By JOÃO LANARI BO*
Commentary on Jamie Roberts' documentary “Four hours at the Capitol”
Four hours at the Capitol it's a documentary real-time about the pathetic event that surprised the world on January 6, 2021, when a heterogeneous horde of pro-Donald Trump protesters invaded the Capitol in Washington, the home of the Legislature. Almost four years later, the fateful event seems to have been diluted in the apocalyptic fog that characterizes the contemporary collective psyche, of social networks and algorithms, of simulacra and post-truths. On the eve of a new presidential election, watching Jamie Roberts' film is equivalent to revisiting a primary scene, one of those that configure the psychic repression of neurotics.
The psychoanalytic vocabulary serves as an extenuating factor in a precarious effort to rationalize not only what actually happened, but above all in terms of the subsequent erasure, the compulsive denial of responsibility – starting at the top, with Donald Trump and the politicians aligned with him, and reaching the media apparatus tied to them.
Even the US legal system, certainly the best equipped on the planet, was unable to materialize sufficient evidence to incriminate these agents, despite the evidence and the numerous ongoing processes.
Only the small fish, some of them exposed in detail in Four hours at the Capitol, are settling accounts with the Justice system. The successive postponements of the specific case against Donald Trump reveal not only the incapacity of the system, but perhaps the institutional corrosion of political life as a whole.
The assertion may seem overdramatic, but it becomes natural in the face of the sequence of speeches and outbursts of the possessed who invaded the Capitol, bearers of a psychotic desire for rupture. The notion of social contract that emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries – the simple idea was that people give up certain rights to a government or other authority in order to obtain the advantages of the social order – went down the drain.
It is ironic that many of the invaders appear wrapped in nationalist flags or symbols, shouting “USA”, “Freedom” and “1776”, the year of independence from English colonial power. Even the most radical groups, such as “Proud Boys"and "Cowboys for Trump” flaunted this supposed patriotism. The rupture symbolized by the invasion – or the escalation that points to the downfall of almost 250 years of American democracy, “the longest-lasting in history” – is crystallized in every corner of the Capitol corridors, in the entropic path of the mass and in the fruitless resistance of the police, reconstructed by the skillful chronological editing of Four hours at the Capitol.
The attack on the Capitol, as we know, was instigated by Donald Trump’s incendiary speech that same day at Ellipse Park, near the White House. The aim was to prevent a joint session of Congress from counting the Electoral College votes to certify the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. The documentary does not hesitate to give voice to supporters: one of them smiles and describes the scene as a great day for America! Another says that Donald Trump was anointed by God and is the savior. The reactions of politicians who were at the Capitol record the bewilderment of the event – truly, no one could have predicted that it would come to this.
It is not, after all, a mere compilation of images from the numerous cameras that entered the place – not only cell phones, but also professional ones – nor is it a simple record of security cameras. Four hours at the Capitol constructs a meticulous account of the core of the scene and the dynamics of the events, including subsequently recorded interviews with a wide range of participants.
The scale of the attack became clear with each barrier that was overcome by the invaders. It was a fierce, hand-to-hand combat – at one point, a police officer was dragged out and was in imminent danger of being lynched. Take his gun, shoot him with his gun, someone shouted: miraculously, moderate protesters managed to get around and lead the (almost) victim into the building.
By the end of the day, six people were dead: one woman was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, three died of natural causes, and a security officer died after being attacked by the mob. Many more were injured: four officers committed suicide within seven months of the invasion.
And two years later, on January 8, 2023, a similar attack occurred on the center of power in Brasília – history repeats itself as farce, as Marx said, or as rhyme, as Mark Twain said.
*João Lanari Bo He is a professor of cinema at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Brasília (UnB). Author, among other books, of Cinema for Russians, Cinema for Soviets (Time Bazaar) [https://amzn.to/45rHa9F]
Reference
Four hours at the Capitol
USA, 2021, documentary, 92 minutes.
Directed by: Jamie Roberts.
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