Movie Review: Born in Flames

Podcast Episode: https://www.theholidaypride.com/podcast/episode/23822cab/movie-review-born-in-flames

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Welcome folks! I’m Al and this is the podcast of The Holiday Pride: A Pittsburgh LGBT+ community museum.

            Warning: This is a mature movie with many mature themes. There is discussion of assault, rape, and other violence against women. There are uncensored images of gentile and naked bodies as well. While this review will not have anything explicit, be warned when approaching the film itself.

            I knew about a lot of LGBT+ movies from reading queer works. Many LGBT+ folks talk about the queer films that changed their lives or that helped them out of the closet. We’ve already watched a few for this season.

            However, I wanted to find at least one movie I hadn’t heard of before. Maybe fewer people heard of it. Maybe it wasn’t as wide reaching. Maybe it was over shadowed. Either way, I went looking and found a movie that intrigued me. While it was recommended many times in lists on reddit or tumblr, I’d never heard of it before.

            The 1983 film, Born in Flames, is an alternative history story focused on civil rights. It also just about predicted the kind of aggressive horrible things that we are dealing with right now. I know that the issues we deal with today, sexism, racism, homophobia, and conservative and right wing cruelty, have existed for a long time including in the 80s. However, this movie is about how bad things could become from where they were standing and they nailed it. That being said, there are some tough topics in this film, so proceed with caution and mind the warning at the beginning of the episode.

            The general premise is that this film takes place in 1983-ish New York. Ten years prior, the United States underwent the War of Liberation which, according to this world’s government, was the most peaceful revolution in the history of the world. Supposedly, a socialist democratic party had taken over to make America a perfect utopian socialist democratic society. According to the government, anyway.

            Then we are introduced to the main characters by two FBI agents who are discussing the leadership of the Women’s Army organization. The Women’s Army are loosely tied together groups that are trying to help the lower classes, which are increasingly minorities and women. Childcare, food, work, and protection, things that are seemingly in no way important to the government. For example, we’re shown a pretty rough scene of a woman being assaulted by two men in broad daylight. She’s not in an alleyway, she’s in a public space where there’s plenty of space to be seen. Despite that, no one comes to this woman’s aid as she shouts for help.

            It’s a really hard scene to watch, but it tells you everything you need to know about the current political powers that there are no cops around to help this poor woman. Instead, about ten or so women on bikes blowing sharp whistles burst onto the scene and scare the men off and help the woman to safety. Of course, this movie spares no expense in the realism of people’s reactions to all of this work these women are doing.

            Every kind of reaction you can imagine occurs. There are those who think they’re not extreme enough, there are those who hate the vigilante justice. There are those who would normally agree with them saying they don’t like them for being too violent or not violent enough. There are men calling them all sorts of bad names.

            That’s the thing about this movie. It’s a commentary on the reaction to a real fight for justice just as much as it is a commentary on the trajectory the nation is going in. As these women are doing good work and fighting against the oppression they are facing, that makes their leadership of interest to the government.

            Hence why a lot of exposition is told to us by two FBI agents. Adelaide Norris is the main leader, she’s a young black woman who works in construction. There are two other prominent leaders as well, who aren’t connected to the Women’s Army at the beginning of the movie. Both are radio stations who keep people informed about the violence done against women and people of color. One is run by Isabel, a white woman, and her two white women friends. Then there’s Honey, a black run production. We hear music from them throughout the movie and the music is amazing. Of course the song, Born in Flames is played the most, but they always hit really hard with their music choices in various parts of the film.

            There is another section of women the movie brings up often as well. Three white women who work for the party’s review or newspaper, its kind of unclear which it is. At the beginning of the movie, they act as the Phyllis Schlafly to the Women’s Army. Phyllis Schlafly led a counter movement to the women’s movement in the 60s and 70s. She believed that the women’s movement was demonizing the ‘normal’ and ‘correct’ place of women in the home. Many women of the women’s movement just wanted the choice to be a working person or a housewife, but Schlafly didn’t believe that was the proper role of a woman. So she often argued that there was nothing wrong with the way women were treated.

            These three editors, at first, fulfill a similar role. They uphold the party’s work, claiming that rape and violence against women are declining and that it would just take more time for the government to make bigger and better changes for everyone. In other words, ‘we just have to wait it out’. They dismiss the Women’s Army at first and often argue against it, discouraging the way they act.

            Now, this doesn’t sound like an overly queer movie. It’s certainly about activism and fighting for justice. The summary for the film I found in the description on YouTube call it; “A blistering rallying cry against inequality--issued loud, clear, and unapologetically queer…” Which I do and do not agree with. Adelaide Norris and her recruiter for the Women’s Army are lesbians. The two FBI agents talk about how the Women’s Army is mostly made up of lesbians and black women. Other than a few posters and signs during protests that appear throughout the film, those are the only direct conversations the movie has about queerness. It’s a film more about the rights of people and how to resist oppression. However, that fight is undeniably queer and black folks and queer people are often forgotten about or closeted when it comes to their role in many civil rights movements.

            In this, Norris is the founder of the Women’s Army. She is also being mentored by Zella Wiley, an older black woman who is/was a lawyer. When the Socialist Democratic party first took over, they invited Zella to help with the creation of the future society, but she instantly started doing what she thought they were all there for and filing a lawsuit against industries that were causing inequality. She was kicked out by the same government that welcomed her.

            Near the beginning of the movie, Norris gets fired from her construction job. Many women were also fired from their construction ‘masculine’ jobs. The economy of this version of America isn’t going well. There’s a protest by a bunch of white men about how they have ‘meaningless’ jobs and that minorities are getting preferential treatment in the ‘good jobs’. The police do respond to this protest with a lot of violence, but a few of the protestors are hit with batons.

            The notorious intentions and behaviors behind the government become clearer the longer the movie goes on. At one point, another protest occurs, this time it was black men who said that they were being given ‘meaningless jobs’ that don’t pay enough for them to feed their families. That protest is handled by SWAT teams and people were shot at and it’s implied that some people were killed.

            As things are clearly getting worse, Norris and Zella discuss how they believe the Women’s Army needs to start taking up arms. To start, they organize a protest to see who would come out to support them. Norris asks Honey and Isabel to talk about their protest, but Isabel refuses believing that the Women’s Army isn’t revolutionary enough. Honey is hesitant to help them, but eventually does. Norris even asks the three women editors to write a piece about their protest, but they don’t want to be involved and still believe that if they wait long enough, the government will deliver on their promises.

The protest only pulls 3,000 people, and Zella tells Norris that they need to do more. Norris argues that she feels the problem is that all of the women are too divided. Zella gives her some wonderful wisdom. She asks Norris, and I’m paraphrasing the best I can here, if she would rather have one united lion or five hundred mice. That’s to say, a united front may seem scary, but could be overpowered where five hundred mice can do a lot more damage and can be much harder to completely eradicate. Norris comes to the conclusion that the Women’s Army, at the least, needs to be doing more.

In order to do that, Norris goes to talk with an old friend of Zella’s, a woman from the Saharra whose country’s women have become militant as they protest their government. She agrees to help Norris get weapons if after their fight, they help the women of the Saharra. Norris agrees to go to the Saharra to learn how they are becoming militant and fighting back as well as how to use the weapons they will be given. Sadly, the FBI learns about these travel plans. When Norris returns, she’s ambushed then arrested.

While Zella tries to get her out of jail, she’s found hanged in her jail cell. None of the women who knew her believed that she committed suicide. Instead, they are sure that she was killed by the government in attempt to stop them. Which is when Zella’s mouse analogy kicks in. Because the Women’s Army had always functioned as a loose coalition of women with their own leaders, they aren’t helpless without Norris, instead they’re motivated to fight back even more.

Even the editors and Isabel’s radio station join the fight. Isabel joins because both her radio space and Honey’s were burned in order to silence them. She proposes to Honey that they steal UHaul trucks and convert them into mobile radio stations. At first, she’s hesitant to ally with the Women’s Army alongside Honey, but eventually does because they are their own group that just has support from the Women’s Army when they need it.

The three editors, meanwhile, are shocked and appalled to see what happened to Norris and write an article denouncing the story that the public is being given about Norris committing suicide. Which, while that article is being narrated, the song Strange Fruit is playing. For those who don’t know, Strange Fruit is a song sung by Billie Holiday in 1939. It’s about seeing a lynched black person who was hung from a tree. It’s a very good choice and important choice to play that song here. That’s what I mean when I say that the music in this movie is really well done.

Denouncing the party like they did, leads to the three editors to be fired from their jobs. They don’t waste time and also join the Women’s Army.

Their first plan is to get their message onto the news, and they know they have to do it by force. A small group of women storm into the local new station while the president of this new nation is giving a speech. The speech is about how he and the party are going to start fixing the economy by paying women to do housework. Given everything we’ve seen, this is clearly an effort to put women back into the home with the lure of money. Then they’ll begin taking away their rights, their wealth, and their freedom.

Before the president can finish, the news station employees are forced to put on the women’s recording under gunpoint. Zella comes onto the city’s TVs and tells the viewers that the president’s plan is deceptive. Of course, those women are arrested—side note, one of the women that’s involved with this hold up is an Asian woman who appeared in the beginning of the movie questioning why the Women’s Army uses the term ‘Army’ because it’s so ‘masculine’ which is a kind of lovely bit of character growth—and then soon after Zella is arrested as well.

This doesn’t stop the Women’s Army. They keep holding up the news stations to air their own videos encouraging people to join them, to understand that fighting for women and minority rights will save them all. Both radio stations also keep broadcasting off the grid so they can keep telling people the real news and how to resist.

Now…before I tell you how this movie ends, I need to remind you that this movie takes place in New York city in 1983. At the beginning, when there was an opening shot of the city’s skyline, I was startled to see the twin towers. I was born in 1996, I don’t remember a New York skyline that included the towers, but I was old enough to remember how people reacted to the towers. In fact, my dad was supposed to be near where one of the planes crashed, but the plane neither made it nor did he end up being there. My sister was traumatized by a teacher who went totally Islamophobic after 9/11.

So. Of course I was startled to see them, but this movie takes place in 1983. Of course they are there. Now, I bring this up because at the end of the movie, while another one of the Women Army’s recordings is put on the air, another woman enters the towers…rides an elevator to the top…and…places a bag among some pipes.

The last scene of the movie is—well. It’s that bag exploding. It’s mostly just smoke! There isn’t a mass amount of damage made to the towers! But I was just--shocked. I know at the time, that action doesn’t carry the same weight or even the same message as it does today, post 9/11. Especially for me who mostly remembers what happened. I don’t know how to deal with this scene? I don’t know how to interpret it without the weight of 9/11, so I’m just not going to try to.

What I will say, is that this movie is really important for us to watch. It’s a movie about resistance. It’s a film about rights and human persistence. Not only does it predict the desires and efforts of our current political system to return to such aggressive oppression, but it also shows us something we can do. It holds rhetoric that may seem scary so some, but also is the reality of many of the previous civil rights movements of the past.

We are much closer to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X than we would like to admit. We’re closer to the horrible racism and abuse that happened all over the nation than we would like to remember. We’re closer to the sexism, the homophobia, and the transphobia that kills people every day than we know.

This movie was saved and preserved by Anthology Film Archives and is only about 3 dollars to rent on YouTube. I’ve linked it and the Wikipedia Page for the director in the description. I highly encourage watching this film so long as you mind my warnings. Some scenes are really hard to watch, but they’re important.

I really liked this film even if it made me cry at least once. It’s a really important piece for us to see today.

That was a Review of Born in Flames by The Holiday Pride. Thank you for listening and thank you for sticking around.