Origin (US 2023)

This is a biographical drama directed by Ava DuVernay. Her earlier films included Selma (2014). This film has received favourable reviews but seems to have only a limited release in Britain; I found only one venue in Yorkshire so far, (Sheffield Showroom), though Curzon are screening it at some venues. The film credits being ‘inspired’ by a successful book publicised in the USA, ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’, a non-fiction book by the American journalist Isabel Wilkerson, published in August 2020 by Random House. The book did well on the best seller lists and was recommended by a number of members of the political and cultural establishment like Barrack Obama and Oprah Winfrey, [who recommended the book to DuVernay]. Both book and film have enjoyed substantial critical praise and awards; however, both have also been subjected to severe criticism. It is worth considering the book before considering the film.

‘Caste’ was motivated by Wilkerson’s response to some of the racist murders in the USA this century; in particular that of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012. Her investigation took a particular direction after reading a study of how racism operated in the ‘Deep South’ under what was known as ‘Jim Crow’; ‘Deep South A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class’, 1941 by W. Lloyd Warner, Allison Davis, and John Dollard (a recent second edition carried at introduction by Wilkerson). This involved studying what she thought was a relationship between the caste system in the Indian sub-continent: the extermination of Jewish people under the Third Reich: and the racist system oppressing African-Americans in the USA. Wikipedia has a page including responses and reviews to the book; though this is rather partial. It includes the following;

“In Caste, Wilkerson identifies eight “pillars of caste”, or features of caste systems in various societies:

Divine will: the belief that social stratification is beyond human control, either divinely ordained or a natural law, as in the biblical story of the curse of Ham that was used to justify Black inferiority in the U.S.

Heritability: the belief that social status is acquired at birth and immutable, as codified e.g. in the U.S. “one-drop rule” that determined Black ancestry

Endogamy: the prohibition of sex and marriage between castes, as in the former U.S. anti-miscegenation laws

Purity and pollution: the belief that the dominant caste is “pure” and must be protected against pollution by the inferior castes, as shown in the segregation of facilities for bathing, eating, education, etc. in the U.S. Jim Crow era

Occupational hierarchy: the reservation of the more desirable occupations for the superior castes, as enshrined in U.S. Jim Crow laws that restricted Black people to farm or domestic work

Dehumanization and stigma: the denial of individuality and human dignity of lower-caste individuals, as through the various arbitrary punishments and restrictions to which enslaved and free Black people were subject to in the U.S., down to racist carnival games.

Terror and cruelty: as means of enforcement of the caste system and control of lower-caste people, as through the whippings of slaves or the lynching of Black people in the U.S.

Inherent superiority and inferiority of castes: the belief that people of one caste are inherently superior to those of other castes, expressed e.g. in restrictions on clothing or displays of status by lower-caste people (such as driving a car).”

“Wilkerson argues that the social constructs of race and caste are not synonyms, but that they “can and do coexist in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other. Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin.”

Wilkerson identifies three examples of what she believes are caste systems: on the Indian sub-continent: under the Third Reich and the treatment of Jews: and in the USA in the treatment of African-Americans.”

Critical appraisals of this study are online but not as easy to find as those that praise it. One is in the ‘Boston Review’ by Charisse Burden-Stelly, December 1920.

“In a book that combines memoir, travelogue, anecdotal evidence, historical vignettes, and a cacophony of similes and metaphors, Wilkerson presents the United States as a caste system made up of an upper, middle, and lower caste. The upper caste is the white majority (equated to the Indian Brahmin upper caste), the lower caste is the Black minority (equated to Indian Dalits), and the middle caste is comprised of undifferentiated “Hispanics” and Asians, striving to make it into the upper caste.”

She also discusses a counter-view to ‘Deep South’; Lincoln University historical sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox published his 624-page tour de force, ‘Caste, Class and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics’ (1948). She critically examines Wilkerson’s use of data on the Indian caste system and the policies of the Third Reich and she places Wilkerson’s critique and nostrums in the larger discourse of resistance to US racism.

“Caste neither illuminates nor speaks to the origins, exigencies, or urgency of our time. Its celebration in the mainstream media is cause for concern because it reflects the continued priority of elite preferences over the realities, needs, and struggles of ordinary people. It is akin to books such as Robin DiAngelo’s ‘White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Race’ — books that emphasize white peoples’ emotions and behaviors as the source of inequality, thereby circumventing fundamental issues such as resource allocation, labor exploitation, and economic dispossession. This re-centering of dominant voices and desires comes at the expense of those whose marginalization is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. If, as Wilkerson and DiAngelo suggest, the eradication of exploitation and oppression in the United States is contingent upon the dominant white “caste” demonstrating more empathy, abandoning their privilege, and adopting a better attitude, then the suffering of the overwhelming majority will undoubtedly continue unabated. As Frederick Douglass enjoined in 1857, “who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. . . . If there is no struggle there is no progress.”

Arjun Appadurai  in ‘The Wire’ discusses the issue of the Indian caste system in detail. Burden-Stelly includes a  link to Anthony Monteiro’s review in ‘Black Agenda Report‘ (23 Sep 2020).  which in particular addresses Wilkerson’s failure to address class and the mode of production.

“In the face of 60 million working people unemployed, underemployed or completely removed from the labor force in this COVID 19 driven depression, Wilkerson’s arguments turn attention away from actual racial and class conditions, to a non-material and made-up reality she calls caste. Moreover, she misguidedly substitutes an ill-conceived caste analysis for class analysis; the extreme of petit bourgeois obscurantism. Rather than the real and actual material conditions of the life worlds of the people, Wilkerson makes beliefs, values and ideas her central focus. In the name of caste, she flips reality on its head, from working people to their alleged deeply held beliefs; beliefs so deep in their consciousness that they seldom recognize them. Such analysis works in polite parlor discussion, or in university faculty lounges, but is completely meaningless to the lived experiences of Black folk and workers. “

He also points out the absence of serious discussion of capitalism, colonialism and, interestingly, societies in Africa which operated caste systems, the continent from which the enslaved Africans were transported.

As both writers note the basis of Wilkerson’s study is the view, (partly religious), that caste operates beyond particular periods or mode of production. Thus the book has no real notion of political economy. This allows for the comparisons of: the Indian caste system which has operated for thousands of years and which oppresses rather than aims to exterminate: the holocaust under the Third Reich, (which included not just Jews, but also Romany, Slavs and political groupings) which was a system of extermination: and the racist system in the USA which is not a system of extermination but oppression and exploitation.

Wilkerson does refer to ideology but does not define this term. Her study can be identified as ideological in the sense used by Karl Marx in ‘Capital’; addressing only the surface appearances but not the underlying social relations. And the book is empiricist in the sense that it ignores theory; whilst caste is seen as originally conscious domination and, according to Wilkerson, an underlying often unseen social structure, it is never clear what are the fundamental social relations; unlike class which is related to the mode of production and reproduction.

One thing that readers, certainly DuVernay, picked up on what Wilkerson’s noting that the Third Reich leaders used US race laws as a guide when developing their own race laws. However, she failed to discuss that Hitler was also influenced by the US policies against Native Americans, which, that unlike that against black slaves, was a policy of extermination. Likewise caste systems were found in a number of early societies but Wilkerson only studied that in India and apparently not in depth.

Wilkerson does include references to Native Americans and ‘indigenous peoples’, though what the difference is here is unclear. She seems to place them in the middle ranking of the class structure. There is no sense of the settler colonialism which was inflicted on them and then  on the enslaved Africans. Yet this relation is central. I wondered why the analysis did not include a comparison with South Africa and its settler colonialism, where there were under apartheid such parallels with the USA, and where the affects of apartheid still inflict on Africans.  The USA is still complicit in settler colonialism, notably in supporting the Zionist war on Palestinians. And the USA is a major practioner of neo-colonialism, another aspect missing from the book. I noted that Wilkerson frequently uses the word ‘America’ or ‘American’ when referring to the USA; like many others in the USA expropriating the name of two continents, twenty two states and even more numerous peoples.

DuVernay’s film is certainly one that seems to uncritically accept the arguments of the book.

In fact she seems to widen the scope of the book in her comments;

“… caste is the bedrock. It’s the foundation of any of the ‘isms’ – racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, antisemitism.(Interview quoted in i 8 March 2024].

Rather like the term ‘evil’ this applies to so many things but explains none of them.

The film provides a partial biopic of Wilkerson, the period in which she developed and then wrote the book, but it also simplifies the arguments. Thus I noted three occasions when the Wilkerson character commented something along the lines,

‘it is not race it is caste!’

The film omits the long debate over ‘racism’ versus ‘caste’ and Wilkerson’s treatment of oppositional views like that of Cox’s ‘Caste, Class and Race’. Also omitted are Wilkerson’s use of metaphors like that of ‘pathogen’. Wilkerson’s helpful deconstruction of the terms ‘black and white is omitted. And Wilkerson has two West Highland terriers [Chi-chi, a Westy, and Chloe, a Havanese, in the book]; she meets her future partner when she is worrying about the dogs. Yet despite this apparent care for them we hardly see the terriers, not even when she is grieving for her lost partner or mother. And the book’s conclusion regarding how caste should be addressed is presented with Wilkerson giving an address on the book to an enthusiastic audience, mainly composed of African-Americans. Some of the biographical details of Wilkerson appear in the book and in the film: a shameful restaurant experience is one. But other aspects, such as Wilkerson’s partnership and two key white friends, seemed to have been obtained elsewhere.

The film opens with a dramatisation of the last walk of Trayvon Martin. There follows the introduction of the Isabel Wilkerson character, her relatives and partners and her status as a Pulitzer Prize winner. Her increasing interest in events like the murder of Martin leads to her reading ‘Deep South’. She embarks on her research, journeying to India to research caste and the situation of Dalits; and to Germany to research the issue under the Third Reich. During this she suffers the loss of both her partner, mother and a close relative. Her researches are embellished by dramatic recreations of the research behind ‘Deep South’. She then works on her book and following its publication we see her addressing the afore-mentioned meeting.

The film marries sequences with a strong element of melodrama, for example, the killing of the killing of Martin: the illness and death of her mother and then her partner: with fictionalised recreations like the two African-American academics in Berlin or of a German dissident with a Jewish girl-friend. There are lacunae, as to what were the African-American academics researching in Berlin of the Third Reich, [the book explains they were pursuing post-graduate studies; the film shows their shock on encountering racism, which seems unlikely]. There are several meeting s with two middle-class white women, friends, and one an editor at the publishing firm. Yet they seem blissfully uninformed about the issue Wilkerson researches, or on one occasion the issue of untouchability in India.

There is a problem in mainstream narrative film generally with handling ideas, theories and political analysis; successful studies of theory and analysis mainly work in unconventional and to a degree Brechtian forms. A successful example would be I Am Not Your Negro (2016), a documentary by Rahul Peck which is based on an unfinished manuscript by James Baldwin. It is partly biopic but also successfully presents Baldwin’s political arguments through a combination of found footage and stills, television interviews, film extracts, and music all organised into a series of categories.

It is worth noting that Wilkerson writes about a leader of the Dalits/untouchables of the Indian caster system, B. R. Ambedkar.  There are at least three film biopics of Ambedkar, the 2000 film by Jabbar Patel, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, seems typical and is a conventional treatment with little sense of caste or of the politics. There is an interesting treatment of Ambedkar is in Shyam Benegal’s TV series Samvidhaan, scripted by Shama Zaidi and Atul Tiwari. This deals with the making of the Indian Constitution and the book that records the discussion, debates and political arguments that went into this.  The issue of untouchability and the character of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar are important aspects, [he has a page on Wikipedia]. The series uses recreation of speeches and debates by leading political figures during the drafting of the Indian Constitution: it opens with a TV presenter: a commentator fills in the history and details on aspects of both Indian and British conduct. This fills out the history, the political stances and the content of arguments in a way missing from mainstream treatments. The one reservation is that it seems somewhat partisan in treating the differences between The Indian National Congress and The Muslim league.

Of the Third Reich there are multiple drams on film and television. But one of the outstanding is Night and Fog / Nuit et brouillard (1956): directed by Alain Resnais: with script writer Jean Cayrol, a survivor of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp: and with music by Hans Eisler. The film  uses contemporary colour cinematography of the Nazi concentration camps together with found footage from various archives. The film  is divided into twelve sections of categories with a commentary read over the film sequences alternating with the music. This is a film that both dramatises the shocking experiences of Jews in the concentration camps but also deconstructs the values and interests of the Nazi regime. Running only 32 minutes it achieves in that relatively short space what films of four or more times the length fail.

Origin was shot on Kodak Super 16mm Vision 3 stock, which is designed to improve the quality when processed to digital; it increases the aspect ratio available and requires adding sound optically. The screenings are in colour and 1.85:1 DCPs, and the image and sound are excellent. The cinematography uses a high ratio of close-ups, especially in the parts of the film that offer Wilkerson’s biopic. The editing moves fairly fast between sequences. I felt that the different types of narration and the various techniques did not blend together and the film felt obviously constructed. In attending to the book, [in an audio version from the Local Library which did not provide a bibliography or index; it is unclear if the book has these or footnotes despite copious quotations], and the film I increasingly was concerned about how the central arguments relied on illustration and metaphor rather than detailed analytical argument. The film is the worse offender because of the way that some of the complexities of the book are omitted.

Charisse Burden-Stelly expressed concern about the popularity of the book and its actual impact on what is frequently referred to as ‘race relations’; Anthony Monterio is blunter in his objections. In Britain I have not come across critical objections to either the book or the film, though presumably there are some. I have this awful feeling that someone will follow Wilkerson and attempt to delineate a caste system here in Britain. I would hope that the fine films of directors like John Akomfrah, Maureen Blackwood, Ken Loach and the recently lamented Horace Ové would disabuse people of such misdirected efforts.