Critical Theory and French Action Films, Partie Deux

#13: D'13: Ultimatum

This sequel to the delightful District B13 returns to the squalid Parisian suburb only to find that conditions have not markedly improved. The tribal gangs, having taken the upper hand after the defeat of the drug lord in the last film, seem better organized and more explicitly stereotypically representative of Parisian boogie men. There are the Islamisists, the Neo-Nazis, Haitian/Caribbean gang bangers, and Southeast Asians (headed predictably by a woman straight out of a Hong Kong action flick). These gangs are locked into a balance of power battle for territory and the District seems hopelessly divided, content to direct its anger internally rather than against the authorities that have walled it into its Hobbesian state of nature. In the midst of all of it is still Leito, the home grown avenger for justice, and Damien, the go-to undercover cop, too honest for the Parisian authorities to allow to snoop around when trouble is afoot.

In this film, shady government contractors, headed by a corporation called Harriburton and apparently having read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, decide that D13 is not so much a suppurating urban sore as an untapped business opportunity. The plan? A literal moment of Schumperterian creative destruction: persuade the new government into nuking (yes, with advanced neutron nuclear weapons) D'13 and then swoop in to acquire the contracts for reconstruction. The trick? Dividing the population so thoroughly that it is unable to wage resistance against its forced relocation and ultimate, gentrified, redevelopment. Suddenly the depth of the tribal rivalries comes into focus: this is not a product of human nature but a strategic plan by Harriburton to divide the population into political apathy while mobilizing the fear of the middle class to accept their cultural liquidation.

In the end, Damien and Leito must unite the rival gangs to take on the evil thugs at Harriburton and save the district. But first they must reunite.

Taken together, these two films are quite interesting. They depict a Parisian underclass, robbed of its dignity and trapped in a world without justice. In both, the government has left these people to the predations of the worst human instincts, all of which are framed through unrestrained market logics (the logic of the black market drug trade and, more dangerously, the logic of the outsourcing of basic government functions without sufficient social management). Each of these markets exist outside of effective governmental control. Tellingly, the bad guys from Harriburton and their government lackeys early in the film bemoan the fact that their urban redevelopment plan would take "eight years" under normal regulatory conditions in France whereas in Dubai they could be completed in "eight months." On its face this has the appearance of a critique of an overly-regulated market that makes beneficial redevelopment too onerous. But over the course of the film it becomes clear that the intended beneficiaries of the development are the middle class and Harriburton itself. The poor are to be, once again, marginalized; their class status translates into their inhumanity from the perspective of a state that functions almost exclusively as a handmaiden to the ruling class.

Yes, D'13 is a Marxist film.

The residents of D'13 reclaim their humanity by overcoming the artificially-imposed differences rooted in nationality and uniting around their shared class status. The heavy-handed conclusion is that tribalism, nationalism, and jihadism are ideological tools that facilitate the interests of the nationless corporate entities that really rule the world. Only through the united action of the underclass can the state's sense of humanity be re-awakened, at which point the underclass can use the tools of the state to promote its own interests in the class struggle.

Curiously, the tools available to the state seem strangely limited. Once Leito and Damien, in coalition with the leadership of the rival gangs, break through the protective walls, defended by the class interests of Harriburton, to speak to the president they make an eloquent case for the nobility of the working class and the duty the government has to human uplift in the face of capitalist greed. Convinced, the president asks Leito and Damien what is to be done. All agree to go forward with the planned destruction of the district. Its rebuilding is to be in the hands of the workers themselves in the person of Damien, now representative of the desire of the underclass to forge a new society free from the failed warehousing plans of the original suburbs but also, presumably, under the wing of a state apparatus now in the hands of a sympathetic bureaucrat.