Herbert Marcuse is best known as a philosopher of the Frankfurt School and leading theorist of the New Left. Those interested in a biography or his works- like the classic One-Dimensional Man- should go to his official website.
The documentary “Herbert’s Hippopotamus” covers the short but controversial period when Marcuse was professor at UC San Diego and was attacked by governor Reagan and other nut jobs who depicted him as a radical communist threat to the American way.
The film is worth watching for several reasons;
A) it shows that even as governor Reagan mobilized support, and in fact won his reelection, by mobilizing support against constructed radical threats. This rhetoric of course continued when he was in office on the domestic front in his demonization of liberals, his racism against “welfare mothers” ( a code for black people), and on the international front with the constructed threat of the evil empire of the USSR, which in reality was disintegrating faster then the subprime mortage market.
Recently, this tactic was especially operative in those heady days of hubris in the Bush administration, when french fries were freedom fries and leftists were in league with the terrorists in hating America. So, you could say it is a good case study of one of the main narratives of American politics in a time when we are still fighting the war on terror against what Mccain mysteriously calls the “transcendental threat” of Islamo-Fascism.
B) In the figure of Marcuse, interviews with his students like Angela Davis and footage from the time, it shows what political activity looks like. Whether it is protesting, communicating, thinking, writing or simply standing up for what you believe in these examples are a reminder that widespread apathy is not the natural reaction to an unpopular war and a country going down the toilet. We can fight for what is right.
C) The archival footage of Marcuse and the interviews with the German professor are simply remarkable in their combination of moral intergrity and hilarity.
Watch it here
