Jean-Luc Godard: Le gai savoir, Part 2

In Le gai savoir (1969), several references are made to mai 1968 and Year Zero. 1968 was, indeed, a cataclysmic and revolutionary year, in Paris and globally.

To recount, 1968 saw the Prague Spring; the Tet Offensive; the My Lai Massacre (not made public until 1969); the assassination of MLK; the 1968 Chicago riots and "disturbances;" the Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City; the attempted assassination of Andy Warhol (who never fully recovered). Richard M. Nixon was elected president, unknowing then he was already Watergate bound. Bob Dylan was more or less recording underground post-66' motorcycle accident. Apollo 8 circled the Moon. Hair the musical debuted. HemisFair '68 was held in San Antonio, Texas. Within a year, Ireland entered the period donned "The Troubles" and the Stonewall Riots in New York City galvanized the gay rights movement. The American Indian Movement was formed, the Chicano movement launched, feminism and the womens' rights movement picked up steam and the environmental movement gained traction. 1968/1969 is as good a time as any to name Year Zero.

In Le gai savoir / Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Godard and his characters lay the groundwork for studying, learning, analyzing, acting and critiquing, as well as figuring out new ways to make films with import and impact.

By the time Godard emerges in 1972 from the intervening years of eclectic experimentation, in releasing Tout va bien / Everything's All Right (co-directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin) he has indeed done many of these things. Picking up from mai '68, the latter includes lines like, "Sometimes what's needed is a good kick in the ass" and, "We should just let outselves get fucked over?" "Workers are always made to look sinister." "Each is his [or her] own historian." "They looked at us and we looked at them . . ."  Unlike many other observer-particpants of mai '68, Godard remained determined to keep forging ahead on his own radical terms, despite or perhaps because of repressive political backlash. 

Le gai savoir was banned in France.

Today's Rune: Defense.