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The Chronicles of Riddick Likening the Lord Marshal and his Necromongers to the Borg of the "Star Trek" world, and even to Hitler and Mussolini, the imperialist bourgeoisie are trying to portray "The Chronicles of Riddick" as an anti-fascist movie only. MIM would go further than that and say that it is an anti- imperialist movie whose impact feeds off of the real-world struggles of today. Replace the Lord Marshal with Bush or Kerry, and the "Underverse" campaign with Manifest Destiny or the so-called War on Terrorism, and "New Mecca" in the movie looks more like the Congo, Nigeria, or Sudan, than a European country.(1) The criminal Riddick tracks his mercenary enemies' employer to a planet called "New Mecca," populated by people who appear to be African and Arab Muslims (inconvenient to the interpretation that this is just another anti-fascist movie--and what happened to the old Mecca?). There he finds the leader named Abu "Imam" al-Walid, whose people Riddick defended in the past from "monsters." But importantly, it is not Imam who placed the bounty on Riddick. It is a highly mobile, "calculating" white "Elemental" who later comes off as being on good terms with the Necromongers--she almost cuts a deal to prolong her home planet's destruction-- but she placed the bounty on Riddick to incite him to come back to New Mecca and save the planet from being taken over by the Necromongers. There are factions within the Necromonger leadership, although nobody (with the exception of one Furion, Riddick's "race") opposes Necromonger imperialism in general or the Necromonger "faith." And at one point, Imam tries to save only himself and his family, but he overcomes his bourgeois instincts and deliberately sacrifices himself to save his family and effectively also Riddick. Since the movie doesn't get into the characters' histories, we may say that the conflict between the Necromongers, laughably spelled more like "warmongers" than "necromancers," and the self- described "neutral" Elementals is an inter- imperialist struggle. Even if we take at face value the nonsense about this being just a space opera, this is still true. In this context, the New Mecca leader Imam may represent the comprador bourgeoisie or the national bourgeoisie. It is unclear which is the case, but the principal contradiction is clearly with Necromonger imperialism. The movie may also be criticized for its lack of clarity on whether Riddick opposes the Necromongers for persynal, vengeful reasons, rather than out of a deep hatred for Necromonger imperialism or imperialism in general, but here we have a European lumpen criminal who not only sympathizes with the New Mecca (Helion Prime) people, but also defends them materially when the time is right. Vin Diesel has played the role of bad-guy-turned- reluctant-hero before, in "XXX." In "XXX," he was a petty-bourgeois criminal who saved the united $tates from terrorism. In the postmodern-amoral(2) "The Fast and the Furious," he was a petty- bourgeois criminal who raced sports cars. Vin Diesel was starting to turn into an icon for white supremacist youth, so it interesting to see him in "Chronicles of Riddick" even if he was just following the money. At the beginning of the movie, we see the ragged Riddick being chased by mercenaries. He likens himself to a hunted animal, and he also lives like one. Although Riddick, thinking himself special shit, remarks that he is just "passing through" the prison, his lumpen status is also obvious when he unites with the leader of the Crematoria prisoners. When the leader of the prisoners distinguishes between "inmates" and "convicts," we should hear "lumpen proletariat" and "petty bourgeoisie," and understand that Riddick is among the lumpen group despite his false, subjectivist opinion of himself. In a version of "Chronicles of Riddick" made in a socialist people's republic, the utopian fantasy that a single white persyn can save the world would be axed. Instead, Riddick organizes more exploited and oppressed people to defeat imperialism. Also, the bullshit about Necromongers possibly being gay men who call everyone else "breeders" would be dropped.(3) (Necromongers call non-Necromongers "breeders" in the movie and try to "convert" them.) The part about Riddick's own sexuality being questionable would be kept. While MIM does not support banning sex(4), "Chronicles of Riddick" refrains from depicting romantic sex at the expense of actually gender-oppressed people, and even raises the possibility of revolutionary asexuality. Vin Diesel is obviously a sex symbol in and of himself, but the makers have gone out of their way not to make romantic sex the point of the movie, and they have gone out of their way not to pit patriarchal ideology against the anti- imperialist themes. It is telling that the sexiest, most content womyn character (the Necromonger Dame Vaako) is clearly among the enemy camp.(5) If Vin Diesel is going to make his millions anyway, he should do more movies like "Chronicles of Riddick."
Addendum: Normally, a Maoist movie review does not concern itself with exposing and criticizing every single instance of religion or spiritualism in a movie, or ghosts and souls, etc. This is not Amerikan Atheists for whom the only thing going on is a bourgeois reformist movement for freedom from religious thinking. The focus in "Chronicles of Riddick" is on an anti-imperialist struggle in outer space, so the review reflects this focus. (Technical requirements aside, there is no reason why interplanetary capitalism cannot exist.) Any culture review is influenced by the principal contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations world-wide, and secondarily by the struggle against gender oppression as a part of the struggle against the imperialist- patriarchy. Maoists do not shy away from these struggles for the sake of criticizing religion in the abstract, or focusing on religion in a movie just because the religion is Islam. However, the makers of "Chronicles of Riddick" emphasize that "New Mecca" is a society where different faiths are respected--a Necromonger purifier is rebuked by a Helion Prime citizen for trying to get them to disown their faiths--so this needs to be addressed. What they're getting at is that New Mecca is like a future Saudi Arabia without fundamentalism. How we got from the Mecca of today to this "New Mecca" dripping with Liberal rhetoric about respecting religious diversity is important, but the movie glosses over the history. We see the English-speaking, white (European) race called "Elementals." Again, they are "neutral," but they are obviously trying to cover their own ass when they trick Riddick into traveling to Helion Prime. They are an oppressor nation who dominates New Mecca. In the real world, Euro- Amerikans are installing an imperialist-lackey government in Iraq under the pretext of opposing extremism and fundamentalism, and promoting religious diversity.(6) In the "Pitch Black" prequel to "Chronicles of Riddick," Riddick says that he believes in God but hates him. MIM would encourage Riddick to articulate his gut feelings and reject theism completely so he can better practice materialism and revolutionary science. However, there is a profound difference in line between the M-L-M view of religion, the bourgeois-atheist view of religion, and the Liberal view of religion. For Maoists, having a materialist outlook is a life- and-death issue for the world proletariat. Exploiters and oppressors have the leisure time to philosophize about atheism and theism for years. They don't have an objective interest in atheism. For the exploited and the oppressed, atheism is a necessity, and it must be promoted in an effective and sustainable way.(7) Tactical compromises with religion are not a matter of "respecting" religion in the abstract. They are a matter of grappling with religion among people in the revolutionary camp in a peaceful way. The united front cannot be allowed to fall apart around people who are 25% religious and 75% materialist, or even 75% religious and 25% materialist, as long as they do not try to overthrow the leadership of the proletariat. In fact, if the choice is between religion somewhere in the united front let by the proletariat, and revisionist so-called materialism under the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie, Maoists would prefer that people unite against social-imperialism and grapple with their religious thinking later, or secondarily. Exploited and oppressed people will eventually see religion for what it is: oppressive--whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, or fantasy- Necromonger.(8)
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