Have any of you seen Punishment Park?

[snappydresser]

I think the only thing we'll agree on is that it's a deeply disturbing film.

I have no problem with the "speculative documentary" format, personally. If 
that makes the film more about media politics than politics proper, so be 
it. Isn't that a worthy subject, too?

Cinematically, I think Punishment Park is a minor triumph. The documentary 
style totally sucks you in. A satire without comedy (is there a word for 
that?), Punishment Park works as an action thriller, near-future science 
fiction, an angry dialectic, and a horror movie for hippies. Having the 
actors (mostly amateurs) on both sides of "the law" improvise their 
self-defense testimony using their personal politic beliefs was very 
effective. It was difficult not to imagine having to defend my own less than 
popular beliefs before a committee of steadfast and resolute ideologues.

That the characters were (some rather obvious) doppelgangers for 
counterculture figures of the time didn't bother me, either. Those who 
occasionally sounded like they were reading from a script (the cops and the 
morality counsel) were the ones who might actually sound scripted in real 
life, which made it all the more jarring when they flew off the handle.

Some have argued that the film is pornography for paranoids, but one of its 
most compelling aspects was that Watkins extrapolated his vision from 
existing legislation: the McCarran National Security Act of 1950.  Just 
because things never got as bad as the film portrays, that doesn't mean they 
couldn't have. The Nixonian dystopia Watkins envisions is relatively 
realistic, even feasible. And it definitely has more than a faint echo of 
certain passages from Vineland.

I would recommend Punishment Park to anybody who enjoys and appreciates the 
works of Thomas Pynchon.

Cheers!
YOPJ

>
> i have seen it, and even though watkins' politics are very close to mine, 
> i didn't really like the manipulative side of it, fake tv documentary 
> etc... there is something about it that i find even more disturbing than 
> what it criticizes. i think that by making a fake tv documentary it tends 
> to shift the focus from politics to media politics, and i don't think that 
> was his original goal.
> what do you think?