No Authority #5: BORN IN FLAMES
A Series On The Lessons Of Anti-Fascist Cinema
As our culture continues its slow, aching bend toward acquiescence and accommodation of authoritarian power, ideas, principles, and propaganda, I am writing a series about the lessons of representation of authoritarianism and resistance in cinema. Thanks for reading and please share if you are so inclined.
Previously:
#1: SALÓ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
#2: TONY MANERO
#3: THE CREMATOR
#4: A HIDDEN LIFE
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The 1970’s saw a wave of revolutionary violence that sought the political transformation of society within Western democracies. First, rising out of the anti-war movement and of the post-WWII generation living in a divided Germany, the Red Army Faction (RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group) began in 1968 when its leaders, having been arrested for arson as part of an anti-war action in Frankfurt, decided to flee Germany to escape a likely prison sentence. From there, they reconnected and went underground to form the RAF. By 1970, they had begun raising money for their revolutionary activities through bank robberies, which were followed in 1972 by a wave of targeted bombings against US military installations, West German politicians, and corporate media institutions. The RAF continued their campaign with assassinations, kidnappings, and hijackings, all in an effort to overthrow the state. When the first wave of leaders were imprisoned or killed, new RAF members replaced them1, continuing its campaign in the years that followed.
Experiencing similar political discontents, the Weather Underground was initially formed in 1969 in the United States as a breakaway group from the leadership of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Initially focused on fighting against the war in Vietnam, SDS undertook a campaign to organize poor communities and communities of color across the country. The experience transformed the thinking of activists within the group, inspiring a refusal to engage with non-violent protest and toward a more globalist, revolutionary approach to stopping the Vietnam War and ending state violence in communities of color. In the final days of 1969, this faction formally splintered from SDS2 at a “War Council” meeting3 and established a new, underground organization. By 1970, the Weather Underground had declared itself a “revolutionary party” with the stated goal of overthrowing the government of the United States. Their actions spoke to their belief in the political legitimacy of violence, staging symbolic and strategic bombings that sought to foment a revolution among the masses4.
It never arrived.
Lizzie Borden’s BORN IN FLAMES, begun in the late-1970’s in the wake of the political violence that shaped the decade5, takes the revolutionary impulses of its time and offers a seismic shift in cinematic possibility. Set during the 10th anniversary of a successful, bloodless socialist revolution in the United States, the film examines the failures of post-revolutionary social transformation in the lives of women. Even a revolutionary government won’t fix historic inequality, Borden argues, because it ends up being run by men— as labor markets contract and inflation soars, women are moved out of union jobs in favor of men, the fight for universal income for women who work in the home never arrives, the civil rights of lesbians (specifically) are not addressed, access to opportunity and investment for black women living in under-resourced communities (specifically) remains non-existent, sexual harassment and sexual violence against women by men (specifically) is rampant, and the refusal of the media to give voice to women continues. The conditions of post-revolutionary life undermine the professed goals of the now-institutionalized government, and so, the women of New York City undertake the formation of a Women’s Army to both combat sexual violence and force the necessary social changes that will bring about true equality6. Every revolution is an ongoing process of social transformation, but can society ever embrace true liberation?
No film gets at the revolutionary possibilities of cinema quite like BORN IN FLAMES. Borden blends non-fiction scenes of New York City protests against inequality with staged scenes of “post-revolution” demonstrations, documentary footage of worker strikes shown alongside fictional news reports, and utilizes sly montages of images to bring together ideas about sex, labor, and consumerism that are systemically shaping the narrative world she is constructing. Crucially, Borden’s film is focused on a broad spectrum of women and their ideas, framed within the local context of (then) contemporary New York City, creating a community focus that highlights how different revolutionary activities can operate across a variety of social, creative, and professional spaces.
Importantly, Borden understands the power that access to media holds over the ways in which women are silenced. The film juxtaposes women in institutional media roles, constantly analyzing their position in the struggle and the meaning of their work while having their voices suppressed by male superiors, against the underground voices of women using pirate radio to demand change, to organize, to call women to action. Borden’s astute analysis of media power comes to a head when Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield), one of the founders and key organizers of the Women’s Army, is arrested7. With the state refusing to tell the truth, the authorities engaged in a coverup, and the media unwilling to investigate, the women take matters into their own hands, hijacking a local television broadcast to demand justice. This action escalates the women’s war against the media, culminating in the film’s eerily prescient final shot, which foreshadows transformative real-world violence to come8.
One of cinema’s greatest assets, its ability to establish intimacy between characters and audiences, is also one of its greatest limitations as a tool for imagining large scale political change. When film is forced to deal with a collective subject, the mechanisms of political action are often reduced to a series of smaller actions that, even taken together, do not describe effective, systemic change— instead, everything is personalized. These limitations are also reflected in real-world so-called “revolutionary actions”, which begin with grand theoretical designs and often end up as a series of small, symbolic decisions that seek only to perpetuate the act of resistance itself.
Consider a film like ARMY OF SHADOWS, which shows us the French Resistance as a series of high stakes operations that are not much more than moving people around safely and springing members of the French Resistance from jail, and how it foretells the deep limitations of acts by groups like the RAF, who spent inordinate amounts of energy kidnapping and murdering people in order to help liberate RAF members from prison. At some point, self-interested acts of personal and political survival lose their relationship to the goals of social transformation. So too in cinema, where the actions of characters and subjects often demand the valorization of the narrative of individual heroism, sacrificing the full story of movements and their collective work to achieve their goals.
The asymmetrical monopoly of state violence, the one-sided institutional acquiescence to the ruling party, and the sheer size and scale of national organizing in the United States require an individual contraction into areas where smaller, collective actions can have immediate impact on the community. Borden understands this intrinsically, taking the international political and cultural challenges of gender inequality and centering them in the New York City in which she lives, creating collaborative space in her art for the voices she seeks to represent, and thus enlarging her argument from the realm of individualism (including her own) into shared action, experience, and artistic creation9.
Yes, Borden’s world is fictional, but it also is rooted in the lives and aspirations of women coming together across cultural and class lines to create one of the most meaningful portraits of systemic analysis in cinema. The collaboration undertaken in making the film, the process itself, manifests as a collective revolutionary sensibility that, even though it is localized, is extremely effective— fiction, non-fiction, guerrilla filmmaking, staged sequences, montage, post-punk and soul music combine to create the collective voice that defines the film. Borden uses the material conditions of her time and place to create a call to action that establishes a roadmap for collective action in the act of filmmaking itself.
And so, as we are confronted with overwhelming state and institutional power and wildly asymmetric applications of violence and resources, what constitutes meaningful collective action now?
We know that in spite of the work accomplished by so many, there is a regressive oppositional force in the world, backed by the unlimited resources of the state, individual, and corporate interests, that will seek to destroy whatever progress is made in the fight for transformative, inclusive change. After a long campaign of disinformation and violent and illegal actions, these regressive forces hold power in this country and, predictably, have decided to attack the same communities that Borden and her collaborators sought to liberate— women10, lesbians and LGBTQIA+ people11, black women and communities of color12, union labor13, immigrants and dissenters14, even filmmakers and artists15.
Like Borden’s characters, we are now living in the aftermath of someone else’s revolution. The dominance of regressive power is institutional, using the levers of the democratic process to dismantle democracy itself. If the tide is ever going to turn again, collaborative action is urgently required. BORN IN FLAMES is not a narrative or character-driven roadmap for achieving that change, but instead a valuable lesson in the power of collectivizing the process, locally and inclusively, to help us begin the fight immediately.
This splintering had the effect of shutting down the main SDS operational structure soon after
The War Council was held in my hometown of Flint, MI and, as I was growing up in Reagan’s 1980s, I sometimes heard stories about it from my friends’ parents. Like Woodstock, everyone was seemingly there.
The ascent of the surveillance state and the primacy of electronic security networks in the wake of 9/11 have seemingly made a contemporary, organized “underground” seemingly impossible. Different times, for sure.
The film was finished in 1983 and, interestingly, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.
It must be noted that both the RAF and The Weather Underground had women in senior positions of leadership, including Ulrike Meinhof of the RAF (about whom, more in another footnote below) and Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground. It seems to me that these women were very much a part of Borden’s own thinking in creating BORN IN FLAMES.
***SPOILER***
Adelaide is found dead in her jail cell, with the state claiming she committed suicide but her allies believing she was murdered and that the state is covering it up. This is the exact situation that played out in the death of Ulrike Meinhof in May of 1976 and it seems to me Meinhof’s death directly inspired Borden’s film. In Germany, the RAF took revenge, murdering the German Attorney General Siegfried Buback in April of 1977. In BORN IN FLAMES, Borden’s characters are inspired by Adelaide’s death to seize control of the media in order to disseminate the truth.
***SPOILER AGAIN! SORRY! BUT…***
The final shot of BORN IN FLAMES shows the Women’s Army bombing of the broadcast transmitter atop the World Trade Center. The dramatic explosion is a deeply, eerily prescient visual anticipation of the 9/11 attack on Lower Manhattan and thus, today feels ironic.
This is even more remarkable when you consider Borden’s experience with her prior film, the documentary REGROUPING, which was an attempt at building a collective filmmaking process with a group of of women who met regularly to discuss their own lives. But as the subjects grew increasingly unhappy with the making of the film, REGROUPING ended up a profound interrogation of its own artistic process. The subjects denied permission for the film to be screened once it was completed, and so it was difficult to see for decades. It was recently restored and permission was finally given by the subjects. As of this writing, it is screening on the Criterion Channel.
We are experiencing a tsunami of bans on transgender people, LGBTQIA+ history, books, ideas, and public representations.
Like the destruction of economic opportunity, historical recognition, and democratic participation through orders dismantling non-discrimination and proactive inclusion policies
Like the dismantling of the NLRB and the Department of Labor
Like the unconscionable, illegal deportation and imprisonment programs being enacted against migrants and students
Through the termination of National Endowment for The Humanities grants that support non-fiction filmmaking