"In Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, Gil Scott-Heron's 1971 spoken-word song 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' serves as both a secret password and background noise. The members of the defunct resistance group the French 75 use its lyrics as a call-and-response sign and countersign: If you know what comes after 'Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction,' you must be one of the good guys."
"With the exception of Jesse Armstrong's Mountainhead, conceived in November and shot in March, none of these movies was made knowing the climate in which it would land, a country in which entire government agencies were gutted in a matter of weeks and masked agents swiped people off the streets. But they understood in advance that such a world was possible-that it could, and might well, happen here."
In Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, Gil Scott-Heron's 1971 spoken-word song 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' functions as a secret password and background noise for a defunct resistance group, its lyrics used as call-and-response verification. The anthem opposing the numbing effects of popular culture has been consumed by that culture and turned into a golden oldie. Many of 2025's most powerful films examine struggles against authoritarianism, and several were made before current political upheavals yet imagined a world where agencies are gutted, masked agents abduct citizens, and beleaguered journalists face eroded freedoms.
Read at Slate Magazine
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