#i havent seen him since primary school I have no right to be so upset by this

[hella1975]

forever wishing sam fender would unrelease dead boys

[swamp-world]

anyways. if... (1968). how to talk about it. tired ramblings below the cut. again, big TWs for a lot of stuff.

im slowly in the process of rewatching it because i just havent had the time lately. it just...strikes me as such a strange film for what it is. i dont remember much, frankly. i remember the general idea, the general vibe, i think there was a lot i was too young to understand the first watch.

the first thing that comes to mind in this film is the idea of the school shooting. they didnt call it such, no, but that’s what we would call it today. as a film made in 1968, it’s morbid and horrendous that they created an event in an overdramatized film, clearly meant to be divorced from reality, clearly satirical in every way, and that by the end of the century, Columbine would happen, and within the 21st century, school shootings became a regular event in america. a cursory search shows that there certainly were instances of school violence before this (a man shot a student in a dorm; a principal shot colleagues, etc.) but none so sensationalized or arguably senseless as those in Brenda Spencer, as Columbine.

and that’s where this film walks a tightrope. there are multiple ways to see the film and all of them are true in at least part.

1. many will recognize malcolm mcdowell from his role in A Clockwork Orange. many will recognize that as a film that white american men tend to look to aspirationally instead of with horror, as it was designed. same vein as the matrix, fight club, the joker, etc. this movie is where he got a lot of his character inspiration from. and there’s definitely that same idea of the disillusioned loner who, if given a gun, can make enough of a revolutionary difference in a world that has wronged him

2. is this supposed to be a good thing? the film seems conflicted itself at times. the teachers are in the wrong, certainly. oh, that’s without question. it doens’t paint the violence as aspirational, i dont think. i do think that there’s this idea of a fictionalized, sensationalized and glorified revolution, fighting back against the school system and society

3. this was part of a “series” that was satirizing british school, healthcare, and capiatlism. make of that what you will.

4. it predates monty python as well but absolutely demonstrates much of the same humouor and influence and aims. i can’t explain the surrealness of it.

5. the disillusioned students aren’t disillusioned for no reason. the school system strips them of their character, reduces them to family names and no personality, turns a blind eye to abuse at the level of peers, encourages harmful hierarchies within the student body that involve active abuse and corporal punishment, and aims to produce machines instead of people. this is an understandable reason to be upset. it’s something we still grapple with today.

6. the context of the school shooting in the film absolutely must, for my intentions here, be separated as much as possible from our modern conception of the school shooting. the ones that we encounter in the modern world are certainly a product of the issues that the film brings up, but i want to do my best to look at it in its own time, as much as i am able to with my limited knowledge

7. the modern school shooter tends to be a “lone-wolf” domestic terrorist, and i will not hesitate to call them such. they tend to be incels, white, straight, young men who perceive themselves as being rejected by women, or who are motivated by alt-right and fascistic beliefs and goals. these are acts meant to inspire terror in those populations. i would certainly classify these as hate crimes, since that’s their primary motivation. in If... on the other hand, they are very clearly attacking the system of british education itself and the people who perpetuate it. (in a lot of situations, this isn’t inherently much different from the way that a lot of modern school shooters see themselves: important to consider.) rather than being violence deliberately directed at the students, it’s specifically on Speech Day, where parents, administration, faculty, etc. are all present. These are the people in power; these are the ones who send their children to these schools, who fund them, who run them, who allow, encourage, and enact the violence. it is not an aimless violence, nor is it a hate-motivated violence.

8. the shooting in the film is meant to be farcical and satirical. who would have imagined, in 1968, that this scene, meant to be the pinnacle of overdramatized and hyperviolent revolution in a satirical manner, not meant remotely to approach reality, would become something that people avoid watching because it has in fact happened to them? in 1968, who would have predicted Brenda Spencer, Columbine, Stoneman Douglas, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech? there was one significant school shooting in 1966, in Austin, that killed 28 and was the deadliest mass shooting for 18 years. but, and while this doesn’t diminish the violence, i want to emphasize that that took place at a university in america, not at a boarding school in england. the fundamental difference between the concept of adults, former military, gunning down 28 people; and a set of schoolchildren taking over the boarding school’s armoury and shooting at the headmaster, having been taught how to shoot those very guns on that very schoolground, is an extreme difference.

9. so, the shooting is designed to be an act of violence, targeting a system that the film paints as being actively harmful and deserving of a takedown, using the very weapons that the school taught them to use but never anticipated to have turned on them, and created in a farcical light: the idea that “this won’t happen, it’s too outrageous to be real”.

10. how do we take this these days? it seems, in many ways, like very little has changed. oh, corporal punishment isn’t practiced (or at least, not sanctioned, but certainly practiced). students are still molded to machine standard on the basis of class and aspirations spoon-fed to them by their parents. there’s still a significant divide between the working class and the capitalist class. there’s still rage simmering at the way that students have been abused by their schools. the violence that was seen as being overexaggerated at the time became a reality for a completely different set of revolutionary reasons, and the film balances the same tightrope as the matrix, as fight club, etc., between being commentary and satire that violent men will mark as aspirational and true rather than satirical and a warning

11. (that’s not to touch on the misogyny of the film)

this is apparently voted one of the best british films of all time, but that doesn’t mean much a lot of the time. it being a best voted doesn’t mean it’s popular or common or well known among people outside of britain, or outside of that generation; it doesn’t mean it was understood and received as intended.

the other thing i want to bring up about the film is the question of reality. the whole thing is so surreal and strange that the line between reality and imagination begins to blur regularly, but particularly near the end. there’s the question of whether this shooting actually happened in the film, or whether it was merely a twisted fantasy of mcdowell’s character. frankly, i would say that it doesn’t matter if it’s real, according to the movie or not. it genuinely doesn’t. this is what we as the audience see, and the intent is the same: either the boy is so driven to this violence that he actually does it, or he’s so driven to it that he fantasizes vividly about doing it. the point of it is still the same. it isn’t our job to know reality from fantasy; it’s possible that if it’s made up, the character himself isn’t aware of that. of course the film won’t make sense, it’ll be muddled and confusing and unrealistic, it’s satire and meant to bend the rules of reality to make a point. (those rules of reality included: schoolchildren do not use semiautomatic weaponry on their own schools. except for in texas, it does not happen.)

so what’s this to do with dark academia? let me answer that when it’s not 4am.