Eager 1
Lynn Eager
English 586
Film Rationale
The Weather Underground (2002)
Directed by Sam Green & Bill Siegel
Genre and Length
Expository documentary film-- 92 minutes
Grade Level and Audience
This film would be appropriate to use in a College English class
Relevant Common Core Standards for College Students
Media and Technology
Just as media and technology are integrated in school and life in the twenty-first century, skills related to media use (both critical analysis and production of media) are integrated throughout the standards.
Language
The standards help prepare students for real life experience at college and in 21st century careers. The standards recognize that students must be able to use formal English in their writing and speaking but that they must also be able to make informed, skillful choices among the many ways to express themselves through language.
Vocabulary and conventions are treated in their own strand not because skills in these areas should be handled in isolation but because their use extends across reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Writing
The ability to write logical arguments based on substantive claims, sound reasoning, and relevant evidence is a cornerstone of the writing standards, with opinion writing—a basic form of argument—extending down into the earliest grades.
Research—both short, focused projects (such as those commonly required in the workplace) and longer term in depth research —is emphasized throughout the standards but most prominently in the writing strand since a written analysis and presentation of findings is so often critical.
Annotated samples of student writing accompany the standards and help establish adequate performance levels in writing arguments, informational/explanatory texts, and narratives in the various grades.
Reading
The standards establish a “staircase” of increasing complexity in what students must be able to read so that all students are ready for the demands of college- and career-level reading no later than the end of high school. The standards also require the progressive development of reading comprehension so that students advancing through the grades are able to gain more from whatever they read.
Through reading a diverse array of classic and contemporary literature as well as challenging informational texts in a range of subjects, students are expected to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspective. Because the standards are building blocks for successful classrooms, but recognize that teachers, school districts and states need to decide on appropriate curriculum, they intentionally do not offer a reading list. Instead, they offer numerous sample texts to help teachers prepare for the school year and allow parents and students to know what to expect at the beginning of the year.
Summary
In 1969, a small group of leftist college student radicals announced their intentions to overthrow the U.S. government in opposition to the Vietnam War. This documentary explores the rise and fall of this radical movement as former members speak candidly about the passion that drove them at the time. The film also explores the group in the context of other social movements of the time, featuring interviews with former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party.
Using archival footage from the 1960s and 1970s, the film also intersperses recent interviews with high profile ex-Weathermen like Bernardine Dohrn, David Gilbert, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd and Brian Flanagan, who talk about their involvement in the organization, their experiences, and the trajectory that led them to be placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list. This film covers the Weather Underground's campaign of violence through this period, and the FBI's strategies and tactics to apprehend them (including some deemed unethical or illegal), until changing times and disillusionment brought their activities to an end.
Strengths, Unique Thematic and Textual Connections Characteristics of the Film
The strength of this film is through its archived Vietnam footage, which would tie beautifully with the Tim O’Brian book Things They Carry. O’Brian’s book examines the war through the eyes of a soldier, in comparison to students who become activist for the right reasons but have only seen the scenes of brutality on the evening news. For the reader who is not ready to experience Things they carry, Gary D. Schmidt wrote a young adult novel called The Wednesday Wars. This novel is set in the 60’s and is seen through the eyes a seventh grader. His exposure to the war is also through the evening news, but he also experiences the loss first hand, after he reads a telegram meant for his teacher, informing her of his MIA. Although the film does not mention the beatnik generation, there are some images in the film that suggests this social and literary movement, so this film could be a front load for Jack Keruac’s On the Road.
The textual connections to an atrocity that continues today and is mentioned throughout the film, is the term of genocide. There are many documentaries on just this subject alone, including A Devil on Horseback or clips from The BBC news could also be used as examples. The New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof writes riveting article concerning the act genocide that has and is taking place in Africa. These articles are easily downloaded and copies made from The New York Times website and having the added bonus of a non-fiction reading.
Possible Objections
The film is of adult themes and would not be appropriate to show to students under eighteen. The film uses adult language, brief nudity, and violence.
Awards and Reviews
Nominated for an Oscar (2004) Best Documentary
CarlaMeyer of The San Francisco Chronicle writes:
Regret hangs over "The Weather Underground," a documentary about the 1970s radical group. Powerful and surprisingly timely, the film explores the interweaving of idealism and terrorism and the frustration of true believers who found that neither approach resulted in muchchange.
San Franciscan Sam Green and co-director Bill Siegel mix stock footage of Vietnam-era news events with new interviews with former Weathermen. This isn't the usual middle-aged look back on youthful folly; these were activists so committed they cut themselves off from family and friends for nearly adecade.
Fueled by revolutions around the world -- China, Cuba, the Congo -- and by the failure of marches on Washington to stop the escalation of the VietnamWar, the Weathermen splintered from Students for a Democratic Society in 1969. Led by the charismatic Bernardine Dohrn, among others, these educated, glamorous revolutionaries aimed to overthrow thegovernment.
The idea of stopping horrifying violence in Vietnam by mounting a violent campaign of their own made perfect sense when accompanied by LSD and groupsex.
But the movie also captures the sincere feeling of injustice that prompted such radicalism. As former group member Mark Rudd remembers, "I could be taking an acid trip, and I would be thinking about the Vietnam War." An excerpt of President Nixon deriding peace marchers underscores the activists' sense of futility -- and is eerily similar to President Bush's dismissal of anti-war rallies earlier thisyear.
Adopting the principle that white Americans' blindness about the war and the persecution of African Americans was tantamount to violence, the group planned to bomb a gathering at the Army's Fort Dix, a plan derailed when an accidental explosion in a New York City townhouse killed three group members. Shadowed by the FBI and shaken by the deaths, the group went underground and executed a series of bombings in government offices -- including one at San Francisco's Ferry Building -- while ensuring that there were no casualties. They didn't surrender until the late 1970s, when charges were dropped against them because of FBImalfeasance.
The impact of their long campaign is hard to gauge from the film, which actually downplays the group's significance. By 1973 or so, one interviewee says, nobody was talking about them on college campuses. This moment underscores the film's main flaw, which is assuming that the unrest of the Vietnam era is all the contextneeded.
More on the backgrounds of group members, whose defense of the downtrodden seems at least partly a response to their own "bourgeois" roots, might have helped illuminate their unusual fervor. Dohrn is especially intriguing because she was already a lawyer and in her late 20s when she started the Weathermen. Now a law professor at Northwestern, she could be mistaken for acongresswoman, were it not for a fire in her eyes that says she'd do it allagain.
Previewing Activities
1. Martin Luther King’s speech, “I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam,” which can be heard on YouTube.
2. Richard Nixon’s speech, “Silent Majority,” which can be printed from an electronic source and read as a group.
3. Read Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce Et Decorum Est, to give the students a first hand look at war through the eyes of a soldier. Although the poem is from WWI, it still focuses on the fear felt by the soldiers.
4. Play the song called “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and print out a copy of the lyrics. Later the students will learn the significance of the song to the film.
Viewing Day #1 Opening Credits 0- 45 Minutes
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s polarization of American political situation was becoming acute, with the Vietnam War abroad and civil rights at home being the most pressing issues. This issue was not only going on in our own backyard but also in Japan, China, and France. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which formed in the early 1960’s, believed in nonviolent, peaceful demonstrations and had about 100,000 members as the Vietnam war drew near, but later came to the conclusion that they were having little impact on the war. As a result one particular group, The Weather Underground, split from SDS with about 20 to 30 members that quickly swelled to thousands. The group took their name from the Bob Dylan lyric, “You don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing”. The Weather Underground attempted to team up with the Black Panthers to violently confront the US government. This film features thirteen of the top leaders who began with participation in street riots, and escalated their efforts to include the bombing of specific targets associated with the government or local power structures. They had the Bonnie and Clyde factor working for them; they were good-looking and participated in the sex and drug scene. In the summer of 1969, they left the college campuses and established themselves into working-class neighborhoods; because the thought process was that working-class youths would be more revolutionary then those on college campuses. The outcome was to transform an over-privileged collective into fighters. “Bring the War Home” was their slogan. The group considered the Vietnam War a form of genocide. The group believes once Richard Nixon was put in office there was a policy put into place to take out the Black Panthers in any way found necessary. “The bigger the mess, the better” became the attitude of the group as they transcend from a non-violent group to one that wants now to be noticed. The accidental bombing of an upper-class townhouse in Greenwich, New York that killed three active members of the group cause the collective to rethink their long range plan.
Discussion Questions
1. What is the importance of the Bob Dylan song to The Weather Underground?
2. Who is Bonnie and Clyde and what symbolism do they play in the film?
3. What does the Vietnam War mean to you and do you think the recent Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan show any similarities to the Vietnam War?
Viewing Day #2 45- 92 Minutes
The official beginning of the Weather Underground, and the participants knew at that point they needed to go underground. The group members changed their appearances and left their families. Their plan was to standup against indiscriminate violence and they knew no one was ever going to be injured again and there never was. The Weather Underground claims responsibility for the bombing of a San Francisco building in response to the assignation of prison inmate George Jackson. The bombing took place within hours of Jackson’s funeral. During the next year The Weather Underground bombed seven more building in response to what was considered as American repression. Their peers felt the group has been forced to be outlaws in order for the group to stand up for their beliefs. At this point the major players are under the scope of the FBI and are on the top ten most wanted list. The FBI, in order to capture the fugitives, created an underground group of their own with hopes to infiltrate and capture any one of the group’s members. A group who called themselves, The Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, broke into an FBI field office and made off with some files, which were leaked to the press and contained co-intell. This intell talked about doing away with the Black Panthers, the Anti-war Movement, and Martin Luther King. The group started to feel disillusioned by what in the past seemed so important. They felt as if they had been reduced to group who placed a bomb here and a few months later did it all over again. By the Mid- seventies, The Weather Underground seemed to lose their steam, so they created a film reminding people that they were still there. In 1973, the group began bombing monuments and buildings in protest. In 1975, with the end of the war, the group began to feel as if they needed to come up, and none to soon as the organization had started to come apart. One by one the key people began turning themselves into the authorities. As the seventies came to a close, all of The Weather Underground had turned themselves in. Few served time, because the FBI broke so many laws while investigating the group, so the courts had no other choice but to drop the charges. Ironically, two FBI agents did serve sentences in response to the illegal means of investigation. Most of the members today do not regret their participation in the movement and still stand for what they believe.