Wes Anderson's latest movie, The Phoenician Scheme, had a Christian communist reference in it
And the politest communists on screen I've ever seen in a mainstream film
Something I’ve learned extensively over the past decade is that progressive Christians are terrified of the word “communist.” Exvangelical influencers want nothing to do with it. Even the progressive churches don’t even like the word “socialist.” All the little liberal Christian organizations are (…er, mostly) okay when I’m talking about fucking more than one person, but refuse to let me talk about ACTUAL systems and beliefs that would save lives. What is so threatening about providing for people’s basic needs? Why do you want systems of kings and starvation and forced labor?
But guess what? I’m a communist. I believe in communism as a government system. I would consider myself a Marxist primarily. I’ve read some theory and primary literature, but I’m honestly too tired to get into deep analysis and have niche debates with strangers. Maybe when I’m in my 50s or 60s.
I’d rather just talk about my experience, what I believe, and encourage people to research things directly. Like, literally, read Marx. Read Lenin. And tell me what you disagree with. If you bring up historical atrocities, I can a.) agree with you, that doesn’t mean communism is wrong as a theory b.) show you documented facts about actual historical situations referenced without a Western lens and c.) give you a zillion reasons that capitalism is worse, caused horrible things, and led to more deaths than the most bloodthirsty communist could even dream of.
I don’t think it matters, though. The U.S. won the propaganda war, and they won it big time. It’s only just now starting to show cracks. Communism is bad, and identifying as anything other than a milquetoast liberal on a public scale is subject to claims of extremism and cruelty and terrorism. Yeah, I’m a terrorist. I can’t even update my Substack regularly. I don’t even like to kill bugs. I nursed an injured chicken to health and I cry at sentimental moments in movies. I don’t even own a gun.
Media plays right along. They call anyone a communist or a socialist, even Republicans. There’s not a single communist, or even really a socialist, in U.S. politics. There is no far-left party. There is not even a real “liberal” party. Democrats are center right and Republicans are far right. I beg you all to study politics outside of the U.S.A.
That’s why I was SHOCKED that the communists in the latest Wes Anderson movie, The Phoenician Scheme, were… the nice guys?
I’m a long-time Anderson fan, and I don’t really give a shit what anyone thinks about it. My very favorite is Moonrise Kingdom and I’ve seen it dozens of times. Sure, I can admit that his earlier movies had better characters to root for, better writing, and more heart. But I love his aesthetic. I love his filmography references. I love his quirky characters. I love the colors and the specific geographical focuses. And, dare I say it after all the communist talk above, I love the excess. Don’t let anyone tell you communists don’t appreciate good art or nice things. We just think they should be accessible to everyone.
The character, Sergio, is a guerrilla revolutionary. He leads a movement of people, and holds up a nightclub of wealthy people to ask for their money to redistribute it. And he’s so polite while doing it. So much so that the main character wants to
The entire movie is — er, slight spoiler, read to the italics if you wish to avoid — a riches-to-rags story, which feels great in these times of billionaires overtaking the government. Until writing this blog, I didn’t realize that Wes Anderson called Fantastic Mr Fox “a little bit communist” and even that little comment got some backlash. (See how insane the media is?)
Anderson’s movies often center wealthy people, but they center wealthy people having struggles and issues that money has failed to fix. He does not seem to create overly political movies, as that’s not really an auteur thing to do… but he DOES create movies where the subtlety of politics have in some way affected the characters. Asteroid City takes place near a nuclear testing site in the ‘50s. The Grand Budapest Hotel is about an encroaching Nazi-esque fascist takeover. His first movie, Bottle Rocket, is full of class tension between the rich and the poor. But those aren’t the point of the movies — he’s not going to hit you over the head with them.
That’s why it was so pleasant to see friendly communists in a random movie where rich people are doing bad stuff and bad stuff happens to rich people. But if that wasn’t enough — there’s also a very small Christian communist reference.
I mean, communism does not exist in the United States in a meaningful way. But Christian communism isn’t represented anywhere, ever. Most people think the two are incompatible and go for that Marx quote about opiates without reading the full quote. (I encourage you, as always, to join Red Star Ministry to find more Christian communists around the U.S. and hopefully internationally.)
While Ayoade’s Sergio character only has a few minutes of total screentime, the main character Liesl, played by Mia Threapleton, is also on scene as a nun and daughter of Zsa-zsa Korda, played by Benicio Del Toro. She’s discussing her religious beliefs with Sergio and they both love the quote about religion from Marx, as do I. They realize they have a lot in common in their pursuit of justice for the poor. She asks him if he believes in God and he says, of course not. But some of his comrades can’t shake it. And they cut to a fellow guerilla looking at a shrine to Jesus Christ.
I know, these are scraps at the table for communist acceptance. And I’m biased because I am ride-or-die for Anderson already. But there’s something pretty special that a mainstream movie in theaters with real, actual famous actors featured a discussion about religious leftism and even featured a background Christian communist character.
Maybe Anderson isn’t popular enough anymore for it to make a splash. But as fascism is taking over, with almost no real resistance, I hope we can continue to have conversations and work toward real change. A movie isn’t revolutionary — only your comrades are. But I hope you can see that it’s not just me, forever trying to piece Christianity together with communism together with polyamory. This shit is really happening.
I’ll have to check out the movie!
I’ll acknowledge that I am not up on all the different historical and theoretical varieties of communism. I don’t want to be like “the problem with Christianity is the Pope,” you know?
That said, my main concern in evaluating any government system is its vulnerability to capture by assholes, and what levers of power are available to dislodge assholes. Assholes who want personal power, assholes who want prestige, assholes who want to roll around in excessive material comfort: these will always be with us, this side of the eschaton. This is central to my Christian theology and also, I believe, solidly empirically attested.
I have not yet seen successful models of resistance within communism, that retain communism. It seems like a model that struggles with resiliency (in the structural sense). It seems like it has a weak theory of dissent. This makes me very nervous.
(Now what we have in Western “democracies” in practice is *highly managed* resistance and dissent. In every system, power protects itself, ruthlessly.)
Communism has great resonances for Christians. The church of Acts, the monastic ideal (including nuns in that, not sure if there’s a separate word), general Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 25:35 stuff, this is what we are *supposed to be doing*. But for me, this also plays into the idea of Christian unity, which has far more frequently been used to enable abuse than practice solidarity, in practice. Plus, even if a given community can thrive organized in such a way, to scale up to an entire society takes guns. Lots of guns.
And that gets to my remaining issue with communism: revolution. I have firm pragmatic objections to revolution, both in terms of impact on material conditions and what it incentivizes in the future. But I have even deeper theological objections to revolution.
Well, not categorically. But in our shared American context, yes.
We all carry the divine image within us. Our persons, however imperfectly, can respond to Spirit and show Spirit to others. This necessitates taking the discernment of others seriously. We can’t just retreat to “false consciousness” in the face of others whose priorities and analyses of risks and costs-and-benefits differs from ours.
In this moment, the great majority of Black people are not agitating for revolution. The great majority of the “working poor” are not agitating for revolution. And etc. and etc. One can argue that they haven’t been educated about alternatives to a free market economy governed by a constitutional republic, and that is undeniably true. But what revolution ends up meaning is impatience on the part of the educators, a reaching of the point where they decide they know better than the masses they are supposedly championing.
And that is a fundamental failure of right relations, a fundamental failure of solidarity. It is a very white supremacy culture move: urgency, perfectionism, the works.
So for myself, I’m a fan of Marxist analysis, to the extent that it recognizes that white patriarchy will persist outside of any given class hierarchy. But to look toward a communist government as the way to resolve the problems identified in that analysis…not so much.
What I genuinely would love to see is for a smaller-sized city, like 30,000 people, try to get as communist as possible. Libertarians have tried it. Christian nationalists have done it repeatedly. I would feel better about the idea on a larger scale if I saw governance principles succeeding on a local scale.