The Masters of Cinema Series

The creative and political meaning of Punishment Park, a self-interrogatory dialogue

by Peter Watkins, 2005

You often speak about the Monoform – what do you mean by this?

I have been writing about the Monoform for nearly 30 years, and sending out public statements to the mass media and to media educationalists… You can find an example of my analysis at my website: [www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins]. Basically, the Monoform (an expression I coined in the mid-1970s, after analysing this phenomenon with students at Columbia University) is the internal language-form (editing, narrative structure, etc.) used by TV and the commercial cinema to present their messages. It is the densely packed and rapidly edited barrage of images and sounds, the ‘seamless’ yet fragmented modular structure which we have all been staring at on our TV and cinema screens. This language-form appeared early on in the cinema, with the work of pioneers such as D. W. Griffith and others who developed techniques of rapid editing, montage, parallel action, cutting between long shots/close shots, etc. Now it also includes dense layers of music, voice and sound effects, abrupt cutting for shock effect, emotion-arousing music saturating every scene, rhythmic dialogue patterns, endlessly moving cameras, etc.

What is the problem with this method of presenting films?

There are certain variations in how the Monoform is used, depending on how it is structured in a studio-filmed TV soap opera, a Hollywood film, or the TV evening news. But all these popular forms of mass audiovisual media have characteristics in common. They are endlessly repetitive and predictable in their form – no matter what their actual content – and they are closed in their relationship to the audience. Despite any appearance to the contrary, they all use filmic time and space in one rigidly structured and controlled manner: according to the dictates of the media, rather than with any reference to the expanded and limitless possibilities of the audience. It is crucial to understand that these variations on the Monoform are all predicated on the traditional audiovisual media belief that the audience (pople) are immature, and that they need predictable forms of presentation in order to become ‘engaged’ (i.e., manipulated). This is why so many audiovisual professionals rely on the Monoform: its speed, shock editing, and lack of time/space guarantee that audiences will be unable to reflect on what is really happening to them.

There are two sides to the problem here. First, the professional and creative one, in which you have the audiovisual industry adopting repressive and widespread measures to standardize the potential complexity of the filmic form. Film can be an immensely fluid and complex form of expression and communication, with the potential for an almost unlimited number of varying forms and processes. To compare this potential with the reality of the Monoform is like comparing the work of thousands of different painters to a paint-by-numbers kit. The second aspect of the problem – in my opinion the more serious one – is the disastrous impact of the standardised audiovisual form on the social and political process.

What is this impact?

For one thing, the essential differences in the wide variety of subject matters and themes covered by TV and the cinema are reduced to one common audiovisual language denominator. I believe that this has had a devastating impact on our sensibilities and sensitivities over the past few decades – confusing and deadening our capacity to distinguish between the superficial and the serious, between (for example) actual death and staged violence.

Isn’t this exactly what Punishment Park is doing?

If this film is viewed and analysed superficially, then yes, you could say that. But as I argue elsewhere, I believe there are many factors structured into the presentation of this film, which – if understood and allowed for – create a critical dialectic which not only challenges its ‘factual’ appearance, but also throws light onto many of the standard practices of today’s mass audiovisual media – for example, the use of the Monoform.

What do you do in Punishment Park that is so different? Your film is also tightly edited, isn’t it?

In 1970, when I filmed Punishment Park, I had not yet made an analysis of the problems of the Monoform. This awareness did not come until several years later. So yes, Punishment Park is certainly using its tightly edited form to hold the audience, and to that extent I agree that this film has a traditional, hierarchical relationship to the audience – there is no question about that. However, at the same time, even in this relatively early film, there are signs that I was attempting to break out of the bounds of the standard structural forms imposed by TV and the commercial cinema, and to establish other forms of relationship and awareness with the audience. The use of improvisation, set within the framework of a quasi-‘realistic’ metaphor, is certainly one aspect of the film which is already straining the Monoform to its limits. Indeed, you could say that there is already an internal dialectic in this film which works against its own form. In a 1972 open letter to the press, I wrote that “Punishment Park breaks new ground in my work. It is a fusion of two seemingly contrasting elements: realism and expressionism.” So although, at this point, I was still using the Monoform to structure this film, I was also working with certain internal elements – including its complex sound track and fractured dialogue – to break with the traditional use of ‘documentary’, and to query its sanctity and its perceived relationship to ‘objectivity’ and ‘the truth’, which we in the mass audiovisual media still like to claim we are giving the audience.

Are you saying that there is no such thing as a documentary film which can give facts to an audience?

Joe Gomez responds to this question in his book Peter Watkins, written in 1979. He notes that in a review of Punishment Park in the London Sunday Telegraph on February 13, 1972, film critic Margaret Hinxman “cannot help wondering, too, about the morality of filming a fake situation (however possible or imminent) not as realistic fiction but as instant newsreel documentary.” “Indeed, – continues Joseph Gomez – for Hinxman, there seems to be something inviolate about documentary form, and thus no concern, no matter how genuine, can ‘excuse the assumption that you can picture as fact in the style of fact what is not scrupulously fact’.”

“Documentary forms, even the newsreel, must not be viewed as sacred cows, and perhaps Hinxman should have carried her analysis a bit further. Does documentary form really allow for the objective presentation of fact? Does the mere presence of the camera alter the event? Does the cameraman merely depict his own limited perspective of the event? Does the editor shape the event? Can a newsreel contain fabrication? Can ‘the style of fact’ deal with opinion and/or speculation? Is there such a thing as ‘the style of fact’?”

I would add to what Joe Gomez writes, by querying – is there any such thing as a concrete ‘fact’ when it is represented by any act of audiovisual media? It is these issues and problematics which Punishment Park is attempting to grapple with. Including – as I think we can now see over the distance of time – with its own form.

What other elements in Punishment Park challenge the notion of ‘documentary fact’?

In a society where genuinely critical media education was allowed to flourish, the public would be more than ready to raise such questions. The audiovisual media would have much less of a hold on us, and a film such as Punishment Park would be seen for what it is – a complex, critical social metaphor. But we don’t have such a society at present. Instead, much of media education has become highly complicitous over the past twenty years in disseminating the popular TV culture and the commercial cinema, and in marginalising nearly all alternative and critical thinking towards the role of the audiovisual media.

What happened in the U.K. when the film appeared?

There were several positive reactions, but the majority were negative. The Guardian: “Peter Watkins is a sincere, honest and talented filmmaker who wears his heart so obviously on his sleeve that one almost weeps for him, since there are so few romantics left.” The Sun re: Punishment Park and Fortune and Men’s Eyes: “… is sincerity a virtue when the eyes of both directors are hooded in the blinkers of their own extreme sickness?… Propagandist Peter Watkins is left hopelessly adrift in his own hopeless mind.” According to The Listener:

“Mr. Watkins is a clever filmmaker. The events he describes are more than likely within our lifetime. But he is his own worst enemy. There is a hysterical stridency of tone that somehow, bafflingly, destroys all conviction.” Evening Standard joined the fray: “Punishment Park is an angry allegory whose passion is too hot for its own good. Directed by Peter Watkins, a man of great talent who is exhausting himself by continually imagining there exists a Media Mafia which is out to spite him and suppress his films, it exemplifies how the artist’s own sense of persecution sometimes rubs off fatally on his subject… The film ends with the voice of the camera director… screaming shrilly: ‘You wait till you see yourselves on television.’ It is too like the petulance of the small boy who screams out: ‘You wait till I put my Big Brother on you’.”

Perhaps your film was seen as an attack on the United States?

Yes, I am sure this happened, both in the media and in the education system. In March 1974, at an American state college, some of the faculty became very angry following a showing of Punishment Park to students. One teacher began calling out: “The film is a distortion… you are adolescent, Mr. Watkins! Where have you been all the time? You feel such anguish. We feel so sorry for you – don’t you know that man has always behaved like this, ever since he crawled out of the cave and began using a club?” This teacher, a professor of Romantic Literature, became more and more angry as he shouted: “And what will happen? You and I will be shouting at each other, on our different sides of the room, becoming more and more violent…” Another teacher admitted that a “fantasy” of his was that Richard Nixon might seize arbitrary control of the country with the armed forces, before his senate trial. But, the teacher cried out: “I would never inflict that fantasy on others! I don’t think you should deal with the future like this, you shouldn’t talk about the future… you shouldn’t inflict others with your feelings about the future…” A little later, this teacher left the room.

With all due respect to these people, I think they were missing several rather important points. First of all, although the idea of ‘punishment parks’ is certainly a metaphor of social and political conditions in the United States, at the same time, very much of the rest of what the film is showing – and the basis for the film – was actually happening: from the assaults by a racist police force, to the massive aggression against the people of South East Asia. And it was very disturbing at the time to see Americans, especially those within the media and the education system, go into a state of complete denial about what was happening in their country.

But far more important than this, is the fact that I was not dealing uniquely with the situation in the United States when I made Punishment Park, but with the psychic condition of our contemporary society. The problem of polarization and confrontation, as well as of the repression of alternative visions of society, are not confined to the United States in the 1970s; these remain an acute problem today, all over the world. As I wrote in 1972: “Punishment Park takes place tomorrow, yesterday, or five years from now.”

Do you think that if you tried to make this film again, you would find people willing to participate?

Yes, certainly! I realize that it is said that young people today are much less radical and politically active than their forebears thirty years ago, and certainly many people today appear to be hopelessly sold on consumerism, comfort and style. It is true that young people are also being systematically denuded of history, by the mass media and by the education system. And this is very dangerous. But this may only be a part of the reality, because at the same time many people are increasingly seeking alternative paths to globalisation. When I produced La Commune in Paris in 1999, I was very moved by the anger and frustration of some of the cast towards the present world system. So I am sure that if I was to make another film along the lines of Punishment Park, that yes, we would find people who would express themselves very forcefully and cogently against the capitalist world order.

This question brings me back to a central theme of my work, and to my media critique. As I have already said, I believe that many people working within the audiovisual media are very afraid of the public, afraid of any sign of outspoken popular expression – especially if it is critical of today’s system – because this could in turn threaten the very power and privilege of media professionals and the corporations they represent. This fear underlies the central role of the Monoform, which is to homogenize, and thereby to hold potentially dynamic, expanding critical tendencies in check. But I believe that one day a form of revolution will come, and that we will have a far more pluralistic society than now, including one in which the present unequal balance of power between the public and the media will be a thing of the past. Indeed, it may be that the media will be created by the public, for the public, rather than according to the hopelessly hierarchical process of ‘professionals’ and ‘audience’ which exists at this time. This revolution may not happen in my lifetime, but it will come. Those who want to aid in this process can do so by helping the public to develop media forms and practices that use the voices and the visions of the community to dissolve the existing rigid structures.

Are you saying that we don’t need media professionals any more?

I am saying that we need to be open to developing a society where they have a different role. One which includes allowing the public into their decision-making processes and practices. Where they are open to a more equal balance of power. Why not allow what we call the ‘mass media’ or ‘public broadcasting’ to actually involve the voices and visions of the public in their creation and decision-making process? If this were to happen – and I believe it will one day – you would find a substantial number of people immediately opting for alternatives to the Monoform.

© Peter Watkins, Vilnius, Lithuania. June 2005

Peter Watkins’ Standard Copyright and Usage Notice:

The text in this booklet by Peter Watkins is copyright. Under normal circumstances, Peter Watkins is very willing for anyone to use quotes of reasonable length from his texts, for the purposes of education, thesis work, etc. Peter is also agreeable to anyone printing the entire body of any of his texts, including for the purposes of education, providing that this is not for any commercial gain, and providing that the source is always named.

However, when it comes to the media, including alternative journals, different conditions need to apply for any usage of Peter Watkins’ texts. These different conditions are due to the marginalization of Peter’s work for 40 years by the mass media, who have mostly either attacked his work, accused him of paranoia, or refused to allow his critical analysis of the media to enter the public discourse via the means of the media.

With the advancement of globalisation, this professional marginalization of Peter Watkins’ work – especially of his critical writings – has increased. This has manifested itself by journalists removing any critical references made by Peter himself (e.g., in an interview), and only quoting his comments about creative or production matters. Even when journalists do include comments by Peter Watkins re: the crisis in the mass media or the political meaning of his own work, these elements are nearly always reduced or entirely removed by copy editors. The result is inevitably an unbalanced article, devoid of any political or critical context.

As a result of these and many other problems, Peter Watkins no longer gives interviews of any kind. His practice now is to prepare texts on his films in which he tries to cover as many creative and critical elements as possible, based on questions he has been asked in the past. These texts are available to journalists, providing that the following requirements are understood and complied with:

a) that it is recognized that Peter Watkins’ texts are copyright, and that due acknowledgment is made to the source of the text.

b) that any quotes from Peter Watkins’ texts be taken in fair and balanced measure regarding creative and production, as well as political and media-critical aspects of his work, in approximate proportion vis-a-vis his own reference to these aspects in his original text.

c) that the journalist and/or editor of the journal/newspaper, etc. concerned guarantee that copy editing will not specifically target, reduce or remove the political and media critical elements in any article prior to publication.