Trial of the Chicago 7, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Aaron Sorkin, Jerry Rubin, Abby Hoffman
I turned 8 years old in the summer of 1968. I saw images in Time magazine of hippies
putting flowers into National Guard rifles.
I also saw a picture of a clearly angry hippie shooting the bird at the
camera and, presumably, whoever was standing with the camera person. These pictures – with rich colors – are
stored somewhere deep in my mind. They
were arresting images, but I did not understand them.
Five or six years later, I read the book “Steal This Book”
by Abby Hoffman. I don’t know how I got
hold of a copy… I might have borrowed it
from a friend… In it, Hoffman was encouraging
acts of civil disobedience including, for instance, having everyone in a dorm
threaten to flush their toilets at the same time if the administration of the
University didn’t accede to their demands.
This would, supposedly, burst the pipes.
I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now.
By the time of the Bicentennial, I was almost sixteen and I
hitchhiked to Washington D.C. with my enthusiastic friend Tim to join a protest
movement that involved signing a document called the Declaration of Economic
Independence. We spent the eve of the
fourth in Annapolis and heard the Star Spangled banner at midnight at Francis
Scott Key’s alma mater (where I later went to college).
I had somehow romanticized demonstrating and was actually
looking forward to getting tear gassed.
Fortunately the Vietnam War was over, and the demonstration was a bust –
there weren’t enough people there to join with, much less for the police to get
excited about. Fortunately I did not
learn firsthand just how terrible and unromantic it is to be tear-gassed. Tim and I watched the fireworks, spent the
night on the mall, and hitchhiked home.
In eight years the mood of America had changed and the
gritty reality of 1968 had disappeared.
Fortunately, 50 years later, just in time for the 2020 election, Aaron Sorkin (who was
only six years old that summer of 1968 and had no
knowledge of the events he described in this movie when Spielberg pitched it to
him) has brought it back to life in the movie The Trial of the Chicago
7.
The Chicago 7 (plus one) were a loosely affiliated group of
protesters who “led” a convergence of kids – probably mostly a little older
than I was when I went to Washington – in an attempt to protest the goings on
at the Democratic Convention in Chicago.
Five of the members (Two groups of two and one other person) applied for
permits to demonstrate (something that is protected by our constitution). Mayor Daley’s machine (the same one that
denied my registered Republican grandmother the right to vote in 1960) denied them
permits.
They came anyway and camped in Grant Park which, for those
of you who don’t know Chicago, is one of the truly great city parks in America. Right up there with the Mall in Washington
and Central Park – it is a big strip of land that connects downtown Chicago
with Lake Michigan – and is a front porch for the city. It houses Buckingham fountain and is where
Taste of Chicago and other big crowd events are held. It now even has the Bean. In short, it is now and was then a gathering
place.
Mayor Daley was convinced that the best way to show off
Chicago at the convention was to keep the hippies and yippies and war
protesters away from the convention – to contain them with police and National
Guard in a corner of the park that was a long way from both the Convention’s
headquarters at the Hilton Hotel and from the convention center.
Well, this turned into a bloody mess. And it had the exact opposite effect of showing
off the city and placing the Democratic Party in a positive light. Instead, the nation was appalled at images –
including the ones I saw in the magazine, but others that I don’t remember, of
police tear gassing and beating protesters. One of the complaints about the film is that it insinuates that the protesters – backed into a corner – aggressed against the
police – when, in fact, it was the other way around.
The Chicago 7 (plus one) were charged in Federal Court with
having caused the whole ruckus by Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, John
Mitchell – yes the John Mitchell who would later figure prominently in
the Saturday Massacre that would lead Nixon to resign. Sorkin’s movie is a portrayal of the events
that occurred outside the convention as remembered by the witnesses and the
Chicago 7 themselves as the trial unfolds.
The enacted testimony and memories with the actors
portraying the events are interspersed with occasional videos of the events to
paint a picture of the power of the state to suppress those who would question
it. There is lots of blame to pass
around, but LBJ’s Attorney General Ramsay Clark (delightfully played by Michael Keaton) chose NOT
to prosecute the Chicago 7 because his department blamed the Chicago
politicians and police for creating the violence. But the real criminals that Sorkin wants to
blame are the unhinged Judge, Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) who ran
a court that was, as Abby Hoffman pointed out, a political court, not a
criminal one, and the Federal Prosecutors under John Mitchell’s direction who
brought the full weight of the government to bear on oppressing those who would
have the temerity to object to the goals and objectives of that government.
It is easy to offer a psychoanalytic interpretation of this
film – the members of the “Group” called the Chicago 7 serve as the
self-preservative id. They and the young
people who are in danger of being drafted and sent to a war against people they
have no reason to want to kill object to the super ego’s demands that they do
this, and the ego, trying to preserve peace, sides with the super ego to
silence the id, but the ever creative id figures out how to get around the
ego’s effort to suppress it and ends up asserting itself – not with the ego,
but with the more empathic public who recognizes its distress and get it help.
OK, done. But this
does not begin to touch on how truly terrifying this movie and its depiction of
the state’s power is.
The Chicago seven were made up of four groups, plus
one. Abby Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen)
and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong)
were the head of the Youth International Party – the Yippies. And, just as he had in Steal This Book,
Hoffman was interested in getting kids to prank the adults – he won them over
with humor about a not so humorous subject – the war. He was interested in using youth and energy
to take on the establishment.
The second group were the Students for a Democratic Society
headed by Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and
included Rennie Davis
(Alex Sharp). This group was interested not in making a
mockery of the institutions of the government, but of electing individuals who
would tilt the levers of power towards justice and equity. They were interested in empowering the poor
and using the government to serve the needs of the populace.
There was also a veteran pacifist and non-violent organizer
who was focused on the anti-war effort (and was a Boy Scout leader and father
of a Boy Scout aged kid). Finally there
were two protesters who were included by the prosecution because they would
allow the jury to let them off, relieving any guilt they might feel about
finding the rest to the group guilty.
Oh, and the eighth was Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen
II), co-founder of the Black Panthers, who was in Chicago for four hours to
deliver a speech in a different part of town as part of a completely different
reaction to the convention. He objected
to being included with the others, was unable to be represented by his council,
who was recovering from surgery, and he objected that he was not a member of the
group and was not being represented by counsel.
The Judge – the dishonorable Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) had
Seale beaten, bound and gagged when he would not stop insisting on his need to
be represented and ultimately declared a mistrial for Seale, imprisoning him
for contempt.
Before the mistrial, during one of the intense interactions
between Seale and Hayden, Seale, the only African American among the Chicago
8/7, points out that the motivations of the rest of the group largely revolve
around Oedipal conflicts with father figures (he didn’t use that term, but that
was what he was saying), while the African Americans were fighting the people
who had lynched their parents. This grim
and (at least on some level) accurate assessment put a chill on the image of
the rebellious group that was left to take on the prosecutor and the Judge
after Seale’s departure. It also has the
unfortunate side effect of underscoring the performance aspects of the trial as
just play – when, in fact, there was very serious work underway.
The trial drags on for six months. During this time, Rennie is keeping a daily
list of those who are killed in the war.
In the final triumphal scene, these names are read aloud by the
presumably responsible Hayden who chooses to break with decorum by one-upping
the judge when he has been promised leniency if Hayden will just play along, and
pandemonium breaks loose. This is not
when the names were read into the record in the actual trial – and the attempt
to do that in the trial was thwarted by Judge Hoffman, who would not permit it. So this is artistic license – to good
dramatic effect – and it is a means of reminding us that these antics – and the
very serious business of civil disobedience – is not being done solely because
of oedipally based motives, but to protect American and Vietnamese lives from
the warmongering of Super Powers.
More centrally, though, the movie reminds us that when those
Super Powers get angry about being questioned, they can and will use their full
might against those who would question them.
The Justice Department apparently engaged in jury tampering; the Judge
would not allow evidence from LBJ’s administration that contradicted the current
Justice Department’s view of the matter to read into the record; and it was
clear that an unhinged judge (in a not so subtle mirroring of our current
unhinged President) can wield tremendous power without immediate remedy (the
decision of the court was ultimately overturned – the gross negligence of the
judge would have been apparent to anyone reading the record – but there was no way
to prevent the ongoing injustices during the trial itself – and the bully in
chief seems to have silenced the senate’s ability to rein him in).
There were, as noted, a number of changes in the historical record
to make this a better dramatic work. I
think the most inspired may have been the writing of the part for the
prosecuting attorney – and casting Joseph Gordon-Levitt,
one of the most likeable actors working today, as Richard Schulz. And Gordon-Levitt plays a version of the
prosecutor that is much more insightful, humane, and aware than the real Richard
Schulz apparently was.
This is a critical change in the texture of the drama,
then. When Schultz objects that the
motives of the prosecution are not on trial in this case, it is clear that they
are. This Schultz did not want to try
this case. He saw no collusion between
the members of the group – some had nominal contact before the trial, but each
of the subgroups had very different agendas – and they were not working towards
the same ends. They were also, in
important ways, inarticulate. Hayden’s
statement that set off some of the worst violence was a statement about letting
blood run in the streets. He neglected
to clarify that he meant our blood. He
neglected to let the people he was exhorting know that they were to be martyrs,
not murderers, so he was tried – not for what he intended, but for what he
said. Meanwhile Hoffman was defending
not what he did, but what he intended.
The prosecution wanted to know what he was thinking as he planned the
demonstrations – not what actually occurred.
More importantly, Sorkin's Schultz recognized that he would be
giving the demonstrators just what they wanted by trying them – a platform to
broadcast their views. In this, he was
anticipating the networks coverage of Trump as a side show when he was running
for President – providing him free campaign air time, but also throughout his
presidency. Amplifying his tweets so
that the dog whistle qualities of them could be heard by all of us.
Sorkin's Schultz was smart enough to know that he didn’t have a
winnable case and that prosecuting it would realize goals exactly opposite to
those that the administration wanted to achieve. But he was ambitious. This was also a platform for him. And Mitchell called his manhood into question
– he wondered if he was up for the task.
Hubris – pride – is the vehicle that pulls a smart, capable man into a
vortex from which he, and his vision of an orderly nation, cannot emerge. His wish to ingratiate himself with those in
power, but also the challenge of being able to out duel the Abby Hoffman’s of
the world, pulled him into a place that his better judgement would have saved
him from.
In that final, imaginary scene – the one where everyone in
the courtroom stood and cheered as the names of US servicemen who had died in
Vietnam during the trial were read – was punctuated by Schulz rising to stand with the
rest of the courtroom. When his
co-counsel tried to keep him from doing this – Schulz stated that he had to
honor the war dead.
Sorkin’s Schultz is a man of honor and integrity. A good Dad.
Someone who has sympathy for the causes of the men on trial. He is here – perhaps ironically – putting
into play Trump’s statement that “there are good people on both sides”, but
proving that to be the case. There is
honor among those that serve the government.
This is not just a movie about the Hippies and the Yippies and the
pacifists and the next generation against the man. It is a movie about the complicated process
of being a self-governing nation. It is
about the importance of each of us keeping track of the values that determine
who we, individually and collectively, are.
It is about looking away from the leaders – as if they embody us – and looking
at ourselves to determine how best to move forward.
I am writing these words on the day of Donald Trump’s attempt to
keep the office of the Presidency. I am
anxious about the fate of the country.
If Trump is elected, there will continue to be many fine people in
government service. He will attempt to
root them out. We need to count on “the
deep state” – the men and women of the bureaucracy that is the Federal
Government – as well as our elected officials – to preserve our standing, as
best we are able. We will need to know
that there are, indeed, good people on both sides.
Similarly, if Biden is elected, we will need to bear in mind that there are good people on both sides – and not to veer too sharply away from those who have heard good in reasonable policies Trump has been supporting – but also to recognize the dog whistles for what they are and to continue the process of educating ourselves about how to become better versions of ourselves. We need to listen to the reasonable principles that would guide us – that would allow us to treat each other as family – to be good Samaritans – and overcome our fears, our pride, and whatever else has led us to become ugly versions of ourselves.
Aaron Sorkin and I belong to the generation of baby boomers who came very late in the curve. We idealized what the Chicago 7 were doing and how they did it. They were peace, love, flower people and we believed we could change the world so that everything would be lovey dovey. This attitude is, I think, reflected in Sorkin's West Wing, where all of the people in the White House care about the people they are governing. While there is a part of me that is very deeply committed to this ideal, there is also a part of me that realizes that we act on much more petty and short sighted impulses without thinking through the far reaching impact of those actions. This world is grittier than we would imagine it to be - grittier even than the world depicted in this movie.
To access a narrative description of other posts on this site, link here. For a subject based index, link here.