Aaron Sorkin’s recent film “The Trial of the Chicago Seven” is a great example of how liberalism (represented by Sorkin’s warped perspective of the events) differs dramatically from the left and seeks to erase it. We’ve found three different reviews of that film, but they all say roughly the same thing.
…Sorkin’s reformist retelling of this history is disappointing, if unsurprising. What could have been a moment to make the New Left and Black radical critiques of police terror and US imperialism (which are, of course, thoroughly intertwined) salient, particularly when so many of them continue to be relevant today, instead becomes yet another piece of centrist propaganda. It is in the end nothing more than apologia, offering cheap catharsis for anyone looking to be absolved of their liberal guilt and affirmed in their squeamishness toward protest and dissent.
“Aaron Sorkin’s Inane, Liberal History Lesson: Why his reformist retelling of the Chicago Seven fails to tell the real story of the leftists on trial.” by Charlotte Rosen, the Nation
Aaron Sorkin is probably best remembered for the candy-coated liberal optimism of the TV series “The West Wing”, a show which offered “the idealized fantasy of a calm, steady, liberal presidential administration doing its best to help the American people amid a sea of difficult political calculations” (Clint Worthington).
In Eileen Jones’s review of Chicago Seven, she writes:
…critics can praise the showy evidence of his craft while audiences get swept up by the way he makes ideological piety and cornball sentimentality look serious. If there are tears to be wrung, Sorkin wrings them. If there is patriotic fervor to spew, Sorkin spews it. And if there is any way at all he can demonstrate that America is great because our system works in spite of a few rotten apples, Sorkin demonstrates it with all the aggressive verbosity of a used car salesman.
“Aaron Sorkin Turned the Chicago 7’s Militancy and Defiance Into Bland Liberalism” by Eileen Jones, Jacobin Magazine
Jones concludes her review by saying that Sorkin’s work is “weak, toothless, and wholly inadequate”. Her issue isn’t just with this particular film, but Aaron Sorkin’s entire creative vision. Much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a world based on saccharine fantasies that is superficially similar to the real world, there is a Sorkin Cinematic Universe that is nearly as absurd.
The West Wing universe … is one in which an idyllic, two-term liberal presidency warmly embraces the military-industrial complex, cuts Social Security, and puts a hard-right justice on the Supreme Court in the interests of bipartisan “balance” — all the while making no observably transformative changes to American life. What matters most is how politics look and feel and whether the briskly striding people who staff the corridors of power possess diplomas from the right schools. Idealism, such as it is, has more to do with an abstract faith in American institutions and their inherent greatness (as in, “America is already great”) than any particular desire to make the world a better place or see a coherent set of values reflected within them. In Sorkin’s parochial fantasy, politics at its noblest and most high-minded consists mainly of wonkish sophistry and elegantly crafted speeches designed to offer vague comfort while saying nothing.
Luke Savage, quoted in “Aaron Sorkin’s Chicago 7 Are Shockingly Sympathetic, but Lacking Radical Substance” by Ben Burgis, Jacobin Magazine
If this is the squishy heart of liberalism — and I’m pretty sure it is — it’s easy to see why conservatives hate it. We also hate it.
In The Trial of Chicago 7’s liberal approach to history, those on the left must either be dismissed as idealists or kooks or properly sheared of their more oppositional ideas—all in the service of containing their political energies within the safer framework of incremental (read friendly to capital) reform. […] An animating belief of his work is that reaching for the center, no matter what the actual material realities of this bipartisan consensus may be, is the highest form of governance.
“Aaron Sorkin’s Inane, Liberal History Lesson: Why his reformist retelling of the Chicago Seven fails to tell the real story of the leftists on trial.” by Charlotte Rosen, the Nation
Given that Sorkin is fetishizing the American center — which is more accurately described as the “near right” — the functional purpose of his work is to build complacency rather than a better society. The actual material reality of succeeding in building a bipartisan consensus in US politics is suffering, hopelessness, and death. For example, what is the mid-point between “genocide” and “not genocide”?
The worst thing about Sorkin’s portrayal in Chicago Seven is that he does his best to avoid describing what it is that the leftists on trial want. This is an important part of the liberal erasure of the left. Liberals (and, specifically, Democrats) pretend that they are the left, and that makes the existence of the actual left a big problem, so they deny that the left wants anything different from what liberals want. Leftists are portrayed as liberals who use “bad” (synonymous with disruptive from the liberal perspective) methods to demand change, and therefore must be brought to heel. Meanwhile, conservatives (and, specifically, Republicans) portray the left as villains, and then pretend that Democrats are the left — even someone as conservative as Biden.
Both groups avoid accurately describing what the left truly wants because they don’t want the average citizen to think about it long enough to want it, too — although, Fox News occasionally presents a bulleted list of things intended to sound terrifying, but that actually sounds really good. The good that ultimately came out of the Bernie Sanders campaign was the fact that it let millions of Americans see that many things are possible outside of the false dichotomy of complacent liberalism vs. punitive conservativism.
It’s pretty frustrating that a person whose entire career seems to be built around trying to make people believe everything will be fine — so there’s no need to get off the couch — is so dang popular, but it isn’t surprising. Staying on the couch is what America wants more than anything.