I suspect I was grousing about my students earlier because of my students criminal inability to understand Jan Nemec's brilliant 1966 film A Report on the Party and the Guests the other night. Not surprisingly, this is another film that the Criterion Channel was kind enough to introduce to me. It's also a great fit for my Images of Fascism class. A Report on the Party and the Guests is a surreal allegory on how Communism spread in Czechoslovakia, both both from the perspective of the Party and also from those who who complied, some by force but also way too many much more casually or easily. My students inability to see parallels to today's nightmare American political scene was very discouraging, and also very telling. I will be showing it again on Thursday night, so the generation has one more chance to redeem itself. Highly recommended, the film, not my students.
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