Frantz Fanon, born on this day in 1925, was a West Indian Pan-Africanist philosopher and Algerian revolutionary most known for his text The Wretched of the Earth.
Fanon was born to an affluent family on the Caribbean island of Martinique, then a French colony which is still under French control today. As a teenager, he was taught by communist anti-colonial thinker Aimé Césaire (1913 - 2008).
Fanon was exposed to much European racism during World War II. After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, a Nazi government was set up in Martinique by French collaborators, whom he describedas taking off their masks and behaving like "authentic racists".
Fighting for the Allied forces, Fanon also observed European women liberated by black soldiers preferring to dance with fascist Italian prisoners rather than fraternize with their liberators.
While completing a residency in psychiatry in France completing, Fanon wrote and published his first book, "Black Skin, White Masks" (1952), an analysis of the negative psychological effects of colonial subjugation upon black people.
Following the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in November 1954, Fanon joined the Front de Libération Nationale, a nationalist Algerian party. Working at a French hospital in Algeria, Fanon became responsible for treating the psychological distress of the French troops who carried out torture to suppress anti-colonial resistance, as well as their Algerian victims.
While organizing for Algerian independence in Ghana, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia that would ultimately kill him. He spent the last year of his life writing his most famous work, "The Wretched of the Earth" (French: Les Damnés de la Terre). The text provides a psychiatric analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization and examines the possibilities of anti-colonial liberation
Following a trip to the Soviet Union to treat his leukemia, Fanon came to the U.S. in 1961 for further treatment in a visit arranged by the CIA. Fanon died in Bethesda, Maryland on December 6th, 1961 under the name of "Ibrahim Fanon", a Libyan nom de guerre he had assumed in order to enter a hospital after being wounded during a mission for the Algerian National Liberation Front.
"In the World through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself."
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early reviews of Ari Aster's Eddington (2025) had me worried it was gonna be enlightened centrist slop but posts i saw on trueanon & remembering that most movie critics are shitlibs has me optimistic that it's more a critique of both shitlibs and conservatives from the left
minor eddington spoilers
spoiler
it's centrist in that it doesn't state any solutions or allude to a better way. movie identifies "corporations" as the central villain in society and everything else is a conspiracy to let them maintain powerthe criticism of libs is south park tier caricatures that libs are all literal children who are mad and change their feelings on a whim.
conservatives got off as falling down style anti heroes who occasionally consume (true) conspiracies but are just sad because there is abuse in their world
first two acts of the movie is dogshit as a result. third act and epilogue fuckin rip though
overall mediocre movie and i won't be surprised when people with no media literacy love it
I enjoyed it a lot.
spoiler
I do not read this as a centrist movie at all. As you say it very clearly places the villain as a megacorp datacenter, but the criticism is valid. The liberal protestors are incredibly performative and are removed from any co sequence of the original issue. The right wingers are weirdo conspiracy freaks, one who literally murders his rival and his kid lol and is an massive dipshit the entire movie, and frames his only black deputy for the murder.Capital is the only winner in the movie. That the political theater of these idiots in the movie mean nothing and lack direction. It shows how easily the tech companies bailed on corporate dems (Ted Garcia) and fell right into these right wing freaks (Cross' Stepmom).
Nobody who had a real fucking problem in the movie received any help from anyone. Cross' wife was completely ignored and shit on from the start, and she left and joined a cult. The homeless pissed off The Mayor, the Sheriff, The liberal children, and everyone else before being randomly killed and never seen again.
Everyone in the film is trying to manipulate the suffering for their own game, whether it is their spouses' trauma for political gain, or the suffering of black people to impress a girl and sleep with her. The only thing that wins in this whole film is capital. It was never going to be affected at all.
The movie aint gotta say THE PROBLEM IS CAPITAL AND THE ONLY SOLUTION IS REVOLUTION lol. It is just saying that the events of 2020 were a farce, and capital won.
Seems lefty to me. Doesn't havent to explicitly advocate for revolution.
Anyway sorry for the rant. I enjoyed the movie a lot.
Spoiler
I loved it too. My favorite part was that all levels of wonky conspiracy lead to right wing cults and white Supremacy. The movie captured 2020 american paranoia and how fast it spread and tore towns/cities apart well.I like that the movie didn't take a direct stand nor present any solutions. It ended at where we are today, we're all Joe unable to act; can only watch.
spoiler
Lmao my partner got mad at me because I fucking hated it. I literally told him that Joaquin Phoenix's character was totally portrayed as someone to sympathize with the whole time, and that it was basically a shitty remake of Falling Down but Michael Douglas' freakout seemed more warranted.I laughed at the Antifa super soldiers flying into town, but it seriously upset me when they used Michael as bait and fucking BLEW HIM UP.
He said that it was satire, yeah fucking right lol
Spoiler
I'd argue the main character was only "portrayed as sympathetic" because they're the main character. I didn't see him as right nor correct, after 10-15 mins in the film I knew he wasn't someone to root for. Neither was the liberal mayor of course. But what makes these characters work is they're complex, minimally correct, and consumed by their individualized reality, which is the average American unfortunately.spoiler
So there can be and are protagonists in films that are portrayed as insufferable, he is not one that evokes that emotion. You can feel detached from him, sure, but he isn't someone you dislike. He is much more sympathetic than any of the "woke" characters, which is very frustrating to me. The portrayal of them is MUCH more ham fisted than any of the chud characters, even when the pigs are framing Michael and Cross assassinated the Mayor and his son, it felt completely emotionless. Throughout the film I felt much more disdain for all of the "woke" characters than I did a single one of the chuds, their insufferability was much more obvious and fleshed out. This is what frustrates me about it all. Perhaps frustrating me was Asters aim (triggered lib!), and I'm not media literate enough to see it for its brilliance but it was just bad IMO. I feel like it COULD have been very good but it was all so shallow for a 2.5 hour long movie. He could have done SO MUCH MORE in that time.Spoiler
I think that's fair criticism, he could have gone harder on chuds but that doesn't mean he should go easy on the performative liberals of 2020. The plot was so lost in 2020 because people were just regurgitating things from their internet feed. That's why nothing material was gained, remember the peaceful protest discourse or the kneeling? And the chuds didn't really get portrayed well either. The movie didn't say mask bad-Joe got covid- or BLM bad. There wasn't direct stance on anything because it's not that movie. I think it's about technology, specifically scrolling, is manipulating us while some random mega corporation pushes forward their agenda in the backgroundspoiler
Yeah, I agree that he should have been critical of performative libs for sure, but there was no other layer or complexity to that, everything just felt very surface level to me. And while he didnt explicitly say "mask bad" or "BLM bad", there were the scenes where the grocery store employee was basically assaulting the poor old man who wouldnt wear his mask because he had asthma or whatever, and then the Antifa super soldiers using a black man as literal bait in order to try to murder Cross. It was the build up of many of these very brief interactions that made me roll my eyes. When I first recognized how frustrated I was with the film I was like "Okay, this is probably a reaction that was meant to be elicited, itll probably get better and the story will develop more" but that just never happened for me. Someone in their Letterboxd review just called it "Edgington" and that hit for me lolI just wish that everything was developed more. I feel like I missed the significance of technological influence because I feel like it's just a given that we all understand how insidious it is. But when you phrase it that way it couldve been very intentional that it was barely touched on at all.
In any case it must be good because I've been thinking about it a lot and trying to figure out if the film just went went totally over my head