Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Manos: The Hands of Fate

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the fourth of my critiques and the one you've all been waiting for.

Film: Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
Subtext: Marxism

Made just one year before Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise and just two years before Bernardo Bertolucci's Partner, Manos is a delirious plunge into the same dialectical terrors of bourgeois oppression and of the futility of proletarian struggle.

The film concerns a family--a man, a woman, their prepubescent daughter, and their poodle--looking for a holiday resort. By chance, they stumble upon the lair of the High Priest of Manos, The Master, who lives with his servant, Torgo, and his six wives.

This set-up immediately reveals to us the class struggle. The Master is the bourgeoisie, the land-owner--he is the thesis. Manos, meaning 'hands,' an evil deity who is never seen, clearly represents the power of labour: the means of production. The Master has the power because in his hands are the means of production; this gives him power over others around him and even, he claims, immortality.

Enter the typical American family--the antithesis--a car full of consumers. They meet first with Uberservant, Torgo. Torgo is shifty, full of nervous habits, who takes care of the place "while the Master is away." Torgo is one of the dominated: peasantry, proletariat.

When Torgo lays eyes on the young, pretty American wife, however, he gets ideas of revolt. "The Master wants you," he tells her, "but he can't have you. I want you." He wants to be free, to take control of his own life, to wrest the means of (re)production equally into his hands. The spirit of communism walks in Torgo.

This class struggle between Torgo and the Master is later emphasized as the Master tells Torgo he cannot have a wife of his own because, "You're not one of us." Torgo is low-class, proletariat, destined for service only. Torgo often says the Master has six wives, he doesn't need any more. Of course, need has nothing to do with it: class inequality exists because the means of production (Manos) are in the hands of the few, the Master. Torgo has no wives.

When the Master gets air of the rebellion, he awakes his six wives, that they might perform sacrifices upon the rebels, the unwanted, and maybe take a wife or two in the process. This generates rebellion even amongst his wives. Some refuse to kill a child, some are pleased to kill everyone. These wives are like the aristocrats, some of whom gave their support to the bourgeois to their own destruction, while others fought but wound off no better.

Soon the Master has punished Torgo, burning off his hand--hands being symbolic, in this film, of power--and subduing his rebellious first wife. His first wife believes he is impotent, saying she does not fear his power. The Master, however, does have all the power.

In the meantime, the family is attempting to flee. The capitalist consumers do not want to be caught up in the struggle, in the Revolution. They are afraid. However, finding they have no resources--finding they cannot indulge themselves without the product of the producers--they return to the house of the Master.

Attempting to join into the Revolution far too late in the game, the whole family is overcome. The bullets do not work: Manos really does give immortality to the bourgeoisie. The father is made into a servant, replacing Torgo, who has fled into oblivion (being entirely impotent without his hands), and his wife and daughter have both become new wives of the Master.

This film is special in that it is one of very few Marxist dramas in which the victory belongs to the bourgeoisie. The film's dialectic is such that the consumers arrive to the ordered bourgeois plantation. The plantation's conditions offend the delicate sensibilities of the consumers, who then instigate a revolt by their horror. Where the thesis of the bourgeois Master and antithesis of the consumerist family might have unveiled a synthesis of revolution, this is not the case; in this synthesis, the consumers are swallowed up into the bourgeois domination, the Revolt is suppressed.

If ever there was a true Marxist horror film, then, Manos is certainly the first and possibly the only. While not handled as competently as Bertolucci's 1900, it stands as an offset, showing the other possible course--the more realistic course, perhaps, given recent history. It is recommended for the interested to watch 1900 and Manos: The Hands of Fate as a doublebill.

Because the film does not provide the Revolution, however, it can be argued that the film is the thesis, and Warren has made the audience--we ourselves--the antithesis. If there is to be a synthesis, the synthesis of Revolution, it is to be carried out by us. The action of revolution, as Lina Wertmuller argued, cannot take place in film, for the film is passive; the Revolution must be in reality. The horror of the film places the onus of revolution on us.

This film is highly recommended for Marxist analysts, film studies groups, and for comrades who are preparing for the triumph over capitalism. It could well be watched alongside Wertmuller's Swept Away for a similar depth of insight, with less attractive actors.