Privilege (review)

Privilegehas long been regarded as Peter Watkins' great lost movie that, since its truncated initial release, has remained largely unseen for decades. Aside from the occasional screening on television and at film festivals, the only chance to see Privilegewas confined to those willing to forage around the grey market for a dodgy print ripped from an old television broadcast. However, it is now widely available for the first time thanks to New Yorker Video.

Viewing Privilegesome forty years on from its original release is a frustrating experience since Watkins' first fully fledged feature is an uneven affair, failing to piece together a range of elements that nevertheless offer up some truly memorable moments. The film tells the story of the all-conquering pop singer, Stephen Shorter (played by real-life Manfred Mann vocalist Paul Jones), who, in a near-future Britain, enjoys an almost god-like status among the general public. As Watkins' voiceover tells us, Shorter is 'the most desperately loved entertainer in the world' and so great is his influence that his music, chains of discotheques and 'dream palaces' (glitzy stores packed with the latest electrical goods) are used by the authoritarian government to distract and pacify the masses. Watkins draws inspiration for this theme by referring to the rise of the hysterical pop-music fan in the late 1950s and 1960s.

The film's impressive opening sequences are particularly evocative of Beatlemania in the mid-1960s, and Watkins clearly draws heavily (and effectively) on Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor's documentary short about Paul Anka, Lonely Boy(Canada 1962; included as a DVD extra), to tap into notions of the mindless and malleable music fan. Shorter's opening rendition of 'Set Me Free' at his homecoming concert in Birmingham is the film's hysterical high point, with Jones' overwrought performance matching frighteningly convincing crowd scenes that are uncannily reminiscent of the kind of frenzied fan-worship associated with The Beatles and The Bay City Rollers. The theatrical and stylised performance features a handcuffed Shorter incarcerated onstage behind bars and a rank of leering prison guards. The dramatic release of Shorter as the song reaches its conclusion results in violent chaos as fans rush the stage and the singer is dragged away, bloodied from stigmata-like wounds on his wrists. The brutality of this show is carefully orchestrated and endorsed by the coalition government of the day, who alongside the entertainment agencies ensure that the violent tendencies of youth are diverted by such performances in order to 'keep them happy, off the streets and out of politics'.

This linkage between the adoring fan and potential political manipulation is a provocative and potentially rich idea to explore, but unfortunately Watkins' somewhat heavy-handed approach often comes across as unconvincing and at times rather patronising. A central problem is his view of the audience, which reflects many of the shortcomings of the Left's oft-expressed suspicion of the mass audience as an undifferentiated and easily manipulated mob. Writing in 1941, Theodor Adorno suggested that popular music represented part of 'the social cement' that was used to distract and pacify the masses, and Watkins' film clearly adheres to this principle. In one key sequence Andrew Butler (William Job), the head of Stephen Shorter Entertainment Limited, tells his troubled star that the 'millions of little people' are 'stunted little creatures with primitive emotions that are in themselves dangerous – they've got to be harnessed, guided'.

Although the early crowd scenes provide some convincing depictions of frenzied pop-fandom (albeit conforming to the stereotype of hysterical fans as exclusively female), the unproblematic and mindless way in which these fans are led down the ideological path of religious nationalism by Shorter's carefully orchestrated career swerve is somewhat distasteful and, more to the point, unpersuasive. Portraying the mass audience in this crude way undermines the film's attempted critique of media manipulation.

There is no doubt, however, that Privilegehas a key place in the strong tradition of British...