Thoughts spawned as the result of watching Fassbinder’s Faustrecht der Freiheit.

The cypher I
think to understanding the film is the sensation we get of the rich forming a sort of sect, a
conspiracy, a brotherhood. We see it all throughout the film: it isn’t only Eugen’s family taking
part in the scam, it is the whole of their circle, even when there isn’t any direct benefit for them
to obtain. The thing is, they know they have to help with it, first because they know they
probably will need to do something like that at some point, in fact probably already have, and
will need the help of their “friends” as well, and secondly, and most important, because this
sectarian, “conspirational” behavior acts as the mechanism of control on which their whole
power is based. What the rich are running is a scam. What they are actually doing is ripping the
poor off, as we see them doing the poor Biberkopf. And to do this, to sustain this scam, to make
the poor earn money for them, it is necessary to make the poor believe that they have a certain
measure of control, that since it is they who have the labor force, it is really they who are in
charge, it is about making them believe that the system consists in a form of agreement, a
contract (as seen in the film) that benefits both parts. But there’s no contract whatsoever, and
the poor are not and have never been in control. Their capital is being used, they are being
mined for what they have to offer, is all what’s happening. They are being dried up and dumped
to die. It is the perfect mechanism of control, and all based, as said, in this brotherhood the rich
have created. It is quite interesting to go a little deeper into it. As seen in the film, it isn’t money
itself what gives an individual power (after all, Biberkopf has the money, but has no power); it is
precisely the ability to move in that circle, the being accepted in it, as part of the brotherhood,
as part of the con, what will give the individual power. There is something of the Kafkaesque in
it, something that reminds me of poor Josef K attempting to gain access to the Mysteries of the
Law, to that area where only the initiate can tread with a certain amount of confidence. It is
something that controls all of our lives, and yet it is something the common of the people can’t
in any manner comprehend or even gain access to. There is something of that in this scam of
the rich, something of a modern version of the Elysian Mysteries, something that perhaps even
goes beyond the mere mechanism of control and into the area of the forming a brotherhood
with the simple goal of convincing oneself that one’s above the populace, as seen in Kubrick’s
Eyes Wide Shut. And it is also interesting to consider how unlike good old fashioned oppression
this system is. There’s something of the honest, of the direct in oppression. Something of the
clean, even. You don’t do what I tell you, I fuck you up, I put you through the sword, and then
others will do as I tell them out of fear. But this is so much more twisted. This is making you
believe you’re in control while in reality I’m sucking your blood up till your last drop of energy.
And to avoid your noticing and rebelling all I do is keeping you distracted. I feed you valium and
such pills as a means to keep you stupefied. I give you American Gladiators 24/7 so that you
cannot stop to think for a moment. And all the while I tell you “it’s you who have the upper
hand, you who’s holding all the cards, you who are really benefited by our contract”. It is so
much more effective and easy to maintain than violence. You’ll do it of your own accord. You’ll
do it convinced you’re robbing me.

One last thought on the manner: it is interesting about the valium and other antidepressants.
Instead of modifying that what’s wrong about the system, that which spawns the needs for the
antidepressants, what we do is we choose to ignore it with the antidepressants.

Another interesting theme that appears at moments in the film is that of time slipping by
unnoticed, with a speed that is almost cruel. In the grand scheme of the film, in the denouncing
of the conspiracy of the higher classes, I wonder if what this theme means isn’t that in a way ,
what the poor are being robbed most of all is of their time. It is curious that this idea is
developed by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged, a book that is, at least ideologically, diametrically
opposite to Fassbinder’s work.