It’s a third world dictatorship, and the strong man has a list. On it are the names of every known American film critic, from the blogs to the Chicago Reader to Ain’t-it-Cool to The New Yorker to the two wiseass Koreans who used to man the cult counter at DVD Palace on 44th and 8th. They’re already on the road, the death squads. Your door bows in, storm of boots, and before you know it you’re lined up on your knees alongside J. Hoberman and 3 Black Chicks.

I saw it coming a long ways off, so I dressed in militia rags, became a scout helping round up all those poor bastards. I did my best to drown out the whimpering as I double-checked restraints and supervised the digging. But something tugged at my conscience during the second or third corral. It gave me an idea of how to save the critics.

I told the local chieftan that we should spare this particular batch of vermin because their skills might be of use in the propaganda effort. “How do you mean?” asked General Taharqa. “Well,” I began, my heart skipping a beat at the prospect of seriously pissing him off. “We want the people to be more squarely behind our movement. We want to do this with less bloodshed, not more. We know that our filmmakers are instrumental in shaping the public will, and that they have been failing us with their crude, transparent methods.”

“Okay, wrap this up. I’m ready to kill these motherfuckers.”

“What I’m saying is, these “motherfuckers” influence the filmmakers who influence the will of the people. We think of them as some kind of indulgent leisure-arts class, but more than anything they are a scientific class. They spend more hours than any other humans analyzing the moving image–”

“Alright, I’m catching a headache. These fuckers are dead.”

“No, no––almost done. Long story short, we should put them to work on a set of aesthetic criteria, marching orders for the official media makers. These people, better than anyone, know where the filmmakers are going wrong in making the message live in the people’s hearts and mind.”

Taharqa holstered his pistol and brooded for a stony interval. Then: “But we have neuroscientists and shrinks for that.”

“We shot all the scientists last month. Besides, putting the lab coats to work on this problem would be like sending an optician to a school for the blind. Well, not quite. Our filmmakers, they have all their sensory apparatus. They’ve just forgotten how to use them.”

“Or simply refuse to.”

“Now, how many more filmmakers must we torture to death before we let go of that bogus notion? They want to serve the republic; they just don’t know how anymore.”

“When did all this shit start?”

“Long before the coup. The seeds were sown in the era of corporate consolidation that began in 1966, as film production slowly adopted the aesthetic practices of television commercials. The decline accelerated with the rise of MTV music videos and non-linear editing technology. The true language of cinema– the grammar and syntax, the pulse and rhythm– arises from something the pervasive forces I mentioned have destroyed as a concept: time. No, not destroyed. Rendered impotent. Time is money in American cinema, and the filmmakers are going for value. Costco montage making.”

“Fuck are you talking about?”

I just rolled on, fired up at this point. I didn’t care if he shot me.

“Look at what Andrei Tarkovsky wrote back in 1986: ‘Rhythm in cinema is conveyed by the life of the object visibly recorded in the frame. Just as from the quivering of a reed you can tell what sort of current, what pressure there is in a river, in the same way we know the movement of time from the flow of the life process reproduced in the shot.’ Hot lord! See, he rejected his forebear Eisenstein’s way of throwing together shots with no consideration of the movement– the life– within the frame or the disorienting/re-orienting impact of a single cut–only the symbolic or narrative content as raw data crashing into other raw data. Eisenstein dealt in collisions, tumult, disjunction–symbols, signs and meanings rioting and raping each other. That is the nightmare we live in now: A whole buncha shit coming at you. I’m talking about the most rarefied art film and the trashiest pop spectacle alike. Audiences are assaulted by content these days. Idiotic content, brilliant content, postmodern or Postal, doesn’t matter. That the form is assaultive renders it all idiotic. This benumbs the very audiences filmmakers want to ravish. We’re left ravaged, not ravished.”

The general was listening, really trying to get it. He unfastened his machete and laid it aside, sat on the simmering hood of the jeep. Even the critics had let up on their mewling some, their blindfolded heads craning in our direction. “I think I get it,” Taharqa said after a moment. “I can’t remember the last time a moving image made me feel anything but anxious, murderous.”

“Which suits our purposes, to some extent, but those holdouts, the ones whose sweat and devotion we need right now, they will not be won over by cattle prod.”

Taharqa said, “uhn… uhn…” like I had just jabbed a truth located in his molars. But I didn’t want to leave him merely impressed. I wanted him to feel it. “General. Of the whores at the compound, which is your favorite?”

He frowned. His men tensed. I got ready to taste lead, but then his brow straightened out into thought. After a moment he said, “Marguerite. But I suppose she is everyone’s favorite.”

“What is it about her, do you suppose…?”

“Just her… way.”

“She takes her time.”

“She takes her time, yes.”

“She speaks softly, looks you in the eye.”

“Yes, yes. And it’s for real. It’s for you, not a performance. She is in the moment with you. It’s not about strip down and ride it.”

“Like the others.”

“The others, the come into the room stepping out of their dresses, chewing gum.”

“Not Marguerite.”

“No, not Marguerite.”

“And where did Marguerite learn this art, but from watching older, practiced women mesmerize men into a froth? And now you see how she influences the younger ones. Our image makers need someone to teach them the art of seduction. These folks you have lined up here for execution, these are your media Marguerites.”

I was lying. Of the critics assembled there who I’d actually read, maybe a third of them were capable of seducing a reader, making him feel something down in the root of his spine. And of those, maybe one or two actually understood how film works– as distinct from other forms. So many of these folks were hung up on content, attitudes, crude effects passing for style, literary, popcult and art world references– anything but how shots breathe, pulse, go together, how sounds temper and deepen these associations. It’s like a bunch of muffuckas writing about dance and focusing on the tights. They’re hardly to blame, though, when the filmmakers concentrate on perfecting day-glo, see-through tights with blinking lights and ringtones.

So I lied. These folks had families. They weren’t bad people. I lied to save them. Now I’m ready to be their Marguerite. I will service every one of them with loving attentiveness until they begin to feel again, understand visual pleasure and in turn pass this gift on to the filmmakers, who will craft images to stir us all out of our coffins, into action.