Gory thriller needs Maoist interpretation

   reviewed by MC5
   
   "Blade" has received some acclaim, because "we have our first
   universally popular African-American cartoon character 'Hero'." The
   notion is that there are no Black superheroes, especially none with
   martial arts skills. Along comes Wesley Snipes to play a physically
   buff superhero. Reviewer Dana Chandler also finds N'Bush Wright a
   convincingly sexy Black female in true Hollywood, superhero movie
   style. For MIM, however, tokenism is not enough of a reason to acclaim
   this movie, so we delve deeper.
   
   The movie has some science fiction special effects that make it no "B"
   grade movie. However, despite the redeeming factor of having a Black
   superhero, the movie sticks to its vampires are evil premise to have
   an excuse for violence aimed at audience popularity.
   
   By establishing unquestionably evil vampires as enemies, the producer
   or director created excuses for gory scene after gory scene. Blade is
   named for how he kills the vampires preying on the humyn species.
   
   The movie does not make full use of its potential for political impact
   though. There is a pseudo-political struggle between the Black man and
   the Black womyn in the movie in which Blade must explain to the
   newcomer that the real world is ruled by vampire violence that
   requires a violent response.
   
   Police are portrayed as pawns of the vampires. When they barge in on a
   struggle with the bad guys, they shoot the wrong side. Later a white
   male cop is seen running errands for the vampires and the Black womyn
   is caught showing sympathy for the white cop, which causes a struggle
   that Blade eventually wins.
   
   Of course, what Blade must say to win the struggle is initially deemed
   as far-fetched, and in this communists see a glimmer of materialist
   self-recognition. What we communists say should be grounded in
   materialist reality, but sometimes the more grounded in material
   reality, the more far-fetched something sounds to the masses. Blade
   teaches us that it is important to continue with the struggle if we
   are scientifically correct but unpopular. Certainly Blade is
   scientifically correct in the movie and the masses are living in a
   dream-world or political stupor in which the vampires are feeding on
   them and murdering them.
   
   In fact, Blade also raises for us Maoists the question of People's
   War. Blade and his one old laboratory friend who makes vampire-killing
   weapons essentially fight the vampires alone. They have sealed
   themselves off from the masses, because the masses live in such a
   stupor. The vampires are so prevalent and powerful that trusting
   anyone simply leads to a chance for the vampires to kill Blade and his
   engineer ally. When Blade decides to trust the Black female character
   in the movie, he chides himself and his ally chides him for showing
   mercy to the enemy-presumably out of humanist concern for the injured
   female or highly repressed sexual drive. It turns out that the
   supposed mistake of trusting and struggling with the Black female hero
   was a good idea in the end, and so there should be some lesson in
   relying on the people.
   
   In Maoism, there is usually more of an emphasis on preparing public
   opinion for People's War, not the war of heroes. The war of heroes
   idea is more prevalent in the works of Che Guevara and Regis Debray,
   focoist military strategists who promote a losing strategy.
   
   In the context of the movie, Blade almost always has tactical military
   superiority over any combination of his enemies that he might come
   across. For this reason it is tempting to ignore the role of the
   masses and simply slaughter the vampire enemy. On the other hand,
   Blade and his friends both realize that the struggle would be lost if
   they were to die for some reason. Indeed, the engineer has cancer and
   Blade himself is getting older and is struggling with his own vampire
   side. Plus, there is always the chance that a vampire trick could
   result in the deaths of two or three fighters. Meanwhile, the vampire
   population is international and reproduces. Hence, ultimately, even in
   the fantasy situation where Blade has general tactical military
   superiority, he should have waged more of a People's War.
   
   If cultural work should be subtle, then this movie may be counted as a
   success because vampires seem to be far removed from the real world
   and thus the potential political expression in the movie is muted.
   
   The vampires control real estate and the city government, so the
   vampires can be taken as a metaphor for the bourgeoisie. The only
   problem is that all of this occurs at such a subliminal and
   fantasy-oriented level, that it becomes questionable whether it will
   offset its negative features in once again portraying "aliens"--this
   time vampires--as worthy of militarist hatred.
   
   There is a strong argument for this movie. The main counterargument
   concerns whether we believe that political cultural work should be
   directly and blatantly understood by the masses. The fact that the
   public views Archie Bunker as a hero and not as the object of satire
   in "All in the Family" should be a warning to cultural workers. What
   matters is not how Hollywood producers and intellectuals appreciate a
   movie but how the whole public viewing audience appreciates it.
   
   We are afraid the public will see in "Blade" another excuse for
   individual heroes who come up with their own reasons for violence.
   While Blade has good reasoning for violence, many viewers will come up
   with their own justifications for serial killing. "Blade" is not as
   bad as a Black "Rambo" would be, but it walks on a fine line.
   Certainly wherever we communists manage to reach the people in
   connection to this movie, we can turn it into a good thing by
   discussing the issues in this review.
   
   Note:
   
   The Boston People's Voice 4Sept1998, p. 12.