out of the network making the programme, resulting in millions of lost dollars as a result of the homophobic bigotry of a handful of rich marketing directors. Under capitalism it is these people who decide what is good for us to see.

Socialists oppose censorship. Ironically, C4's Banned season was itself censored: in the hitherto unshown Mother Ireland the voice of the IRA woman shot by the British troops in Gibraltar had to be dubbed over by an actress lest we be contaminated by her authentic voice; a Yugoslav film-documentary about Wilhelm Reich had to be changed so that the male genitals in it could not be seen by the highly-corruptible late-night audience.

A more significant irony was that C4 did not once in its season give any consideration to the ultimate ban which it seems to find quite compatible with its own liberal values: the ban on serious TV exposure to those ideas which are considered "way out" or "utopian". In short, the ban which we socialists have experienced when trying to obtain more than a two-minute chance to explain our ideas on Channel Four. Perhaps now is a good lime for the C4 gang to ask where they draw the line. And why. And who might lose their jobs if the boundaries were redrawn.

THE LONGER VIEW

You can never be depressed in the company of a geologist. Why hasn't socialism been established after all these years? After all what years? Clive James interviewed Stephen Jay Gould, the eminent and very worth reading Harvard palaeontologist (BBC2, 6pm, Sunday, 7 April). "What would happen if a nuclear holocaust destroyed the whale of human life?" asked James. It has happened before, responded Gould — in fact, there have been three wipe-outs of life over the past 260 million years. "We'd just have to wait a few million years and it would all start again" replied Gould. And the struggle for socialism is hardly a century old. Come to think of it, when they banned The Life of Brian less than twenty years ago the censor probably thought that it would never ever be shown - the fools.

Steve Coleman

Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker pt.2 (2015)

From the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the second part of our study of the work of Peter Watkins, we look at how his career as an independent film-maker challenged conventional trends. (Part 1 of the article is here.)

Frustrated by the poor reception to Privilege, Watkins left Britain for Sweden to make his next film. The Gladiators (1969) continued the theme of the elite using the media to divert aggression, but instead of music, as in Privilege, here violence is the catalyst. Soldiers representing different states are sent to arenas to fight and compete against each other in missions. These ‘Peace Games’ are televised to massive international audiences. From the comfort of a country mansion, the generals of each side sit together watching the battles and amiably take turns to influence what their soldiers do. One of the strongest messages in The Gladiators is that soldiers of any side have more in common with each other than they do with their leaders.

By the start of the 1970s, Watkins had relocated to America, where tensions between the state and the radical political scene were focused on the Vietnam War, the Kent State shootings, and threats to ‘civil rights’. Watkins’ response was to adapt the setting of The Gladiators – a remote arena run by the military – to create a scenario where the views of those disaffected and at risk from the state could be expressed.

Punishment Park (1971) followed two groups of militants – civil rights activists, poets, protest singers and draft-dodgers – held by the American police under the 1950 McCarran Act. This piece of real-life legislation allowed the government to detain people expected to cause subversion. Some of the characters were loosely based on those involved in the ‘Chicago Trials’ which followed countercultural protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the sets of militants is on trial from a nationalist tribunal already sure of their guilt. The other prisoners have been sentenced, and have chosen to spend three days in ‘punishment park’ instead of lengthy prison stays. This is a torturous trek through 53 miles of desert, to reach an American flag within three days while being hunted by trigger-happy cops.

The drama was improvised by non-professional actors, mostly giving their own views in character, whether playing activists, police or draft-board judges. This approach gives the film a raw authenticity which led some viewers to assume that it depicts real events. From this point in his career, Watkins’s films would feature only non-professional actors, often improvising their dialogue.

Punishment Park received mixed reviews, variously describing it as a ‘chilling prognosis’, ‘hypnotically gripping, and ‘the pornography of hate’ (pwatkins.mnsi.net/punishment.htm). Most film distributors decided that it would be too volatile to screen, and consequently it was denied the impact it deserved.

Watkins’ next film, released in 1974, was a biopic of Norwegian expressionist artist Edvard Munch. He first discovered Munch’s work only a few years before, and felt that the marginalisation of his own work echoed Munch’s experiences. The anger of his earlier films is more measured, targeted against repression rather than oppression. Munch’s life and work was shaped by the strict social norms of the late 19^th Century, as well as a constant threat of illness. The pace is more sedate than in Watkins’ previous films, gradually building up a layered picture of what influenced Munch.

Watkins’ films acknowledge the presence of the camera crew, especially in Punishment Park where they influence events, and even when this would be impossible within the drama, as in Edvard Munch and Culloden. His intention here was to remind the viewer that film-makers don’t objectively and passively record events, but interpret them according to their own agendas. Watkins himself ‘appears’ in his films as a narrator.

Through the rest of the 1970s and 1980s, Watkins remained in Scandinavia, where he developed his theory of the ‘Monoform’ and produced films to counter its approach. The Monoform is the standard style of editing and directing films and television programmes, which only presents the film-maker’s capitalist ideology, and stifles alternative interpretations. His films in this period studied ‘modern stress’ among Danish families (The Seventies People, 1974), radioactive waste produced by consumerism (The Trap, 1975), protests against nuclear submarines (Evening Land, 1976), and public awareness of the threat of nuclear war (The Journey, 1987). As always, reviews and reactions were largely hostile, coming from those who supported the oppressive society which Watkins was attacking.

In the early 1990s, Watkins worked with students at the Nordens Folk High School in Sweden on a biopic of radical writer August Strindberg. The Freethinker ‘has a complex internal structure, and moves in an unpredictable and seemingly random way between’ different points in Strindberg’s life, offering ‘the audience an open-ended process allowing for individual and varied reaction’ (LINK).

His 1999 film La Commune (de Paris, 1871) is political cinema at its best, and here Watkins attempts to counter the Monoform. Watkins identified that ‘the Paris Commune has always been severely marginalised by the French education system, perhaps because it is a key event in the history of the European working class.’

Watkins shot the film in black and white using digital video cameras in 13 days in an abandoned factory on the eastern edge of Paris in July 1999. There were over 220 people in the cast with approximately 60 percent of them having no prior acting experience.

In an effort to counter the Monoform, Watkins engaged in a democratic / collective experience during the filming; his overall objective was to present a collective voice, while the cast was involved in the film’s preparation, and during the filming itself. Watkins rarely has the cast framed in close-up as individuals, usually there are at least two or three people in the frame at the same time thus allowing a group dynamic to develop. The cast step out of their roles from time to time to discuss the situation in 1999, and its links to the events of the Paris Commune, contributing to the telling of their own history, and bringing out the modernity of the Commune. They would also discuss what they would say, how they might feel, and how they would react to the events of the Commune which were about to be filmed, externalising their true personalities and becoming the men and women of 1871.

Watkins brings the class struggle to the screen in his film of an attempt to create a better world. The Commune is not seen as a failure but the beginning of an idea of solidarity amongst people; he celebrates the Commune but its errors and its weaknesses are not hidden. The 375 minutes length of La Commune which runs counter to the Monoform ensured its complete marginalisation.

After La Commune, Watkins concluded ‘We are now moving through a very bleak period in human history... , sheer greed engendered by the consumer society sweeping many people under its wing, human, economic and environmental catastrophe in the form of globalisation ... have synergistically created a world where ethics, morality, human collectivity, and commitment ... are considered “old fashioned”... In such a world as this, what happened in Paris in the spring of 1871 represented (and still represents) the idea of commitment to a struggle for a better world, and of the need for some form of collective social Utopia.’ He felt that La Commune should be seen as a tool for others to use in challenging the dominance of the ‘Mass Audio Visual Media’ (MAVM) industry.

Watkins sees direct links between the hierarchy and centralisation of the contemporary manipulative role of the MAVM and the globalisation of capitalism.  He sees the rationale for the internal lengths and structures of the ‘Universal Clock’ (timing TV programmes according to adverts) as entirely commercial; they contribute to a loss of history, the increase of hierarchical forces, and the passive acceptance of global capitalism. Watkins speaks of ‘exploitative, morally corrupt free-market ideology sweeping aside everything before it.’ In his view, the ‘anti-globalisation movement’ won’t reach its full potential unless it challenges the MAVM.

Watkins published his theories as The Media Crisis (2004), a passionate critique of the Monoform and the lack of debate around the production of new audio visual media forms. His rejection of the dominant Monoform style, and his objections to the oppressive media industry which pushes it, has led to most of his films being marginalised and neglected. Consequently, his work hasn’t had the exposure or influence it deserves. Despite this, his approach is echoed in films such as the critically acclaimed holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985) by Claude Lanzmann, which may be seen as counter to the Monoform. Shoah was 11 years in production and editing and released at a length of 613 minutes! Lanzmann used no historical footage, arranged many of the scenes, but not the testimony; the film was made without subtitles, voiceovers, questions and answers were kept on the soundtrack, along with the interpreters. Lanzmann matches the testimony to places, and the audience is encouraged to think about the historical actions of these men, but also the ethics of reflection.

With filming and editing technology now affordable to more people, and the internet as a means to distribute films without going through corporations with their own agendas, there is now more potential for people to produce films which express their own experiences and views.

Watkins should be recognised more among socialists not only for his critique of the power of the media, but also in suggesting a positive alternative style of film-making: docudramas largely improvised by non-professional actors, and a new way of organising society in opposition to global capitalism. His films concerning history, war, pop culture, the oppressive role of the state in capitalism, late 1960s radicalism, the Paris Commune, and the role of artists, are always relevant to socialists.

Mike Foster & Steve Clayton

Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker (2015)

Peter Watkins

From the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

To mark the 80^th birthday of film-maker Peter Watkins, we examine his unfairly neglected work.

Peter Watkins, the film auteur, has been subject to massive marginalisation of his work. His entire oeuvre has seemingly met with extreme disapproval by the state, the power structures in capitalism and its ideological support structure, the mass media. Watkins can be a difficult film artist but he is essential cinema, the pioneer of the faux docudrama where he dissects historical events, the present day, or the near future. He described himself as a libertarian socialist and campaigns against false, stale and authoritarian film-making.

In the mid-1970s, Watkins’ experience of film-making and his studies of mainstream cinema and television led him to develop his theory of the ‘Monoform’, the predominant style used by the ‘Mass Audio Visual Media’ (MAVM) industry. A film or programme produced in the Monoform would be edited with a rapid succession of different images which don’t allow the viewer long enough to digest and consider what they have seen. This style manipulates the viewer into interpreting the film according to what the film-makers determine.

This theory influenced how Watkins would make his films. For example, The Journey (1987) did attempt in its use of time, space and alternative structures to counter the Monoform. His later preference for lengthy films gave the viewer more time and information to consider the subject matter, although he recognised that non-monoform movies don’t have to be as long asThe Journey’s14.5 hours! His use of non-professional actors and improvised scenes (even before he developed the theory of the Monoform) were intended to give a voice to people outside the media industry.

His theory of the Monoform includes a discourse about the ‘Universal Clock’ which refers to the synchronisation and the global movement of the televisions in the world, calibrated anywhere, at any time, their programming constructed without meaning, context or feeling but fitting within time constraints determined by commercials.

The Monoform treats audiences as receivers, consumers, passive spectators when faced with news, television and film. People are trained to accept the mass media in a non-critical light as if the media is neutral  and informative. The Monoform precludes any critical analysis of technique, structure, or effect, and is based on pre-formed moulds, from which there is no real freedom. The public are viewed as inherently stupid so that it needs authoritarian, simplistic, rapidly-moving language forms in order to absorb consumer ideas from TV.

To counter the Monoform, Watkins advocates an organic relationship between the film-maker and the audience; using non-professionals furthers his cause of involving the public in a democratic media. Watkins has laid out new possibilities for meaningful audience interaction with media, not just for viewers and those involved in production, but on a personal level. He endeavours to remove the comfortable avoidance of reality inherent in conventional programming on television by challenging the mainstream media’s handle on the way we view the world through television and film. Watkins has wrought more truth from the faux docudrama genre than the documentaries of the so-called vérité school.

Watkins himself pioneered the docudrama genre of dramatising events in the style of newsreel footage, right from the early years of his career. In the mid 1950s, he was part of the Playcraft amateur theatre group in Kent. He acquired an 8mm camera and directed the group in short films set in the first and second world wars, and during the 1956 Hungarian uprising. By the early 1960s, Watkins was working as an assistant producer at the BBC. He had already noticed that ‘much of the commercial cinema in the 1950s and early 1960s, and television in general, felt extremely stilted and conventional, holding the public locked into set and authoritarian agendas’, and he wanted ‘to offer a way of countering the effects of soap-opera historical reconstructions and TV news broadcasts’ (pwatkins.mnsi.net/part2_home.htm). So, when he had the opportunity to produce his own film for the BBC, he built on his newsreel style, and Culloden (1964) was the result.

The film showed the 1746 battle between forces loyal to the Stuart and Hanover royal dynasties, and its aftermath, as if a TV camera crew had been there to record it. In less than an hour, over 2,000 soldiers were killed, and the victorious Hanoverian Duke of Cumberland’s troops then went on to hunt down any remaining members of opposing clans. One of Watkins’ aims was to draw parallels between the resulting destruction of the clan system and the American army’s impact on civilians during the then-current Vietnam War.

Many of the cast were non-professional actors, including descendents of those who fought at Culloden. This wasn’t just an artistic decision in order to elicit more naturalistic performances, but also a political statement. Watkins wanted his films to provide a voice for anyone, rather than the biased, unrepresentative media industry. The film received enthusiastically supportive reviews, especially for its pioneering techniques.

After Culloden, the BBC commissioned Watkins again, and he produced the 1965 harrowing, bleak, nuclear war docudrama The War Game, 47 minutes in length. It concerned a nuclear attack on Britain focusing on the North Kent area, and featured instant flash blindness, a firestorm, radiation sickness, widespread psychological damage and suicide. We see the Army burn corpses, the rationing of resources, police shooting looters during food riots, civil disturbance becomes a capital offence, and people are executed by firing squad. The cast was almost entirely made up of non-actors, and Watkins filmed in the style of a news magazine programme.

The BBC violated their own Charter when in September 1965 they screened the film to senior members of the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Post Office, the Military Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary to Harold Wilson’s Cabinet. As a result, the BBC suppressed transmission before the screening date in October 1965, stating ‘the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting, it will, however, be shown to invited audiences.’ A Parliamentary question in December 1965 ‘asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he made to the BBC concerning the Civil Defence film called The War Game; and why he exerted pressure to prevent its showing to the public’. But the Labour government denied any outside pressure on the BBC. There had also been pressure from Equity, the British actors’ union, who were angry that non-professional actors had been used.

The War Game was released to cinema in 1966, and picked up the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and a BAFTA. Hypocritically, the BBC picked up the awards although the BBC had also said the film was banned because it was an artistic failure! Today both The War Game and Culloden have been available for some years on DVD but it is difficult to obtain these films for theatrical screenings which is related to restrictions imposed by Equity. The BBC eventually broadcast The War Game twenty years later in July 1985 during the week before the fortieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

The film essentially stated that civil defence policies did not prepare the public for a nuclear attack. Watkins said later that ‘I was interested in breaking the illusion of media-produced ‘reality’. My question was ‘Where is ‘reality’?’’ Watkins disassembled the fourth wall to uproot the MAVM complacency, and characters deliver direct Brechtian statements to camera. Patrick Murphy, a senior lecturer in Film and Television at York St John University, quotes Watkins: ‘The War Game and Culloden are signposts to a direction that TV could have taken, but refused. Television could have been a plurality of forms and processes.’ Watkins’ disillusionment with the way television programming was heading meant that he left the BBC and turned instead to film production.

His reputation as a talented new voice meant he could attract the backing of major studios such as Universal Pictures. This led to Privilege (1967), a docudrama about Steven Shorter, a manufactured pop idol of the near future. Shorter’s career is dictated by his management company, which is working with the government to distract his millions of fans from society’s problems. His stage act uses violence to provide ‘the public with a necessary release of all the nervous tension caused by the state of the world’. Shorter’s popularity with the masses means that he can be used to manipulate them. So when the state wants to promote religious and national unity, Shorter is rebranded as repentant and faithful. The singer Paul Jones from Manfred Mann plays Shorter, giving a tense, awkward performance which reflects how the character is trapped and unable to express himself.

Privilege was dismissed by contemporary reviewers as ‘paranoid, hysterical and unconvincing’ (Privilege DVD booklet), and was shown by few cinemas. Consequently, it has been largely forgotten, whereas it should be recognised as a lively and perceptive critique of the mass media’s power, echoing Herbert Marcuse’s views about consumerism as a form of social control. The directions that Watkins’ career would take next reflect his growing awareness of how the media industry stifles intelligent debate. The concluding part of our look at his work will follow in the next issue.

Mike Foster & Steve Clayton

Socialist Meeting in London: Peter Watkins' Culloden (2015)

'Culloden' (Film)

Sunday, 18 October 2015 - 6:00pm

Venue: The Socialist Party's premises, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Directions: About four minutes walk from Clapham North tube on the Northern line and three minutes walk from Clapham High Street station on the circular overground line

'Culloden', a film by Peter Watkins - running time 69 minutes. 

Introduction by Robert Worden with discussion afterwards

Peter Watkins will be 80 years of age in October 2015

"Culloden is a 1964 docudrama for BBC TV.  It portrays the 1746 Battle of Culloden that resulted in the British Army's destruction of the Scottish Jacobite rising of 1745 and, in the words of the narrator, "tore apart forever the clan system of the Scottish Highlands". Described in its opening credits as "an account of one of the most mishandled and brutal battles ever fought in Britain", Culloden was hailed as a breakthrough for its cinematography as well as its use of non-professional actors and its presentation of an historical event in the style of modern TV war reporting. The film was based on John Prebble's study of the battle."

Free admission and refreshments

See Also:

October 2015 Socialist Standard: Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker

The Radical Cinema of Peter Watkins

Cut and pasted from A Very Public Sociologist blog. The blogger, Phil B-C, is a member of the SP/CWI Trotskyist tradition.

Keele MCC heard from John Cook of Glasgow Caledonian University this evening. He spoke on the little-known work of the radical film maker, Peter Watkins. Watkins was part of the amateur film movement that grew up in the mid-late 1950s and found himself taken on at the BBC on the strength of his short film on the Hungary uprising, The Forgotten Faces. Released in 1961 it was, contrary to popular belief, among the very first films - if not the first - to pioneer the documentary-drama style. Rather than being a straight apologia of either side, it showed how revolutions are necessarily very messy, how circumstances can transform the downtrodden and oppressed into people fired by murderous rage. In one key scene, we are shown crowds coming under fire from uniformed snipers. When they surrender the people wreak bloody vengeance by crushing them beneath their heels and boots. As a tribute to Watkins style, when Forgotten Faces was shown to the founding chairman of Granada, Sidney Bernstein, he quipped "if we showed that film, no one would believe our documentaries anymore".

Having secured a position at the BBC he became the centre of controversy in 1965 with The War Game. This film imagined the dropping of a nuclear bomb on Kent and its aftermath. Immediately it was banned and remained so for 20 years. Watkins was convinced this decision was taken on political grounds, and was so disgusted by the experience that he left Britain in 1968, and hasn't worked here since. But the hallmarks of his film making had been established. The docudrama style (also seen in his earlier film, Culloden, which involved scenes where participants of the famous 1746 battle were interviewed by filmmakers), his preference for hand held camera work, and the casting of "ordinary" people, not professional actors, have continued to mark out his oeuvre from the mainstream.

Post-BBC Watkins has continued to make films outside of the conventional production process and on very tight budgets. Typical of this is 1971's Punishment Park. Inspired by the trial of the Chicago Seven, it is set in a future where subversives and hippies jailed for political offences get the chance to have their sentences commuted if they complete a desert wilderness course. All the while they're being pursued by law enforcement as part of their training in tracking, shooting, and apprehending suspects. The clip shown this evening's audience is taken from the trial scene. The defendants are arrayed before a tribunal and time after time the presiding judge disallows pleas and defences guaranteed under the US constitution. Contemporary criticism attacked Watkins for exaggerating the violation of basic democratic rights, but post-Guantanamo these seem rather quaint objections. The film itself was on general release in the states for four days until it was mysteriously dropped, so obviously somewhere the film spoke an uncomfortable truth to power.

Watkins' last major film is La Commune (Paris 1871). Filmed in 1999 the 200-strong cast was populated almost entirely by non-professional actors, and casting was done to type. The roles of the communards were taken by leftists and students, and the counterrevolutionary forces recruited from adverts placed in Le Figaro. Like previous work, in the battle scenes the film crew interview 'communards', who would alternate between acting as a participant and commenting on current affairs. Furthermore Watkins filmed La Commune chronologically so the actors knew what was coming and helped simulate a more authentic feel, albeit one anachronistically juxtaposed to interventions by modern media.

Throughout his presentation Cook compared Watkins to Ken Loach, arguing of the two the former was a more radical film maker. Though Loach is famed for the controversial nature of his subject matter how he makes and presents his work is far more conventional. Furthermore Loach's films are very clearly of the left. However, Watkins is a bit more problematic. He describes himself as a leftist, and a superficial acquaintance with the above films seems to reinforce that. But for Cook, Watkins' work is a comment on polarisation and the politics of hate. In Punishment Park for example, there are multiple scenes of the radicals and agents of the state attacking one another verbally and physically. There is a certain even handedness in their portrayal as reaction gets just as much time to put its case against subversion. The same is the case in La Commune - there are scenes capturing the Versailles troops berating and polemicising against the communards and leftism. In both Watkins manages to make visible the polarisation between the two - to take sides and start shouting (as he does in his role as a cameraman in Punishment Park) is to become seduced by hate. What is needed is some middle ground, a space for dialogue between the two antagonistic camps. Only then can real progress be made.

What to make of this? I don't think Watkins has retreated into the wishy-washy liberalism/populism that tries to be all things to all people. Instead it is a call to the left to realise the views of our opponents are as convincing to them as our politics are to us, that we should not forever hector or starkly oppose our views to theirs but rather take the time to address their concerns and win them over through persuasion. As he puts it, "the ideological left is as flawed as the right - any politics that doesn't take on the views of ordinary people is playing at politics".

                                                                                                                                         Phil B-C