Welcome to Cinema of Resistance, a semi-monthly column highlighting films of all genres and styles with one thing in common – a desire to shed light on, fight against, and/or stick it to authoritarian regimes, fascists, and bigots both in present day and historically. Genre film about violently killing Nazis, deep drama about finding meaning in suffering, important documentaries that provide hope, dystopian fantasies – it’s all here. In the face of an authoritarian regime, the time to resist is now. So, here at Cinapse, we’re celebrating the resistance.
In late January, I launched this column with the intent to post roughly weekly about films that are resisting tyranny and oppression. While late January was a success in staying on schedule, February was a wash… with two half written pieces sitting in my drafts all month. The goal is to get at least a couple of these up most months, but life happens. Turning on the news will tell you everything you need to know about life being a distraction or getting in the way of things we hope to accomplish, sadly. But we forge on… even when fiction starts to feel a little bit too real – as is the case with 2018’s Purge franchise prequel entry, The First Purge.
The entire Purge franchise feels possible in the world we currently live in. With a regime that seems as willing to stage national catastrophe and crisis as the New Founding Fathers do in this series or the government does in V for Vendetta, it doesn’t feel far off that a classist and racist cleansing ritual disguised as a way to curb crime and protect the country could be reality. Yet, there’s something particularly hard to swallow about the 2018 entry which shows the beginning of the annual day of crime that the rest of the series focuses on.
The location of the “social experiment” is the first element of the film that feels extremely possible and reality based – Staten Island. The New York City borough is chosen for several reasons, with the most prominent being socioeconomic motivations. The borough is chosen because the community is primary comprised of the people of color and/or working class and poverty stricken people. Stratified society in the near future setting of The First Purge certainly resembles the stratified society of the modern United States – with the elites abusing the lower classes and attempting to pit them against each other in order to gain more power, control, and wealth. The choice of Staten Island for the initial experiment that would one day become the nationwide 12-hour purge at the center of the dystopian horror franchise is a perfect setting – as it allows for the exploitation of people struggling to make ends meet, offering them money to stay on the island for the event and bribing them with the promise of additional pay for “participation”.
Poor people, notably black and brown poor people, are expendable to the elite of this cinematic universe – something that feels, as I noted before, a bit too real. Much like the way the poverty stricken black and brown people in the United States have been for quite some time. Poor white folks are just a rung above and any people who sympathize with the plights of these oppressed populations are right there with them. As we live in a day and age where we see real time footage of police executing people of color for little to no reason, ICE agents shooting the activists who support the plight of the oppressed on the streets in broad daylight, and military planes bombing schools and communities in countries populated by brown skinned people – it’s hard not to feel like this could happen in 2026 Amerikkka.
The choice of a setting filled with the people that the elite don’t care about is one of the primary reasons this film feels so poignant. But, it’s not just this setting or this exploitation of these oppressed people… it’s the flippant attitudes of those in power towards the nation’s people in general and their willingness to do anything it takes in order to prove themselves correct.
The “experiment” hypothesizes that people will use this 12 hour period of legalized crime to purge their anger and hatred in order to cleanse the country of the need for crime the rest of the year. Yet, when the experiment begins, the number of participants is extremely low and very little actual crime is being committed. Instead, people mostly use the time as an excuse to party without noise ordinances and enjoy themselves without supervision. The scientist who developed the idea of this experiment realizes her hypothesis was wrong, but the government officials refuse to accept it. Soon, we see hired mercenaries enter the picture in order to ramp up the death and destruction.
Unsurprisingly, these mercenaries hide their faces, many wearing tactical gear – some even wearing costuming such as Klan robes. The main target becomes the large housing project at the center of the community – a symbol that the government believes must be taken down to show the world that the experiment was a success.
As Neo-Nazis that bear a striking resemblance to a far better trained version of today’s ICE brigades, they tear up the community until a united force of the community’s social activists and drug dealers fight back. This serves as a good reminder that good and bad isn’t always as black and white as we tend to think. Drugs are destructive to the community and choosing to poison the community with drugs is mostly certainly not something to be lauded – but, to think that people are pure evil because they deal drugs is foolish. There are a variety of social factors that lead people to do evil things. There are reasons people feel they have no other choice. However, when backed against a wall, true colors tend to come out. And, for the drug dealers in this film, notably Y’lan Noel’s top dog kingpin Dmitiri, the community is more important than anything else. His love for family and those around him leads him to risk his life to take down the racist renegades trying to destroy his community.
Despite the dystopian backdrop and the knowledge of how things would only get worse as this universe progressed, the message at the end of this film is actually hope. Through unity, Dmitri throws down his worry about protecting his drugs or his wealth and takes up the mantle to fight for what’s right. He becomes a leader against a fascist government trying to harm those he loves, a leader of the people who are ready to stand in the face of the oppressor, a leader of a real movement.
We can learn from this film’s protagonist and the community that rallies together for a common cause of fighting against what is being thrust upon them. We may not always win, but the fight is never without merit. Even when battles are lost, fight the battles is still good and honest work. If we don’t fight, the loss is certain. If we do fight, there’s always a chance to win. And even when we suffer losses, it’s not over. We must continue to fight.
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