{"id":37527,"date":"2024-08-15T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=37527"},"modified":"2024-09-25T04:30:09","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T04:30:09","slug":"chicagoans-watch-films-of-the-violent-1968-convention-protests-to-get-ready-for-the-democratic-convention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/chicagoans-watch-films-of-the-violent-1968-convention-protests-to-get-ready-for-the-democratic-convention\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicagoans watch films of the violent 1968 convention protests to get ready for the Democratic convention"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Heather Hendershot<\/a>, Northwestern University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the third day of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago police beat protesters in a free-for-all on Michigan Avenue. The iconic images of that melee<\/a> have since been incorporated into almost every documentary on America in the 1960s<\/a> or about the war in Vietnam<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these are not the only images from those dark days. In fact, Chicagoans have recently revisited some of the greatest films of that moment, as there is tremendous interest in stories about the history of that violent and troubled year\u2019s Democratic convention, sparked by the decision to hold this year\u2019s convention in the same city that saw that earlier unrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late spring 2024, four short 1969 documentaries made by Chicago\u2019s Film Group<\/a> were screened at the Chicago Cultural Center<\/a>. Film Group was a successful commercial producer<\/a> for clients such as Kentucky Fried Chicken. They added political filmmaking to their repertoire in the summer of 1966, when Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference came to town to engage in an ultimately futile battle against housing discrimination<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Police
Police attack demonstrators on Chicago\u2019s Michigan Avenue during the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 28, 1968. Bettman\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The theater was filled with journalists, octogenarian activists and a handful of quinquagenarians such as myself<\/a>, all eager to view these gripping documentaries that included not only famous footage of Michigan Avenue but also images that have circulated much less since 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those included Mayor Richard Daley stating, following the assassination of King, that the police should \u201cshoot to kill any arsonists\u201d and \u201cshoot to maim or cripple anyone looting<\/a>\u201d \u2013 suggestions he later claimed he never made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Searing indictment\u2019 of Daley<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In late July 2024, the Music Box Theatre showed another Film Group short<\/a>, followed by Haskell Wexler\u2019s \u201cMedium Cool<\/a>,\u201d a drama about an almost-completely amoral TV news cameraman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film unfolds its story in two different ways. One scripted and sometimes rather stiff storyline follows a budding relationship between the cameraman and a young Appalachian woman. The other interconnected story is unscripted and more explicitly political, featuring documentary footage of 1968\u2019s street violence and interviews with Black activists, and raising questions about media ethics and the policies of Daley\u2019s police. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Q1jBezLoCXs?wmode=transparent&start=0 The original trailer for \u2018Medium Cool.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movie is ultimately a searing indictment of both Daley\u2019s \u201claw and order\u201d tactics \u2013 language that Daley used, echoing Richard Nixon \u2013 and of television itself. It celebrates the depth of film over the facile shallowness of what snobs used to call television: \u201cthe idiot box.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The house was packed. To my right sat a film student attending at his professor\u2019s urging. The place was, in fact, full of young cinephiles, enraptured by an introduction by Julian Antos of the Chicago Film Society<\/a>, who celebrated the fact that now, at last, the city has its very own new 35mm print of this most-Chicago-of-all film. Adding another detail that was catnip to film nerds, Dibbell explained that a fun song had been restored to the film\u2019s roller derby scene, long lacking from streaming and DVD versions of \u201cMedium Cool\u201d because of rights issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On my left were three older men who had worked with Wexler in the 1970s. One had seen \u201cMedium Cool\u201d multiple times, but it had been a while. Afterward, he observed correctly that a good editor could have trimmed 20 minutes to tighten up the picture\u2019s wonky pacing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Re-viewing it for the umpteenth time, I was particularly struck by the film\u2019s gaps in political context, in stark contrast to the Film Group productions. \u201cMedium Cool\u201d offers a strong critique of violence, and media exploitation<\/a> of that violence, and it makes a reference to Chicago\u2019s Red Squad<\/a> \u2013 a police surveillance unit targeting communists and others deemed \u201cradical\u201d<\/a> \u2013 that would be lost to many viewers then and now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Wexler fairly presumed that 1969 viewers would already know most details about the 1968 presidential race. Where does this leave contemporary viewers who aren\u2019t history buffs, over half a century later?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
The crowd at the Chicago screening of Haskell Wexler\u2019s film \u2018Medium Cool.\u2019 Chicago Film Society, CC BY<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Not going to take it anymore\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Exiting the theater, I stopped to talk to an energetic young woman gearing up for a march in support of reproductive and queer rights, and against the Democratic convention and genocide in the Gaza Strip<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She felt that Kamala Harris was not very different from Joe Biden, and that neither politician was more than marginally better than Donald Trump. As for the film, she could not have cared less about the hero but offered that the sound design was exceptional \u2013 fair criticism and accurate praise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seemed that \u201cMedium Cool\u201d had not taught her too much about 1968, and yet her stance on systemic injustice resonated with me as a historian. Few activists showed up at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 to support its presidential nominee, Hubert Humphrey<\/a> or attack Nixon. Those men simply weren\u2019t their focus. They were there to protest the whole goddamn crisis of American politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year 2024 is not 1968, but films about that period in American politics capture a feeling that has again taken hold almost 60 years later. It seems likely the streets of Chicago will soon once again fill with people who are, as the protagonist Howard Beale said in his famous rant in the movie \u201cNetwork,\u201d \u201cmad as hell, and I\u2019m not gonna take this anymore<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story has been updated with the correct name of the Chicago Film Society staffer, Julian Antos.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heather Hendershot<\/a>, Professor of Communication Studies and Journalism, Northwestern University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heather Hendershot, Northwestern University On the third day of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago police beat protesters in a free-for-all on Michigan Avenue. The iconic images of that melee have since been incorporated into almost every documentary on America in the 1960s or about the war in Vietnam. But these are not the only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":37528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025,10,4],"tags":[778,1138,479,7319,885,891,886,860],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37529,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37527\/revisions\/37529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}