Moulin Rouge
Dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2001

This ITAL could END have been a sharp, smart movie, undercutting the 
usual Hollywood pablum that "love conquers all." 

Isn't it a little bit funny, for example, that Ewan MacGregor's 
Christian expresses his innermost, persynal, unique, true (and blah blah blah) 
feelings for Nicole Kidman's Satine in the clichéd words of classic 
rock ballads? That brings to mind a better rock song:(1)

   The same again
   Another disagreement
   You dream of scenes
   Like you read of in magazines
   A new romance
   Invented in the bedroom
   Is this so private 
   Our struggle in the bedroom

Romance is a social construction, even if that construction purports to 
be unique to two people.

And Satine learns the hard way you need more than love -- she dies of 
tuberculosis, a disease almost synonymous with poverty.
Ultimately, though, "Moulin Rouge" only uses Satine's death and her 
profession -- she's a prostitute -- to glorify the "purity" of the 
relationship between MacGregor and Kidman. Instead of drawing the conclusion 
that property relations and patriarchy taint ITAL all END sexual 
relationships in this decadent society, Luhrmann lets a certain cultural 
variant on that theme off the hook. 

This is a form of liberalism which MIM criticized back in 1992.(2) 
Saying there is "good sex" in imperialist society allows white patriarchy 
to say sex with Black men is bad, allows petty-bourgeois wimmin to put 
down less-educated men who don't use the right language to approach 
them, and avoids the need for revolution as a way to deal with power which 
wimmen have been socialzed against having.

For this reviewer, the real heroes in "Moulin Rouge" are not the 
prattling "bohemian revolutionaries" like the idealist Christian. The real 
heroes never appear. They are the scientists, public health activists, 
and above all proletarian revolutionaries who helped drive down the death 
rate due to tuberculosis worldwide. As the recent conflict between 
monopoly corporations and masses in South Africa over AIDS drug patents 
illustrates, the struggle for health is a political struggle.

Notes:
1. Gang of Four, "Contract," ITAL Entertainment! END 1979.
2. MIM Theory 2/3, pp. 110-114.