On the 21st of August 2020, we organised a special director-approved screening of Peter Watkins' controversial 1971 masterpiece, 'Punishment Park'. For the event, Peter provided us with an audio introduction to the film and an extended essay, both exclusive to the Black Maria screening. We have provided this content for you below.
The Media Crisis Pt. 1
A Brief Analysis by Peter Watkins
“The world must thrash out a new deal for nature in the next two years or humanity could be the first species to document our own extinction”, warns the United Nation’s biodiversity chief.” (Guardian UK, 3 Nov 2018)
I would like to begin by raising the following questions: Why is it that we human beings have allowed the environmental crisis to reach such disastrous proportions? What has led to the upsurge in populist thinking and the consequential crisis in democracy? Why have the global media done so little to query their own role in this crisis?
After some years as an amateur filmmaker working with an amateur drama group called Playcraft, in Canterbury, Kent, in the south of England, my professional film training began with my initiation into the traditional documentary form at the BBC, where I worked in the mid-1960s. We were informed by the BBC – I still have the document – that our principal obligations were to fulfil the principles of “truth, balance and fairness“ (i.e., ‘objectivity’) in any film that we produced, and were told that a producer who failed to do so (by yielding to his personal feelings about a particular film he was producing)”... should leave the BBC and make his name in some other field”.
Early on, I understood the contradictions in the generally accepted professional tenets of ‘objectivity’ and ‘reality’, and decided that my function, as a filmmaker, was to try to subvert this notion, to clarify the subjective nature of my own views, and to expose the constructed and carefully planned nature of the traditional documentary form.
I set about this subversion essentially by using all the techniques and tricks of the standard form, in order to stage films that were patently constructed – and not the reality they appeared to represent. In 1964 I filmed a reconstruction of the 1746 Battle of Culloden in Scotland, in the form of a TV news broadcast - as though that battle was actually happening in front of the camera. I hoped that the fact that cameras were not invented in 1746 would enable people to understand the contradictions between the appearance of reality given by my quasi-documentary form, and the elaborately staged nature of that seeming filmic ‘reality’.
My ideas, however, were not yet fully developed, for I also hoped that the staging of a film in this way would have more impact on the audience than a conventional film form. One could say that until 1977, I was caught between wanting to deconstruct and subvert the idea of film ‘reality’ on the one hand, and using that subversion to capture the audience on the other.
Along with this duality, I was caught in another, more serious trap - that of applying a standardised structural form to all my films. This form, referred to by the MAVM (mass audiovisual media) as “the grammar of film’’, emerged from the early films of Hollywood, and was deemed to be the best method to capture an audience. Without understanding the consequences, I used this form to underlay the ‘subversion’ in all my films from Culloden to Evening Land.
I was caught in that contradiction, because at that time, films were made with that form (indeed they still are), with no information or professional training to point the way to something different. Of course, I saw the occasional alternative film, but I was never subjected to any professional debate about the heavily structured films of the mass audiovisual media. Then, in 1977 and 1979, I was given the opportunity by the History Department at Columbia University to run two summer courses, at which time the students and I studied and specified the characteristics of this standard Hollywood form. We made a detailed study of a number of archive copies of TV news broadcasts from the three principal American network stations, the ABC, NBC and CBS, and also analysed several ‘docudrama’ series, Roots and Holocaust, from the same stations. What we uncovered were the specific characteristics of the uniform, repetitive language form, which was (and still is) used by circa 90-95% of all commercial cinema films, virtually all TV programmes, and even by many documentary films. In a word, this language form frames almost the entire output of the MAVM. We called it the Monoform.
The Monoform can be seen as a time-and-space grid clamped tightly over all the different elements of any film or TV programme. This grid encompasses rapidly changing images or scenes, constant camera movement, a dense bombardment of sound including atmospheric music and narration, the up and down climactic curves of the narrative story line, etc. A principal characteristic of the Monoform is its high-speed editing. The uniform nature of this structure, no matter what the subject matter, blurs essential distinctions between subjects and themes (e.g., fictional and real death), and leaves no time for reflection by the audience.
This means that a standard documentary film (no matter how serious the subject) often uses the same form and narrative structure as a Netflix drama series. Which in turn means that many documentary films utilise the Hollywood ideology and methods to establish a hierarchical relationship with the audience.
As I have witnessed in over 30 years of research and attempts to draw attention to this phenomenon, many, if not most, film professionals, as well as media instructors in schools and universities, persist in teaching young people that the Monoform is the only correct way of reaching an audience. They simply do not want to hear or confront critical thinking on this issue.
The result is a deafening silence on the whole subject of the Monoform throughout the MAVM, and media education. And when confronted...? As one senior executive from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation proudly proclaimed at a film market, “I am not afraid of the grammar of the people”. The problem with this declaration is that “the people” have never been consulted about the nature and form of this ‘grammar’ (ergo the Monoform), or even about the fact that there are structures which hold mass audiovisual messages and their underlying ideologies in place.
I have often been told that there is no crisis regarding the form of the mass media, thanks to the work of independent filmmakers. I believe that this illusion needs to be strongly challenged. First, we need to understand that the Monoform is only one language form amidst the immense possibilities of the filmic medium. Despite this fact, the Monoform has become de facto the officially used and propagated film grammar... hence the standard - including among quite a few of the films that are independently financed.
Of course there are examples of genuinely alternative or experimental films, including, over the years, works by Stan Brakhage (US), Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia), Trinh T. Minh-ha (Vietnam), Chris Marker, Robert Bresson, Agnès Varda (France), Krzysztof Kieślowski (Poland), numerous Japanese filmmakers, and so on. The varied filmic processes and experiments by individual filmmakers have indeed helped people to escape the boundaries of the Monoform. [Whether complete ‘escape’ is either possible or desirable – given the nature of the filmic medium – is another question.]
But the fact remains that most of these films that are outside the confines of the Monoform are ‘ghetto-ized’ into specialised screenings at art houses or film festivals, confined to the arcane grip of academic ‘experts’, or screened on TV at 1:30 am. Essentially, they are withheld by the MAVM from the broader public, for they do not figure as a component of the so-called ‘popular culture’, nor do they represent any significant challenge to the Monoform media. I believe that this position best serves the interests of the status-quo MAVM, which strive to strictly compartmentalize – and suppress if necessary – anything that threatens their professional power base. Whether this is conjecture or certainty, what is true is the fact that the mass media and most education systems make no effort to research the Monoform, or to debate the possible effects on the public.
I often refer to the public, for here lies the crux of the problem: The public has always been defined as the receptors of media output, never as participants in a pluralistic process. Indeed, this one-sided relationship between media and public may even, by default, be legitimised in various national Constitutions, which guarantee “freedom of the press”, but never guarantee the right of the public to a choice between Monoform and non-Monoform media, or equal rights to non-Monoform and Monoform filmmakers for access to funding and distribution.
The conventional attitude towards the public as shown in national Constitutions is also written in stone in the literature of the audiovisual media, and goes back to the early days of Hollywood. For example, endless teachings of the stages of film production – especially editing – refer to time-tested techniques for having an ”impact” on the audience. There is seldom, if ever, any mention of the process of a democratic interchange with the audience.
One of the most insidious aspects of this crisis is the relationship fostered between the media and the public by most media educators. Not only do they not acknowledge the problems of the Monoform, on the contrary, they teach students that it is the one and only valid language form in the production of ‘successful and professional’ films and TV programmes.
The websites of many universities promise students entry into the media industry after they learn the standard ‘professional’ practices. Students are usually trained (‘bullied’ would not be an inappropriate term) to accept the Monoform method of film and journalism production (which is designed to format the products of the MAVM into a uniform code), as the sine qua non of entry into the mass media. “We allow our students to make their alternative films, but we know that these are the ones who will never find work in the professional media,” states a professor of media studies at a French university. This being the case, it’s obvious that the whole area of media, cinema and journalism studies is strongly tilted in favour of the Monoform media, instead of encouraging – and supporting vis-à-vis the industry – media students who want to work in alternative ways.
In this way, the MAVM and educational systems are increasingly shifting cinema and TV production away from anything resembling more liberal forms of creative art and communication, such as the theatre, plastic arts, literature, music, etc. For all the commercial problems that these other creative forms certainly face, they still acknowledge the importance of individual creativity, and the validity of the ‘alternative’ - unlike the audiovisual media, which are reeling under an unprecedented pressure to keep the Monoform in place, and the public ever more tightly controlled.
This one-sided relationship between the media and the public also manifests itself in the concentration by the MAVM on telling ‘stories’ via endless streams of popular culture feature films and ‘serial box-sets’. The cynicism behind this phenomenon is illustrated in a statement by actor Kevin Spacey to an enthusiastic audience of media professionals at the 2013 Edinburgh TV Festival: "Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in... If they want to binge then we should let them binge.”
There is not enough space on these pages to speculate on the multiple levels of damage to the global social climate because of this situation. Certainly, even if we focus only on the visible agendas of the MAVM - including the themes and values espoused by Spacey’s bingeing - we can speculate on the immense damage to the planet that has been directly caused by the overwhelming media emphasis on consumerism and consumerist values.
The effects of the lesser visible, more subterranean aspects of the mass audiovisual media have mostly gone unremarked. Even one of the most obvious – the way that the rapid structures of the Monoform have caused a widespread drop in attention span - has gone largely undebated. And that in itself is an extraordinary indication of the power of the Monoform to render invisible its effects upon us.
On a recent visit to London I went with my brother to the cinema. Before the feature film we had to endure over 20 minutes of trailers and promotions for upcoming films. Each shot must have been a second or less in length, with cameras whirling, diving and whip-panning, and with the sound loud enough to shake the walls of the cinema. This was the Monoform in full aggressive action (to be repeated, in a somewhat modified format, in the Spike Lee film that followed). Obviously the Monoform has become a sort of code, whose purpose is identical to that of the secret digital algorithms taking charge of every decision we make each time that we use a computer. The purpose of this audiovisual code is to pin us to our seats, and to ensure that we do not take our eyes away from the screen for a split second.
It is crucially important that we identify this entire process not only in terms of the authoritarian control that the mass media exert over our viewing experience, but also that we understand that this trauma relates in many complex ways to the troubled state of society today – in our passive acceptance of the global environmental crisis, in our fear of collectivity and our withdrawal into ‘safe’ privatised comfort zones, and in our participation in the process of ‘populism’, into which we have been indoctrinated, and to which we have become accustomed via the so-called media ‘popular culture’. I do not regard the public support for Donald Trump or the populist ideology of Brexit, or the actions of the president in Brazil who is destroying the Amazonian rain-forest, etc., as a series of unhappy accidents. I think that these tragedies, and the lack of wide-spread opposition, are the result of decades of MAVM-induced trauma, which has fragmented our human sympathy and our holistic awareness of what is happening to us and around us, and in so many ways contributed to our acquiescence and fear of speaking out.
What is needed in order to confront these problems is an escalating series of critical debates in public, and in the classrooms of schools and universities, on the role of the mass media (not only audiovisual) in the entire social process. Unfortunately, decades of Monoform supremacy – and its hierarchical habits and practices – have brought about the reverse process. Even most film festivals limit public debate to a 20-minute ‘Q and A’ [question and answer] session, during which the filmmakers invariably occupy the time by talking, instead of engaging in a dialogue with the audience - let alone discussing the Monoform. The same process happens at film conferences, or ‘hommage’ screenings at cinematheques: panels of film scholars talk to (or at) the audience, instead of engaging in an interchange about the crucial role of the cinema in contemporary society. Will we ever see genuinely critical debates between the media and the public (between the public and the public) – especially in non-hierarchical, non-curated forms?
What does ‘alternative’ film mean? Is there such a thing as a non-hierarchical Monoform film? How might the public participate in shaping the mass media, or alternatively, a ‘non-mass’, local media? or take part in a non-media, community discussion? There is no single answer to these and other questions, and unfortunately the environment at present does not encourage their debate.
In an article in September 2018 in the international art magazine Frieze, Evan Moffitt writes, “Borders are a violent political construct that defy nature’s logic of cohabitation” ... and that, “though borders shape the lives of so many”, we are reminded “how little they tell us about the way the earth operates”. Thus, also with the Monoform, which produces and enforces borders of the mind to exactly the same effect.
Hopefully, sometime early next year, I will be expanding the articles on my website pwatkins.mnsi.net to detail more of the standard Monoform practices, such as ‘pitching’, and ‘The Universal Clock’, as well as give an account of media analysis projects that I have initiated, which have been suppressed. I will also deal with the marginalization of my film work by the status-quo MAVM, as representative of the general repression that is also affecting many other filmmakers.
On the positive side, I will outline the important personal support I have received along the way. I will also refer to the role of my last three films, The Journey, The Free-thinker (a biography of August Strindberg), and La Commune de Paris 1871, which have attempted to work beyond the limits of the Monoform. There will also be links to earlier articles that I have written, as well as some relevant articles by other media critics. In conclusion, I want to extend my sincere thanks to the organizers of this presentation of my work. Also I want to thank everyone present for this possibility to discuss – in public – the issues raised on these pages.
Best wishes,
Peter Watkins, France 2019
Edited by Vida Urbonavičius
Additonal Comments
For the Perth screening of Punishment Park, 2020
It’s a little difficult to write in more detail here about the impact that the standardised mass audiovisual media have made on society, and in particular the role they have played in fermenting the current global crisis, with their unceasing promulgation of consumerism; their use of violence and sexism in the so-called popular culture, and their universal rejection of alternative forms of audiovisual communication. All of which has directly led to the environmental crisis, and the surge of populism in the US, the UK, Russia, Brazil and many other countries, where the public acceptance of escalating forms of political hierarchy and dictatorship has reached levels not seen since World War II.
The self-seeking behaviour of the bully in the American White House which is pushing the country towards civil war; the unthinking and politically-driven decision by half the population of the UK to sever relations with Europe, at a time when collective cohesion is so badly needed; the moves by Vladimir Putin – a former officer in the KGB - to juggle the Russian system so that he can become President for Life; the wanton destruction in Brazil of large areas of the Amazon Rain Forest; a violent increase in levels of racism and xenophobic behaviour towards immigrants; and increasing levels of violence and aggression towards women – all this and so much more would be the stuff of some 19th century nightmare - were it not true.
In direct relation to this horror story - the fragmented, fleeting. hierarchical language form of the mass audiovisual media (especially in the cinema and on TV) has helped to create an unprecedented lowering of the attention span in many people; an inward-looking, privatised and self-interested distraction amongst many viewers, with a consequent aversion to genuine social collectivity and an equal aversion to challenging the systems of education for whom the only objective seems to be creating more and more obedient consumers and clients for the markets of Amazon.
The daily agendas of the mass audiovisual media have played a major role in allowing these aspects of society to come into being; their audiovisual language forms – in particular the Monoform -have neutralised so much of the critical collective awareness and debate which might have otherwise might have prevented this from taking place.
An inherent part of these problems, is the issue of repression – and this is something the mass media do NOT want to discuss – the extraordinary way in which so much critical thinking, ideas for alternative programme making, ways to find more democratic and pluralistic media processes, and even more essentially, the possibility of a CRITCAL PUBLIC DEBATE on these issues – have been suppressed in the last several decades – suppressed by those controlling the global TV networks, suppressed by TV Commissioning Editors, suppressed by commercial film producers, suppressed by the administrators of Film Institutes and national Cinematheques, by the organizers of countless film festivals, etc., to which list one must add many media and popular cultural teachers in universities, schools and professional training colleges, who have played their part by their deep complicity in establishing the norms of the mass audiovisual media, and by their acquiescence in this crisis.
You’ve asked me about the relevance of Punishment Park to this nightmare. Well, I hope that the film suggests that the present world crisis began many years ago!
Punishment Park is an allegory of the early 1970s in America, a time of division and a lack of tolerance between peoples of differing ideologies. My film suggests a struggle in which the more reactionary come out on top, even if momentarily. There is also of course the direct relationship with what is happening now in Portland, Oregon, as well as elsewhere in the U.S and elsewhere in the world.
Further, Punishment Park– like most of my work – functions on two levels – a) that of the subject of the film (repression), and b) the media crisis behind the role of the mass audiovisual media - in which the film itself is playing some kind of role (by its rapid form, no time for the audience to reflect, etc). This does not invalidate the film, just to point out that it is part of the growth of the cinema which somehow we need to change and make more democratic. Of course, this will never happen with a large portion of the cinema and TV who will keep going as they are. But my work is dedicated to reminding people of the unseen part of the iceberg, and that it is that part which sunk the Titanic (like the media’s centralised form and structures), not the part people could see.
All of which means that my work is dedicated to help people forge a future where there is infinitely more audiovisual CHOICE about what we see and how it is made, with different forms and processes. I do believe that Punishment Park offers one clue as to how this could happen, by its use of ordinary people who comment on the crisis in society and who play a direct role in how it is represented.
This way of working with ordinary people, allowing them space, the opportunity to openly express themselves openly in public, is one of the most important aspects of my work, and I believe it is this aspect which is most seen as a threat by the mass media, with their present role of centralising so much to themselves.
Peter Watkins
France, August 2020
Published by Black Maria Film Collective, 2020
Peter Watkins Statement Transcript
Hello.
This is Peter Watkins, I am speaking from a small town in the centre of rural France where my wife and I are now living. I’m very pleased that the Black Maria Collective is going to be screening Punishment Park in Perth. I have sent a copy of my latest public statement to the organizers of the screening, and I hope that you will have been able to access this before you see the film.
Since the late 1960s I have been raising questions regarding the role of the mass audiovisual media. By this I am referring to the cinema, TV and documentary films. What is the role played by these forms of media in the development of contemporary society? And what is the role of cinemas and film festivals? To what degree is this role limited to that of mass entertainment, distraction and – on occasion - aesthetic pleasure? Is that the limit of the experience? Or is there an effect of one kind or another passed on to the public? And if so, is that effect neutral? Is there no relationship between that effect and the immense problems facing our world today? Do we ever discuss these questions, and if so, when and where do we do so?
One could surmise that the ideal places for such discussion would indeed be in cinemas, at film festivals and in the many thousands of school and university classrooms around the world where the cinema and TV are taught. But is any of this actually happening? Is there any discussion in these places about the fact that the forms and structures of film have been rigidly standardised since the birth of the cinema in the early days of Hollywood, and that TV followed suit in the 1950s?
Standardised in a way that is completely alien to the development of art, music and literature, where individual language forms and processes – complex and highly subjective forms - make an absolute mockery of the majority, rigid, hierarchical structures of the audiovisual media, whose primary aim appears to be to have a mono impact on mass audiences, rather than any form of open, pluralistic communication.
In fact. we know that critical public discussions of these issues rarely occur in cinemas or in film festivals, where the ritual 20 minute monologue by the filmmaker takes the place of any open, interactive discussion with – and between – the public audience. And on those rare occasions where a proper discussion with the audience is permitted, we know again it is very rare that the issues of the stardardised form are ever raised.
We know – also - that it is increasingly the manner of film teaching in education systems around the world to propagate the myth that the Monoform (and I’ve written about this in my statement)is the one and only correct film grammar, and that if students do not use it, that they will never obtain employment in the industries of the mass audiovisual media.
Given all these issues, it is little wonder that a Netflix executive recently boasted that Netflix has become the global culture– the “global zeitgeist” as he said. And where does Punishment Park fit into this unhappy picture? To what degree does this film challenge these issues, and to what degree has it fallen prey to them?
I realize that these are difficult issues, and difficult questions - but the world has become a very difficult and troubled place, and it has done so at a speed over which we seem to have so little democratic control. And to deny that the mass audiovisual media do not have a responsibility – a shared responsibility - for this crisis is just sheer lunacy.
I know fully well that there are filmmakers – young and not-so young – who are struggling to break free from the professional shackles and to find genuinely alternative ways of communicating with the public. I know how hard this struggle can be. But I also know how rewarding.
Of course, I don’t mean to express this situation just in terms of the present. The entire history of the audiovisual media – especially of the cinema and documentary film – has shown us amazing examples of what these forms of media can create in the way of alternative modes of expression. But the tragedy is that we are not allowed to learn from these examples and to use that learning experience to bring dynamic change to the so-called ‘grammar’ of film. This does not only affect filmmakers, it affects the public, who denied the possibility of a far more pluralistic choice of film form and interactive process. Let’s be clear here, there is no democracy whatsoever in the way the mass audiovisual media function at present.
Well, I’ll stop here. I’m very sorry not to be able to discuss these matters with you in person, but please know that anyone who wishes to do so, can contact me via the form mail in my website, and I’d be very pleased to hear from you.
Thank you again for screening my work, and – especially - for allowing these questions to be raised.