Herbert's Hippopotamus: A Story about Revolution in Paradise
Herbert Marcuse had penchant for hippos, which explains the title of Danish film and videomaker Paul Alexander Juutilainen’s Herbert's Hippopotamus: A Story about Revolution in Paradise (1997), a portrait of the prominent New Left leader and philosopher. This is but one minor detail in the provocative chronicle, which charts not only Marcuse’s role as a prominent and outspoken leader in the 1960s and 70s, and his profound influence on students at UCSD, but the fascinating attempts to condemn him made by Ronald Reagan and Robert K. Dornan (among others), as well as the American Legion, which worked diligently to get him dismissed from his teaching post. The real power of Juutilainen’s video, however, is its depiction of powerful resistance. Angela Davis, who studied with Marcuse, is shown in her Black Panther days and, when interviewed about those early years, recalls Marcuse’s political largess. Other students recall the heady mix pf philosophy and politics, and the result is a moving account of both an era that was giddy with possibilities of making philosophy and politics real and a man totally committed to emancipation and to rejecting the authoritarianism and bureaucratism that undermine our relationship to the world. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker and others.
- Holly Willis
