The Raspberry Reich
2004, Germany/Canada, dir. Bruce LaBruce, 90 mins



THE REVOLUTION IS MY BOYFRIEND.
HETEROSEXUALITY IS THE OPIATE OF THE MASSES.
MASTURBATION IS COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY.
MASTURBATION IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF MAGIC.
HOMOSEXUALITY IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF CLASS STRUGGLE.
EVERYONE IS CONSTITUTIONALLY BISEXUAL.
BOURGEOIS MARRIAGE IS NOTHING MORE THAN LICENSED PROSTITUTION.


Our second screening also takes the fascism-anarchy horseshoe as a key subject: Bruce LaBruce’s hyperbolic, homo-marxist political manifesto The Raspberry Reich. It’s a satirical riff on the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the related phenomenon of “radical chic”, or the petit-bourgeois cooptation of radical political thought for aesthetic and self-gratifying ends. And in the film, said ends are literally self-gratifying: orgasm is the highest revolutionary achievement.

“After 9/11, particularly in North America, the left was castrated and rendered virtually silent. I wanted to make a movie that gave voice once more to the left wing, anti-corporate, anti-capitalist rhetoric that was once part of the public discourse but which had become completely absent. The movie also operates as a critique of the left, skewering people who either don’t practice what they preach, or who become so self-righteous and intractable in their beliefs that they themselves become oppressive and dogmatic.”
—Bruce LaBruce, from Exploring baader-meinhof in TRR