When I was a child my mother bought an old 16mm rental catalog to use for art projects. Before home video schools and individuals could rent movies from the big studios to show with 16mm projectors, and the interest for me were the blurbs and screenshots of movies I had never seen but would be burned in my memory for years to come. The selection was fine snapshot of the film landscape of the mid-70's, highlighting such now-obscure movies as Spielberg's The Sugarland Express and the Walter Matthau-Carol Burnett dramedy Pete 'n' Tillie. It also had a lot of older movies that looked really cool, including the as-yet unreleased-on-video wacky comedy What's So Bad About Feeling Good? and the Anthony Newley vanity musical Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? And one movie I searched high and low for once I got to college was Privilege, only to find it didn't get a video release in the U.S. until 2008. I found out later that Universal essentially buried the film after its release due to its upsetting message. How upsetting? It's only directed by the man who made the most terrifying nuke documentary of all time.
Peter Watkins started as a documentarian for the BBC and first became known for Culloden, which "covered" the 1745 Jacobite uprising as a current news story. That is, Watkins recreated the battle and had people of its time interviewed as if a TV crew was at the battle. Watkins has used this technique many times, including in his 3-hour Edvard Munch and La Commune (Paris, 1871). He also used it for The War Game, a speculative documentary commissioned by the BBC to educate the public on the real facts of nuclear warfare. It's one of the most terrifying films ever made, showing the processes of evacuation, the effects of bombing itself, and life after the bombs in soul-crushing detail. It was actually banned by the BBC for being too disturbing, later winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary. His most ambitious film project is Resan (The Journey), a 14 & 1/2 hour documentary about nuclear war filmed over two years across several continents. Privilege is thankfully only 100 minutes, and as you'll see at the bottom on YouTube. Prepare yourselves for the performance of a lifetime.
Privilege is set in a near-future England where the whole country is obsessed with pop star Steven Shorter. He is given the country's first ticker-tape parade, and there are 300 ghastly, tacky Steven Shorter Discoteques, built "to spread happiness throughout Britain." Shorter has turned into an icon of anguished youth, capturing the admiration of countless young people through a stage show where he is taken out in handcuffs, beaten by stage police, and finally led off stage, followed by minor rioting in the audience. The camera-work in this performance is crucial, capturing intense weeping on the part of the teenage girls present, probably a nod to the droves of screaming fans who flocked to the Beatles' American concerts. We first get a good amount of time with Steven at one of his Discoteques, and it is obvious that he's deeply unhappy, saying almost nothing and wincing at laughter. You would too if you were forced to walk through one of the 300 Steve Dream Palaces, a tin-foiled monstrosity blaring advertisements for various Steven Shorter-sponsored crap, designed "to keep people happy and buying British."
Steven's entourage includes: his galpal Vanessa Ritchie (Jean Shrimpton), who's been commissioned by the British government to make paintings of Steven and keep an eye on him; his manager Martin Crossley (Jeremy Child); his music publisher Julie Jordan (Max Bacon) who clearly knows nothing of music beyond chintzy lounge tunes; Alvin Kursch (Mark London) whose vanity is only outmatched by his disregard for Steven's feelings; and Andrew Butler, chairman of Steven Shorter Enterprises, ltd. There is also the board of Steven Shorter Enterprises, ltd., who speak of Steven's grueling American tour (about 80 different appearances across 25 days, with 3 days off).
We follow Steven through various photo shoots, including a tacky-looking apple commercial which the Apple Marketing Board and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is relying on to get the British public to eat "six apples a day for the whole of the summer." If this doesn't happen 640,000,000 apples will rot on the tree, and their existentialist art director insists on people in fiberglass apple costumes and bizarre period reenactments. Though I have no idea how the commercial is supposed to sell apples I am certain none of the actors have any idea what's going on. The director screams like a John Cleese character and Steven looks as if he wants to shoot lasers from his eyes to kill all of England.
The real plot of the movie comes forth with the second board meeting, where the bring in Steven to discuss the new direction of his pop stardom. Professor Tatham (James Cossins) speaks that the first phase of Steven's career was to appeal to the violent and ambivalent zeitgeist of British youth, and now, in order to curb "critical elements in youth," and undesirable elements (Communism and Anarchism). His new phase is to repent, to accept law and order, and fuse with the M.O. of the Anglican church to transform the youth of England into an ultra-repressed, purified race (demonstrated by a pair of models in Hello Dolly-esque yellow attire). We are also treated to a nameless rock band recording a psychedelic version of "Onward Christian Soldiers", complete with monastic shaved-top hairdos and bottles of milk to drink. ("Excellent! I think you've been influenced by Count Basie, but excellent!").
All of this is leading up to Christian Crusade Week, a massive cultural reeducation project of which Steven has been made the opener, at "the largest staging of Nationalism in the history of Great Britain." We are shown every stage of its mounting, including the first glimpse of a concert poster featuring Steven with outstretched, semi-stigmata hands. Steven has been put in the color red, a symbol of his release from bondage, and at a press conference he appears with handcuffs that are temporarily taken off (we had seen earlier his real bleeding from the cuffs). Afterwards, he asks Andrew, with enormous quavering, to stop all this madness. This is met only by a chilling speech on Steven's "importance to society" (which I won't dare spoil). At a meal it is apparent that Steven is close to losing his mind, reverting to a childlike state with a request for hot chocolate after an unrelated question. And then, at the National Stadium in London, we get to witness one of the most spectacularly mounted and chilling pageants this side of the North Korean Mass Games.
I cannot begin to tell you how frightening this film is. As outlandish as some of the content may seem, all the critical imagery hits home in its dissection of the intersection of British cultural values and the rise of revolutionary rock, and makes a good point of the fine line between one totalitarian regime and another. The opening ceremony to Christian Crusade Week is the spectacular centerpiece, and I imagine Universal shelved the movie because the production was too harsh and terrifying. The pseudo-documentary technique here is crucial, putting us in the center of the action and making us feel like one of the crowd. The narrator is cool and silken, more fit for a documentary on the life cycle of salmon than a man's life. I can't speak for Jean Shrimpton, but aside from her the acting is perfect, with special mention to Paul Jones as Steven. Jones is incredibly vulnerable, saying little and ready to crack into fits of weeping at any second. Steven's handlers are brilliantly placed in their self-absorbed coldness, and the hundreds of extras and side figures give their all to a very risky cause.
Privilege may have been the first of a series of irreverent examinations of the British psyche, paving the way for If...., A Clockwork Orange, and Monty Python's Flying Circus in one way or another. It also acknowledged the full circle effect of the British Invasion coming home and bringing American counterculture with it. Watkins has said that he suspects A Clockwork Orange lifted design and content elements from Privilege, and I can certainly see that in the use of hideous interior design and plastic clothing. It's also been noted that Privilege was heavily influenced by the 1962 National Film Board of Canada documentary Lonely Boy, which followed the growing hysteria surrounding Paul Anka. I'll admit that some of the message in Privilege may seem blunt or overstated. I would point out that one of the greatest strengths of the film is its mounting dread, a kind of catharsis through inevitability, and as all the elements come together at Christian Crusade Week the viewer is paralyzed by the possibility that this could happen here. I once saw a filmed interview with Margaret Atwood, and when asked about The Handmaid's Tale, she said she found it interesting how different English-speaking countries reacted to its dystopian, misogynistic future. She noticed that the British asked "Can it happen here?", the Canadians "Will it happen here?", and the Americans "How long until it happens?"
Privilege is set in a near-future England where the whole country is obsessed with pop star Steven Shorter. He is given the country's first ticker-tape parade, and there are 300 ghastly, tacky Steven Shorter Discoteques, built "to spread happiness throughout Britain." Shorter has turned into an icon of anguished youth, capturing the admiration of countless young people through a stage show where he is taken out in handcuffs, beaten by stage police, and finally led off stage, followed by minor rioting in the audience. The camera-work in this performance is crucial, capturing intense weeping on the part of the teenage girls present, probably a nod to the droves of screaming fans who flocked to the Beatles' American concerts. We first get a good amount of time with Steven at one of his Discoteques, and it is obvious that he's deeply unhappy, saying almost nothing and wincing at laughter. You would too if you were forced to walk through one of the 300 Steve Dream Palaces, a tin-foiled monstrosity blaring advertisements for various Steven Shorter-sponsored crap, designed "to keep people happy and buying British."
Steven's entourage includes: his galpal Vanessa Ritchie (Jean Shrimpton), who's been commissioned by the British government to make paintings of Steven and keep an eye on him; his manager Martin Crossley (Jeremy Child); his music publisher Julie Jordan (Max Bacon) who clearly knows nothing of music beyond chintzy lounge tunes; Alvin Kursch (Mark London) whose vanity is only outmatched by his disregard for Steven's feelings; and Andrew Butler, chairman of Steven Shorter Enterprises, ltd. There is also the board of Steven Shorter Enterprises, ltd., who speak of Steven's grueling American tour (about 80 different appearances across 25 days, with 3 days off).
We follow Steven through various photo shoots, including a tacky-looking apple commercial which the Apple Marketing Board and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is relying on to get the British public to eat "six apples a day for the whole of the summer." If this doesn't happen 640,000,000 apples will rot on the tree, and their existentialist art director insists on people in fiberglass apple costumes and bizarre period reenactments. Though I have no idea how the commercial is supposed to sell apples I am certain none of the actors have any idea what's going on. The director screams like a John Cleese character and Steven looks as if he wants to shoot lasers from his eyes to kill all of England.
The real plot of the movie comes forth with the second board meeting, where the bring in Steven to discuss the new direction of his pop stardom. Professor Tatham (James Cossins) speaks that the first phase of Steven's career was to appeal to the violent and ambivalent zeitgeist of British youth, and now, in order to curb "critical elements in youth," and undesirable elements (Communism and Anarchism). His new phase is to repent, to accept law and order, and fuse with the M.O. of the Anglican church to transform the youth of England into an ultra-repressed, purified race (demonstrated by a pair of models in Hello Dolly-esque yellow attire). We are also treated to a nameless rock band recording a psychedelic version of "Onward Christian Soldiers", complete with monastic shaved-top hairdos and bottles of milk to drink. ("Excellent! I think you've been influenced by Count Basie, but excellent!").
All of this is leading up to Christian Crusade Week, a massive cultural reeducation project of which Steven has been made the opener, at "the largest staging of Nationalism in the history of Great Britain." We are shown every stage of its mounting, including the first glimpse of a concert poster featuring Steven with outstretched, semi-stigmata hands. Steven has been put in the color red, a symbol of his release from bondage, and at a press conference he appears with handcuffs that are temporarily taken off (we had seen earlier his real bleeding from the cuffs). Afterwards, he asks Andrew, with enormous quavering, to stop all this madness. This is met only by a chilling speech on Steven's "importance to society" (which I won't dare spoil). At a meal it is apparent that Steven is close to losing his mind, reverting to a childlike state with a request for hot chocolate after an unrelated question. And then, at the National Stadium in London, we get to witness one of the most spectacularly mounted and chilling pageants this side of the North Korean Mass Games.
I cannot begin to tell you how frightening this film is. As outlandish as some of the content may seem, all the critical imagery hits home in its dissection of the intersection of British cultural values and the rise of revolutionary rock, and makes a good point of the fine line between one totalitarian regime and another. The opening ceremony to Christian Crusade Week is the spectacular centerpiece, and I imagine Universal shelved the movie because the production was too harsh and terrifying. The pseudo-documentary technique here is crucial, putting us in the center of the action and making us feel like one of the crowd. The narrator is cool and silken, more fit for a documentary on the life cycle of salmon than a man's life. I can't speak for Jean Shrimpton, but aside from her the acting is perfect, with special mention to Paul Jones as Steven. Jones is incredibly vulnerable, saying little and ready to crack into fits of weeping at any second. Steven's handlers are brilliantly placed in their self-absorbed coldness, and the hundreds of extras and side figures give their all to a very risky cause.
Privilege may have been the first of a series of irreverent examinations of the British psyche, paving the way for If...., A Clockwork Orange, and Monty Python's Flying Circus in one way or another. It also acknowledged the full circle effect of the British Invasion coming home and bringing American counterculture with it. Watkins has said that he suspects A Clockwork Orange lifted design and content elements from Privilege, and I can certainly see that in the use of hideous interior design and plastic clothing. It's also been noted that Privilege was heavily influenced by the 1962 National Film Board of Canada documentary Lonely Boy, which followed the growing hysteria surrounding Paul Anka. I'll admit that some of the message in Privilege may seem blunt or overstated. I would point out that one of the greatest strengths of the film is its mounting dread, a kind of catharsis through inevitability, and as all the elements come together at Christian Crusade Week the viewer is paralyzed by the possibility that this could happen here. I once saw a filmed interview with Margaret Atwood, and when asked about The Handmaid's Tale, she said she found it interesting how different English-speaking countries reacted to its dystopian, misogynistic future. She noticed that the British asked "Can it happen here?", the Canadians "Will it happen here?", and the Americans "How long until it happens?"
~PNK
