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Peter Watkins on Media

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Peter Watkins on Media • DOCUMEMTAR IES • Film, TV and the nuclear a~ocaly~se Peter Watkins On Media Earlier this year on the last leg ofa world-wide fund-raising tour on behalf on his global A Film For Peace: The Nuclear War Film, British expatriate documentarian Peter Watkins was interviewed by Cinema Canada editor Connie Tadros. The interview, originally slatedfor the CBe, was n ever aired, possibly for reasons that the sub­ stance of the interview itselfmake clear. Since the BBC banned Watkins' The War Game in the mid-60s, Watkins began to reflect upon the role of the communications media in contemporary society. The me­ dia, Watkins maintains, are the electronic equivalent of nuclear weapons, causing social fragmen­ tation and linguistic terror on a scale as devastating to the human­ community as would be the actual use of nuclear weaponry. Indeed, Watkins sees a profound relation­ ship between the development of television and the atomic bomb. Only a wide-ranging public debate and a deeply critical questioning of the role of media today can, he says, hope to begin to redress the mass depoliticization that the me­ dia have brought about. Watkins' critique of media, published here in a slightly editedform, is a contri­ bution to that debate. Its publication coincides with the seminar on filmmaking ethics that will be held during the Festival of Festivals. Related to that discus­ sion of the ethical issues faced by filmmakers in the nuclear age, Toronto filmmakers Laura Sky and Cathy Culkin raise some ofthe diffi­ cult questions the.v feelfilmmakers should address. And Peter Wintonick ellplains the Canadian involvement in Watkins' A Film For Peace on which shooting begins this month. Watkins has already begun work on the European portions of the film, and is currently shooting in the U.S.S.R. The following interview is, he says, "historic" - it is the last in­ terview he will give until A Film For Peace: The Nuclear War Film is completed, sometime next year. October 1984 - Cinema Canada/19- • • From the many interviews that I've been One of the major problems that is done it in bits and pieces here or there doing, especially in this last year, with happening in society now, is that so but unfortunately it has circulated the radio and particularly with the many people are expressing despair, for around within an academic environ­ press, there is so much that is left out or e xample. You know that. This is not Illent ilnd has never fed out into the reduced. -I've done so many interviews news to you, it's not news to anyone social process. Semiology, for example, with newspapers, including newspapers liste ning to this, if any of this stuff goes beems to be a comple te blind alley in Scandinavia about four-fifths of the out on the air, that millions of people are which has diverted enormous amounts time, and I've noticed that they re move expressing frustration and hopelessness of intellectual ene rgy in the last two anv comments on the m edia. I could talk at the threat of nuclear war and what decades, unfortunately. about the nuclear arms race - tha t' s thev beli eve to be the ine vitabilitv of So, these are the things that need permitted . But the moment vou come to nu ~ lear war, a nd their lack of funciion­ to be done but one of the great problems the role of the media, w hat you sa\' is ing, their lack of ability to respond to it. is that w e, in the profeSS ion, Conti­ just rem oved . But wha t we a re picking up is a bl'O ader nually make use of the stuff automa­ There is, finally, rather late, but a grovv­ sense of he lplessness now. How can w e tically assuming that it has to be there ing public conscience, there's no doubt believe the fact that p eople don't com­ Why s hould w e make that assumption about it, th at people are becoming municate with each othe r so muc h a nymore ? The n w e should perhaps aware that this extraordinary (medial now ? The fact that th e re is so muc h automatically assume that nuclear process we have been taking p art in has electronic interve ntion that p eople liter­ w eapons have to be there because thev got a lot of problems attendant to it. And ally do not sp eak to e ach other so much are there, r mean vou could say the sam~ I really am dismayed that this debate­ . anymore. When we rece ive information, thing about child~e n climbing chimneys there isn't really a debate ye t. more of a so-called information, one should al to sweep them ; you could use the same consciousness - wasn't really strong 10 ways put quotes around 'information' logic about cancer, or about any kind of years ago. I think it is because the everv time it's used on this tape; now phe nomenon. Thi~ seems to me the structural systems tha t the media re­ ever~ time w e receive so-called infor­ height of despair; we are allowing our­ present, and that it uses, are so reinfor­ mation, w e us ually don't receive it in selves to be impressed by technology, human communication with someone cing and perpetuating and are all part of soning. I mean, it's not even reasoning. impressed by glitter, by fast-moving a centr alized social structure which is else we can look at. To ch eck the p e rson Therefore one really has to say to one­ ima ges ; we are allOWing ourselves,to be out, whe the r we trust the person or not suppressing people now in all societies, self: is it being done deliberately now, dominated by visual overload. We are at all, to check out the human creden­ especially Western society. And the this maintenance of the myth of objec­ handing over so much of ourselves to tials so that w e can the n look back at the media's structures are simply another tivity? We could really go into this a bit. the stuff that w e work with, to the stuff person and say: 'Jus t a minute, you said overlay of grids on the consciousness of The way I've been looking at this is all that w e use for ego-gratification, for just now that 23 5,000 people w ere s u f­ people: just another mesh over the top, so personal and I've been greatly attacked creative self-fulfillment. We have cross­ And I think that why the debate is begin­ for doing this. But it's useful, valid evi­ fering from this or that, I didn't quite ed over a kind of invisible blurrv line ning very, very la te is a sign of the catch that fi gure .. what is your reference some\-v here .. dence, I' ll give you an exahlple. For point, can you tell me more about it? efficacy of these systems tha t ar e simp ly instance ; one of the reasons why m\' Jt's reallv very dangerous to put the Say it again etc. etc.' And this kind of fragmenting and alienating, confusing work has been continually attacked, problem in these simplified terms. But I mode of functioning w hich is basic to and disorientating. Our profession - ve ry often attacked by the profession, is see the media as being very much over w hat w e are, or a t lea st w e w ere, basic let's make absolutely no mis take about beca use it is supposed to be manipula­ us, domin ating us like the kind of globe it - our profession has become more to the human species ; [ mean, w e are tive : the reason given for banning The that Atla s is holding and what we need and more defensive, self-defensive, - not yet quite electronic neutrons al­ War Game was that the film was subjec­ to do is to take it from over us and to nobody could deny this, whatever other though it's something becoming open take it down to a lateral position in tive propaganda or that kind of thing. point there is controversy on - and it' s for debate now .. We seem to be very which w e can use it for the purposes of But our profession will never switch its probably the last profession on the face case to itself ; never, will never discuss much by-passing the most fundamental entertainme nt, for creative fulfillment, of this earth which absolutely refuses to the way it is manipulative. r mean, until way of communicating with one another. for communication, all those things. but The fa ct that we communicate with allow any kind of interior dialogue or w e are prepared to understand that all with a totally different relationship than criticism or debate, let alone, God for­ communication, whatever the inten­ each other in all these somewhat ques­ at present. The relationship we have at bid, contact with the public that could tion, good or bad, machiavellian or be­ tionable ways, does not automatically the moment with the mass media is one m ean that they are necessary or good or open up this secretive masonic order neficient, is actually clinically mani­ of total and absolute subserviance, with which we guard the dissemination that they should not be challanged.
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