UTOPIAN VISIONS & LIBERATION: THINKING ABOUT BORN IN FLAMES (1983)

by Emily Blake

Born in Flames is a 1983 documentary-style feminist film directed by Lizzie Borden that explores racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism in an alternative United States socialist democracy.

Born in Flames shows what could be, positing the revolutionary feeling of the film derives in many ways from its suspension of temporality. Born in Flames evoked a specific and exciting viewing experience due to its blurring of the lines between fiction and reality. Its documentary form, especially in the earlier part/ introductory sequence of the film, was presented in a way that did not feel uncanny to a 2021 viewer, even though the dialogue was surrounding a socialist revolution that truly never happened. Watching the film raised a compelling question regarding the value of presenting these alternate temporalities. This question isn't specific to Born in Flames, but the film serves as a visual depiction of blurring reality and utopia, and within this there is liberatory potential. Black Utopias‘s overall attention to the significance of how temporality is suspended in the film establishes a framework and terminology for thinking through how a utopia, how an alternate timeline, how a radical vision are presented and visualized through the medium of film.

Jayna Brown, a professor of Arts and Humanities at Pratt Institute, in her essay “"A World on Fire: Radical Women and Anarcha-Feminist Filmmaking in a Dystopian Age" posits a definition of radical Black visions as a speculative vision separate from hope- “hope yearns in future but we dream in place.” Born in Flames, and the presentation of their “new genres of existence” as reinforcing how fact and fiction are indistinct. I am specifically interested in the relevance of this statement beyond specific film landscapes such as the isolated setting of Born in Flames. How do films that lean into a utopian reality foster liberatory narratives? How does science fiction, alternate futures, and other suspensions of temporality we may view as specific to Born in Flames (or films like it) open up spaces of possibility and further our understanding a feminist media theory approach to temporality and future?

Born in Flames includes news broadcasts and other “real life” slices of media, evokes in the spectator an uncertainty of the line between reality and fiction. If Born in Flames  is an alternative timeline existing due to a U.S. socialist, revolutionary government in the 1980s, then why do many features of the power dynamics resonate? Why is not only its narrative but its pseudo-documentary form compelling? My discussion in this essay will focus mostly on how Born in Flames sheds light on revolutionary change as a practice-- conscious thought, ideation of an alternative temporality or reality. Born in Flames presents a counterpublic and fictional landscape where all and any centralized systems of power and up for questioning. In Queer Times Black Futures, Kara Keeling argues “where Afrofuturism invests in Black futures, which are characterized by a type of wealth that cannot be measured by a predetermined yardstick, wrenched open in utterly unpredictable queer times that refuse foreclosing on queer futures. This is an Afrofuturism wherein aliens and others organize social life. There is partying on the Mothership” (xiii). Forming a counterpublic and its commons in this utopian narrative includes things we see as both possible and impossible. In theorizing the future, theorizing media’s influence on culture and public, depictions of non hierarchical forms of organization and futurism opens up possibilities. 

The alternative formation of politics, economy, and social formation in Born in Flames produces multiple facets of the film that range from totally science-fiction or utopian (i.e. a 1970s socialist revolution in the United States) to something only slightly idealistic (i.e. an intersectional women’s organization or a revolutionary public radio). In the midst of 2021 and an unstable view on solidarity and theorizing the value and perspectives of cultural production in general, theorizing notions of futurism and media’s role in it seems urgent. In the context of this discussion, liberation is tied to forming people as individuals under (or outside of) capitalism, as the hegemony of capitalism works to bond people to money rather than each other. I would argue notions of a Women’s Army, any sort of solidarity making (presented in Born in Flames) produces a sense of utopia and science-fiction due to the prevalence of solidarity and collaboration-- whether it be within an intersectional Women’s Army, international solidarity with North African revolutionaries, or its specific configuration of public radio. In a cultural moment where a notion of solidarity can seem alien or utopian, what do the ideas proposed and depicted in Born in Flames mean in the present?

Kara Keeling’s Queer Times, Black Futures focuses on alternative Queer temporality and the doors that discussion opens-- how Queer time can be used for solidarity making, how attempts at resistance can be configured, and overall defining the standardization of time under capitalism. Keeling provides a lens through which we can think through transforming how value is produced. A key nuance to thinking through the liberatory potential of film is the dominating force of the market and the role of film in economic logics and/or non-economic spaces. Even though Born in Flames participates in the financialization of media in some aforementioned ways, the manner of its production, its presentation of an alternative reality/ timeline, its unique co-opting of documentary form/ improvisation, and other more revolutionary configurations of cinema is key in answering how the future of cinema can be theorized, as well as understanding the significance of films with alternative temporalities and revolutionary means of production. Solidarity making within these forms offers liberation; opening up possibilities in terms of how capitalism is rejected and non-linear realities are embodied by forms of representation in films like Born in Flames. 

Keeling quotes Mark Dery’s definition of Afrofuturism, stating “‘speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth-century technoculture–and more generally, African American signification that appropriates images of technology and prosthetically enhanced future’”(3). Thinking of a speculative fiction in the context of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in the context of the hegemony of capitalism, technology, the market overall, formulates a future that is both recognizable and unrecognizable. I found the paradox between the historical relevancy and commonality of certain features of science fiction, of Afrofuturism, of alternative or Queer temporalities and their connections extremely interesting thus far in our discussion of feminist media theory. Queer Times, Black Futures also provides perspective on the liberatory capacity and systems of imagination that create meaning in media-- namely cinema constructing a universe of meaning that has serious implications on everyday life and informs social events. As we discussed in class surrounding the implications of Keeling, the grammar around gender seems like it’s being transformed now. Our focus on and realization of the persistence of past modalities of appearance makes the question of the liberatory potential of alternative realities even more urgent. Media that pushes back against or completely suspends hegemonic formulations, whether it be forms of cinematic production or the use of temporality and alternative timelines, opens up a space of possibility; the open space is where I see the interest and value in speculating the organization of social life Keeling refers to as the party (xiii). 

The nonhierarchical nature of the dynamics in Born in Flames posits one serious layer of the idealism or utopian factor of the film is the pushback against dominant forms of organization. Keeling touches on the notion of competitive imaginaries, asserting that projections of futures have different stakes for different people. The urgency of alternative realities and the ensuing competitive realities is the aforementioned openings for the present they produce. Keeling positions the motivation to try and control a time interval that has been opened is reminiscent of hegemonic control, oppositional to an alternative imagination in space and time that is liberating. One of the reasons the question of the importance and liberatory potential of alternative temporalities and utopia, as presented in films like Born in Flames, is because of the social function of a film on the market. Can film exist outside of being bought and sold? Can it be expanded to exist outside of capitalist hegemony? Brown explained in her essay on Born in Flames that Borden recruited actors that were already in her punk downtown group, whose dialogue was improvisational or self-written monologues, and the film was made based on their involvement and the involvement of the legendary Florynce Kennedy. In these ways, Born in Flames goes beyond traditional cinematic production in different ways, though is still not completely outside of the market. This opens further discussion of what is the utopian relationship with modes of media; is the liberatory capacity of film discounted by its participation in capitalism? Even if films are not shattering hegemony, are they liberatory? In this essay I continue to use Born in Flames as a specific film and visual vocabulary to explore issues that film and media can make conscious, through the depiction of not only non-normative spaces or spaces marginalized persons are subjected to, but entirely alternate temporalities. 

Jayna Brown’s explicit goal in Black Utopia of bringing up more questions and possibilities than answers, which might seem/ are intended to seem completely unrealistic, gets at the crux of what compelled me to write about the alternative reality presented in Born in Flames. Brown writes on page 9, “we shut off access to these other worlds, but they can be tuned into.” Keeping this facet of utopian thinking in mind, how we can tune in to radical imaginations is an urgent question. By blurring this line between fiction and nonfiction, or to use a more Brown-esque perspective, to simply recognize there is no line, a “rallying cry” that shouts “another world is possible” becomes audible (Keeling, 48). As an undergraduate student studying feminist media theory in a pandemic, the compelling nature of the question of the significance of alternative timelines derives largely from the uncertainty both of film and media theory, but generally the question of what’s next. Reading Queer Times, Black Futures and seeing conceptualizations of a variety of ‘radical imaginations’ of the “imagination today” be defined as “called to do dramatic, urgent work” (48) as well as Brown’s call to action for “more imagination, more utopian thinking, more questioning of the impermanence of now” (Black Utopias, 48) all posits a sense of optimism in thinking through the types of thinking, the grammar, the configurations of reality that film can make conscious.