Educational Media Reviews Online

Made in 1967 at the height of “swinging British” cultural exportation and set in the then future of 1970, Privilege, is prescient; much like Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange would later be in 1971, about the prevalence of media manipulation, the cult of celebrity and its place as superficial diversion within popular culture. What was used as a metaphor of the future in the 1960s has fully developed into the present cultural climate. Watkins’ 1960s prophetic future is clearly and sadly the basis of our contemporary reality: it fuses the world of pop music idol makers with that of fascistic religious zealots.

As a result of his position that his work has been marginalized by the media, Peter Watkins does not give interviews of any kind and instead produces self-interviews about his works. These texts provide good background on the making of the films and on the filmmaker’s political view. His website also presents his critical and analytical thinking about his marginalization and his ideas about the media crisis.

The selection of the actors portraying the main characters in Privilege was an interesting one: The lead character was a pop music idol whose popularity was devised by his handlers and thus the role went to Paul Jones who had been the lead singer for the popular band Manfred Mann. The role of the artist hired to paint his portrait went to the supermodel Jean Shrimpton whose face sold cosmetics and magazines. Although critics panned their acting ability, Shrimpton’s quiet shyness comes through without awkwardness and upon contemporary re-evaluation of this film; her acting appears to fit in within the film’s sensibility. She did not however continue in a film acting career.

Watkins mentions in his self-interview that the music business was a completely foreign world to him until he had happened upon a 1962 National Film Board of Canada documentary about Paul Anka, taking its name from Anka’s hit song, Lonely Boy. For Watkins it was a”crash-course into the superficiality and opportunism of the managerial group surrounding a pop idol.” It is interesting that Privilege contains a song called Bad, Bad, Boy reinforcing the link between celebrity idolatry and a kind of media infantilism. This short documentary is also included on the DVD and offers an opportunity to compare Watkins’ approach with that of Roman Kroitor and Wolf Koenig, the co-directors of the NFB documentary. Watkins claims that additional inspiration came from Leni Riefenstahl’s 1934 Triumph of the Will in the way that the mass media of Nazi Germany manipulated its public. This is most particularly evident in the section dealing with the evangelical event in the football stadium. This film is very highly recommended for anyone interested in examining the role of media and culture. Its prescience is almost frightening.