Tonight @ 22:00 hours on More4 I watched Michael Winterbottom’s (A director you will know best for 24 Hour Party People) screen adaptation of Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine, a film that Klein herself has disowned due to differences in the structure and tone of the movie, quickly I will sum up the dispute; Klein wanted less narration and more interviews with sufferers and those behind the shock doctrine, instead Winterbottom has gone for narration. I understand where Klein is coming from on this issue, yes there is plenty of evidence and backbone to the minor clips of theoretical discussion Klein puts across, but sadly, there just isn’t enough theoretical discussion in this movie, a tiny amount so that the average viewer knows what is going on but not enough to totally engage you with her wider argument. So, due to this I will have to buy her book once it decides to fall in price.
Saying that The Shock Doctrine is still an enjoyable and educating film, and to balance the two can often be hard as too much of one can turn a film inaccurate and too much of the other can make you fall asleep.
The film begins with showing what The Shock Doctrine is in psychiatric terms, it tells us that it is a way to gain intelligence from the enemy through torture – sleep deprivation, barking dogs, dazing etc. and how it was first discovered that these techniques garnered information.
Next we see the teachings of economist Milton Friedman, basically unregulated economy with no state intervention – for you budding GCSE students out there ‘keep your hands off what isn’t yours!’ and how Friedman started academies and taught students in Chile, before and after the Pinochet military coup. The Pinochet coup and regime was the most insightful and frightening showcase of the powers of the Shock Doctrine - thousands of men and women ‘disappearing’ and ultimately being murdered, protests being broken up, supreme poverty due to Friedman’s economic manifesto. During Pinochet’s reign early on, and even later, a huge rise in poverty was shown and the rich got fatter simply. However, at the same time Winterbottom shows that these policies where not able to be carried out in Western democracies due to General Elections, instead Western economies often found boosts from the government, like America before the re-election of Tricky Dicky.
However, comparisons are drawn between Milk Snatcher Thatcher and Pinochet, both who did steal the milk from the kiddies. Thatcher carried out the same tactics of Pinochet, just under a more legitimate cloud. She showed this through her use of the police force to break up the coal strikes in 1984-1985 and also the war against Argentina. The war in Argentina is depicted as imperialist and a way for Thatcher to re-assert her and Britain’s dominance on a world and national stage. Thus, implicating the Shock Doctrine through use of brute force, and like in Chile depicting it as a great nationalist and patriotic victory.
Thatcher was loyal to Friedman’s idea of ‘freedom’ selling off state ownership in waterworks, British airways, steel, housing, telephone and others, as you will more than well know. Pure economics according to Friedman, but this leads to a problem in the film that aggravated me because Winterbottom never went into debt on the point, a point that could have won people over to the argument more: he never explored the idea that shares in these companies were not bought by ordinary people, but massive corporations who had millions, if not billions, and ultimately do not give interests into the level of satisfaction or service they provide, but are there to put profit before people.
Anyway, I divulge – another dynamite segment of the film, just as shocking, is the depiction of the American army. This shows how Bush et al privatised mass parts of the army, and the day before 9/11 Dick Cheney made a speech in which he disclosed that he aimed to sell the army to private companies – a chilling thought. In 2007 there were more private company individuals than there were to every 100 hundred American soldiers. It’s made even weird with the fact that the creator of this economic ideology does not even agree with the privatisation of the military. Systematically, it shows that common Shock Doctrine techniques have been used in Iraq as other countries before it, disappearance of people, dead bodies by roadside for warning etc.
However, on a brighter note it’s suggested that we, the human mass, are overcoming the Shock Doctrine, and maybe it will no longer affect us, but still, I’d like to see that. I am going to buy the book and hopefully then I will have more of an understanding of the theory, but it seems interesting from what the documentary showed.
