Martes, John Cris C.

BLIS – 2A

The Battle in Seattle (Reaction Paper)

I don’t have any grand opinion about it’s quality as entertainment. It isn’t great art, but it did hold my attention.
More importantly, it’s about as close as Hollywood usually ever comes to even slightly grasping the reality of a
major grassroots protest… which isn’t necessarily saying a lot. It is worthy in how it gives one some idea of what
it might feel like to be at such an event. But, of course, it inevitably leaves out a lot of context and substance. It’s
only a movie, after all. In order to have any real understanding, you would’ve had to been there and have read
tons of material about it.

I realize many people criticize the film because of its failings, but I’m annoyed by people who criticize it with an
attitude of superiority. It’s just a fucking movie. Anyway, it introduces a lot of people to an event that they would
otherwise be ignorant about. It might even inspire some people do some research to learn something new.

Anyway, here is one scene or conversation that caught my attention.

Sam: “How do you stop those who stop at nothing?”

Jay: “You don’t stop.”

You could say that it’s just cheesy dialogue (“The conversations are made up of clichés or slogans.”), but that
misses the point. Cheese or not, it is still true. That is the 64 million dollar question. I feel that question gnawing
at my mind (not the exact wording, but the sentiment of the question). It’s always there. The character realizes
that those with power control everything including the media. This protest was before the rise of the internet as
we now know it. The average person couldn’t easily put videos on the web and have it go viral. Still, even with
the internet today, most people feel just as powerless. The mainstream media only reports what is in the interest
of the corporations that own the media.

But that wasn’t the real reason I wanted to post about this movie. I was curious about the lines I quoted above
and so did a websearch. I found two reviews which both portrayed different versions of an attitude of superiority.

The first reviewer is someone who apparently is an activist and he feels superior out of some sense of
haughtiness. His review had two parts (here is the first part), but it was the second part that interested me where
he has some minor commentary on the above scene. His commentary lacks any deep insight and so I won’t
quote it, just wanted to point it out as an example. The author seemed to be expressing garden variety cynicism…
and was looking down upon mere mortals who might enjoy this movie as an introduction to a major event in US
history. I guess he is too cool for any movie made for the masses.

The second reviewer annoyed me even more and I will quote the relevant section below. Basically, the reviewer
was entirely ignorant of this major event despite his working in the media at the time. He acts nonchalant, maybe
even slightly proud, about his own ignorance. And then he blames the movie for not lessening his ignorance
(considering the degree of his ignorance, that is probably expecting too much out of a movie based on a complex
event).

Townsend's film ends with the admonition that "the battle continues." The struggle in the coming years will be to
compel those in power to transform campaign-trail rhetoric into a real rejection of corporate globalization. The
White House would still like to pass ever-newer "free trade" agreements. And the WTO, while bruised and
battered, has not been eliminated entirely. Because its original mandate is still intact, the institution has
considerable power in dictating the terms of economic development in much of the world. Opposing this will
require continued grassroots pressure.
On a broader level, huge challenges of global poverty, inequality, militarism, and environmental degradation
remain. Few, if any, participants in the 1999 mobilization believed that a single demonstration would eliminate
these problems in one tidy swoop, and I very much doubt that anyone involved with the Battle in Seattle thinks
a single film will solve them either. But the coming fight will be easier if the spirit that drove those protests
animates a new surge of citizen activism in the post-Bush era.