In the last episode, G & O began discussion of Exterminate All the Brutes, Raoul Peck’s 2021 film now streaming on HBO Max. The brothers focused on the repeated symbol of white people’s “heart of darkness” echoed from the book that title is taken from: Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, written about Belgium’s rape and genocide of Africans in Congo. The brothers also brought in some of the tools of psychoanalysis. They paid close attention to language and images to read the unconscious intentions that drive and direct an action, even if people are unaware of those drives. Seen in this way, this film’s topic is the genocidal drive at the core of whiteness, and it is articulated so that whiteness can be understood and ended.
In this episode, the brothers continue their discussion of Exterminate All the Brutes, by homing in on the film’s connection between images that shape how we think about genocide, such as John Wayne movies, monuments, and histories of genocide, and the structural conditions of modern u.s. society which are designed to result in genocidal effects on Indigenous and Black people. In the present moment, whiteness is engaging in a collective refusal to see itself in the mirror image of other sadistic figures, like Jeffrey Dahmer. The psychic structure of whiteness, stretching across many generations and geographies, is sadistic — meaning, it gets juiced from harming those it sees as “others” — even if that harm is concealed while it occurs and is later denied completely. The brothers analyze the tech industry term “artisanal miner,” for example, which sounds pretty but conceals the slave-like conditions under which Black people in Congo today are forced to produce coltan, a mineral that makes our smartphones work. The brothers conclude with their score of the revolutionizing potential of Exterminate All the Brutes.
NOTE: The brothers apologize for the moments of crosstalk, which are really bad in this episode. This is an ongoing problem with the Anchor software, which the brothers have brought to Anchor’s attention. They will work on fixing it in future episodes and might end up moving to a different recording system and platform.
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