This Revolution Must Be Televised
Hope. A concept easier to describe, yet harder to materialise than love. Hope. The one concept that has allowed the human race to survive as long as we have. Survivors of long-term incarceration and solitary confinement say the saving grace is maintaining your humanity. Reminding yourself, no matter how, of who you are. That’s what gets you to the end.
There are two films that defined my American childhood: Cinema Paradiso and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Not exactly your Disney fairytale fare, but oeuvres that have been in my unconscious since the days I say them as a pre-teen. The latter is a difficult film to find. I think in the past 25 years I’ve come across it only once on the air, in some hotel in some foreign country. In those 25 years it’s remained on my Amazon list—when I used Amazon—and has faithfully populated my Thriftbooks wishlist, waiting for the day when a rare DVD copy will become available for me to scoop up. The universe must have been listening because I recently subscribed to the glorious Criterion Channel and what film was waiting for me? Kiss of the Spider Woman.
The story and premise are not earth shattering: Two men are confined together in a South American jail in the time of a military dictatorship. Luis Molina is gay; Valentin Arregui is a staunch revolutionary. They’ve both been incarcerated because they didn’t toe the junta line. As you would expect, over the course of nearly two hours the men become close; an unlikely pair relying on one other for survival. They bond over Molina’s recounting of a movie he once saw, a film that you—and Valentin--quickly realise is Nazi propaganda. It’s a love story set with the juicy plot twists of betrayal and murder, romantic fluff that Valentin says is not reality. Yet, time and time again, he lets Molina continue on with the story until it’s climactic end.
What you’re watching in Spider Woman, is the process by which hope functions. The film opens with the bleak greyness of a cell; the camera pans around the room showing the confinement; then Hurt’s beautiful deep baritone comes in, engaging us in the story. This opening exemplifies the dangerous and dark place’s hope lies, encouraging through words that you do not see but hear. A spurring on of a feeling deep within yourself that keeps you going. It’s not tangible but palpable.
Hope appears from the most unlikely characters. Valentin, the uncompromising revolutionary. Molina the fantasist gay man. The Spider Woman. The stories Molina tells are tales of humanity during a most in humane time. Both in fantasy and reality, people are being denied their humanity, forced to survive under unimaginable circumstances. And yet they do. From the resistance fighters to two men who know their endings may not be sweet, all continue towards an unseen goal that they believe in. No one knows how they’ll get there, but they know it’ll be right.
Every day I wake up and search for the beacons of light. I listen for the booming timbre that’ll awake our world. Quite often I get nothing back and I curl up and beg. There never is a magic answer to my pleading, no big bright neon sign that says ‘salvation this way.’ So, I put my head down, get to work and start writing stories. Kiss of the Spider Woman is the story of hope in darkness. It’s about finding humanity in the least likely people in the unlikeliest places. It’s a film that would never be made today and that’s the heartbreaking. The artistic landscape of our present time is so filled with fear that barely a piece can be made without someone looking over their shoulder for some reason. That’s a pity, because now more than ever we need art. Art that pokes and prods at our typical ways, questioning our baseness through unexpected megaphones. We need stories on the page, on the canvas, on the screen that’ll get our hearts beating into believing. That’ll get us off our bloody phones and back into our natural habits. Don’t switch of the TV’s, keep them on, just make sure what you’re blasting isn’t always soul destroying. The greatest line in Kiss of the Spider Woman comes from the least expected bullhorn; In Molina’s film the Nazi Obersturmbannführer says ‘the ruling classes keep the prices of goods up to keep control of the people.’ Think about that.
I have tried, and reckon, failed spectacularly at putting an enigmatic human essential into words. Hope is to be felt not seen, yet in our age must be. To understand it is to close one’s eyes, breathe and trust that something good is coming. That that feeling of warmth, uncertainty and giddiness is what’s going to get us through.
*Image Courtesy of cheapledtvs.co.uk