Privilege (1967) was Peter Watkins final film made entirely in England. After making the films Culloden (1964) and The War Game (1965) for the BBC, Watkins was given the chance by John Heyman and Universal Pictures to do a big budget picture in his trademark pseudo-documentary style which became the movie Privilege. It was a radical move by the producers to back a Peter Watkins film.
Privilege follows superstar pop singer Steven Shorter (Paul Jones) at the height of his fame. His corporate sponsors have just contrived a bold new move for Shorter away from an image of violence and into Christian doctrine. It’s a maneuver motivated equally by dollars as well as power. Moving Shorter into a more politically conservative position means that the “youth-quake” that’s sprung up around him will also move.
Steven Shorter is the dark reflection of bands like The Monkees and Paul Jones’ own group Manfred Man that were put together by moneymen to cash-in on cultural trends. Watkins depicts this phenomenon within pop culture as a snake devouring itself by the tail. Investors, board members, consultants, producers and managers have all systematically removed any individuality in Steven Shorter so that he exists only as a brand.
Watkins use of cinéma vérité techniques imbues the elaborate montage that is Privilege with the guise of authenticity and realism. Privilege acts and feels like a documentary film. The constant reiteration that “this is reality” which permeates every frame of Privilege lends Watkins’ more alarming spectacles an uncanny agency. The scene in which Shorter performs his first show backed by the Church of England looks like a cross between a Klan meeting and Triumph Of The Will (1935).
As much as Watkins lampoons the music industry, his real agenda is to reveal the corruption of nationalist ideologies. The moneymen that pull the strings in Privilege are just like those that exist outside of Watkins’ cinema. These are the men who, through their capital, exert a tremendous influence on politics and popular culture. Privilege is concerned with how the music industry is manipulated by these individuals to further their own political agendas.
The narration in Privilege constantly recites statistics regarding Shorter’s popularity in Britain as if the narrator were simply reading bulletin’s at a board of directors meeting. Likewise the scenes of the moneymen operating behind Shorter are full of references to various departments and institutions within the British political infrastructure. These moments, visual and auditory, repeat throughout Privilege as the main unifying commentaries of the film; the backbone of its structure.
The audacity of Privilege has given it a kind of eternal relevancy. Mick Jones’ group Big Audio Dynamite have sampled dialogue from the film in their song “Just Play Music” whilst Patti Smith has covered Shorter’s hit “Free Me” as if he were an actual pop star and these events had truly occurred. Shorter’s “live” performance of “Free Me” in Privilege represents the ultimate exercise in schadenfreude that has reverberated down through both rock and roll performances and avant-garde performance artists. Privilege is one of the essential filmic texts of sixties radicalism and it must be seen.
