ST ch 19 French 75s, Greasy Thumb Guzik

[Robin Landseadel]

I understand what you are saying about the initial setting of the movie in the Obama era. Of course, no names are named. However, the historical POV of most of the movie is in the present tense, or at least a present tense. Thank you for mentioning Assata Shakur and Fred Hampton. That would be more on-point, in that regard you are right as regards French 75. The point of 24fps was to document police actions against protesters, something that was happening a lot at Earth First and associated rallies in the Emerald Triangle in the late 1980s/early 1990s, lots of folks circling the scene with handheld videocams. 

> On 05/11/2026 8:17 AM PDT Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Saw One Battle After Another a couple of days ago. "French 75" appears to be a group modeled after the SDS or Black Panthers but set in the present tense rather than the late 1960s/early 1970s like 24fps.
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> French 75 appears to me to be modeled after more violent groups like The Weathermen and BLA, and Perfidia clearly referenced Assata Shakur, who died about a week (if I remember) before OBAA had its theatrical release. The violence of these groups was a response to the FBI's assassination of Fred Hampton and the excesses of the Nixon administration and COINTELPRO. To set a similar group ahistorically in the tepid years of the late Obama period seems politically tone deaf to me. It's not something that Pynchon would ever do, and certainly didn't do in Vineland. That's one of my many objections to the movie.
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> Laura 
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