Punishment Park

In the wake of the success of The Hunger Games, there has been some discussion of its antecedents. One of them is Punishment Park, a 1971 film by Peter Watkins, set during the tense days of protests against the Vietnam War. In Watkins imagined view, those arrested for advocating the overthrow of the government, or draft evasion, of being given a choice: years of federal prison, or three days in Punishment Park.

Punishment Park is an obstacle course of sorts, set in the California desert. The prisoners have to cross fifty miles of desert to reach a U.S. flag. They are given no food or water, and a head start of two hours before armed personnel are sent out to catch them. If they are caught, they have to serve their prison sentences. If they resist, they may be killed.

This was an interesting film to watch, and has to be viewed through the prism of the time period in which it was made. Watkins had originally wanted to make a film about the Chicago Seven trial, and thus he intercuts scenes with one group of prisoners making their way across the desert with another being tried in a highly unconstitutional tribunal, questioned by hostile people representing the establishment of the United States. A group of scruffy long-haired defendants answer pointed questions about their beliefs.

The prisoners in the desert are followed by a British and West German film crew. One group of prisoners manages to kill a deputy (stabbing with a spike from a Joshua tree), and this angers a sheriff, who can be seen as a microcosm of law enforcement. When four prisoners actually make it to the flag, the system is seen as rigged, which is a concept that is still alive in the American counterculture.

This film was quite controversial when it was released--it was never distributed by a Hollywood studio. Today we might view it as quaint, especially since the inquisitors are seen as cardboard villains and the hippies are seen as noble (there were plenty of hippies and yippies that were just as flawed as the right). But then again, is this really a relic of the past, when we have Guantanamo and the Patriot Act?