1976 is coming back again

Rating: 9/10 (1 April 2008)

1976 was a funny electoral year. One year after the full defeat in Vietnam and the evacuation of Saigon on the run. Two years after the resignation of Nixon, to avoid an impeachment that would have led to the very first conviction of the President. 1976 was the year when all had to changed, and nothing really changed because the establishment just looked for a way to save face and restore the everyday standard imperialistic power, and of course that will fail with Jimmy Carter, but Scorsese could not know it though everyone knew that success would be a miracle. What's more, success in that line was doomed in the long run. It was not yet possible to know what was going to happen in China, but we could know it was going to change, even if it was quite clear that the Soviet Union was not going to change at all, even if we could not know the industrialized feudal soviet system was going to fall down the chute, was going to be flushed down the drain. That was what Scorsese meant with his crossroads but he did not know how many roads there were in that crossroads nor where they led nor of course which one to take. But one thing was sure in those days: the US were going to take a road that did not lead to any confrontation with their real historical mission which is to create democracy through freedom in a system that had to improve itself all the time because it knew perfection did not exist in this world, be it only because perfection is divine and cannot be found in a non-divine world, in a human world, what's more in a human sinner's world. It was sure the US were not going to face their historical fate and their inner problems and their inner challenges like for example the racial problem, like for example the education of their young, like for example the control of violence, like for example a health care system that was more than necessary. The film is a vague echo of that particular challenge with the allusion to the welfare system, because that was where the US stood at the time: helping the poor. But Warhol had already exposed that problematic solution by showing in his films how vain, hypocritical and corrupted the welfare system was in the US, and that could not be an objective for the US, an objective they could put in their constitution in the form of a new amendment, the only way to really improve the system is by making it constitutional since then to repeal such an amendment is particularly difficult. But the film has aged tremendously since today the US have reached the end of that road, the bad road they chose in 1976. They are deep in the mud of a new war (the Buddhist have a nice saying about elephant getting caught in mud) that has been rejected by the world from the very start, they are confronted to the emerging of a world power they will have to share responsibilities with sooner or later so let it be now, the famous BRIC, Brazil, Russia, India and China, and that has to be done straight away since that BRIC is already the first economic power in the world and will be the first political power in the world within a few years. What's more the US is deeply agitated by the necessity to finally come to terms with the racial divide and the racial problem, by the obligation to provide all Americans with a full health care system, by the duty to provide every American with the possibility to educate themselves even if the government has to cut the military budget to do that. The good old three objectives of equality, good health and education in a system that would recapture freedom and democracy, both having been impaired and limited in the process of the US negating history in order to impose their own self centered epiphanic power. But what does Scorsese envisioned beyond 1976? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The system was defeated in a way. That's why the film has aged since the US and Americans finally have the chance today to be able to choose the road that would lead to their finally getting to political adult age.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines