Some thoughts: Stan's Romper Stomper

After watching the first two episodes of Romper Stomper, Stan’s new six part series based on the original 1992 film (it airs on the streaming service January 1st), it’s clear the producers - which include the movie’s writer / director Geoffrey Wright - were faced with a dilemma. The original film is notorious for its right-wing politics, but the film itself is more about ceaseless motion and senseless violence than arguing any coherent philosophy. It’s a string of high-energy scenes of action, destruction and dancing (it’s largely structured like a dance movie), loosely justified by some racist slogans and Nazi flags.

But trying to sustain that level of energy and intensity across six hours would clearly be impossible; the film struggles to keep it up for 90 minutes. So instead of following up on the original’s focus on a bunch of manic clowns trashing Footscray largely because they can, this series is all about the politics, presenting a variety of people and groups united by their connection to an aggressive strand of right-wing activism that represents an evolution of the original film's skinhead thuggery.

The film trapped viewers in the world of its skinheads: we heard their music, we heard their views, and everyone outside them was seen as a subhuman target for violence. For some – most notably David Stratton, who refused to give it a star rating when it was covered on The Movie Show – this forced the audience to identify with a group they should despise. For others (okay, me), it was more that by focusing so closely on them, we were made to see their flaws: for all their posing they were simply violent dickheads tearing their lives apart, and anyone seeing anything admirable in these brutal clowns needed to pay a little more attention to what was actually taking place in the film.

Because the series – the first two episodes at least - is much more about the politics rather than the thrills (and cost) of physical violence, we have to have balance. So opposing Lachy Hulme’s Blake and his right wing “Patriot Blue” organisation we have the Antifa, a group of left-wing uni students whose mission it is to blunt the alt-right’s thrust into Australian society.

Between them are a small group of Muslim bystanders, people who largely want to live their lives without being targeted by Patriot Blue. But the Antifa are opposed to Patriot Blue first and foremost, which leaves these characters trapped between two warring sides with no-one to stand up for them but themselves.

The idea that anyone watching would be attracted to the Patriot Blue characters is dubious at best. Their leader is fat, impotent, and prone to boring everyone to death at barbeques by reading out “bush poetry”; his pious, Christian wife is equally boring and happy to cast aside her cherished values to sleep around behind her husband’s back. Meanwhile, the Antifa types are generic uni students, which is to say they’re smug, sneering, and heavily pierced. Whoever wins, we lose.

The trouble with dividing these groups into good guys and bad is that the world of Romper Stomper is one of all against all, a violent place where violence rules (it’s notable that the police barely make an appearance in the first two episodes, and their minor punishments are largely shrugged off). Just about every location here, from the streets to a nursing home to a television studio, is shown as a form of battleground where people struggle for dominance.

In this world, the real conflict isn’t between left and right wing activists; it’s between people who are happy to resort to violence and aggression to achieve their aims and those who aren’t. And in movies and television, this simply isn’t a fair fight. Violence is simply more dramatic, more exciting to watch; whatever our feelings about violence in real life, we’re almost always going to find ourselves more interested in watching the people who solve problems with their fists than those who want to talk things out (see also: every superhero movie ever).

So when a series tries to have it both ways – violence is bad; here’s some more violence – you end up with a muddled mess like Netflix’s current series The Punisher. There the lead is a mass-murderer driven to kill and kill again because of the death of his family… but don’t worry, he only kills bad guys and he's really, really torn up about it. The (far superior) comic version (especially when written by Garth Ennis) knows that the real way to add balance to this kind of character isn't some kind of moral waffling, but to show the monster you become when you fully embrace violence: pretending there’s ever a justifiable reason to gun down hundreds of criminals is ridiculous and treating your audience with contempt.

Initially the new Romper Stomper looks like it’s falling into the same trap, with a bunch of bad guys that have to be heroically fought against. And it’s possible this could end on a note of “why can’t we all just get along”, at least in a political sense. But the original film was all about the pure thrill of violence: it might be a dead end that will ruin your life and get you killed, but it’s fun while it lasts. And with this new Romper Stomper the thrill of violence remains – only where the film was all about the physical, this is much more about the emotional excitement of living a violent way of life, of finding meaning in your life from being in a gang and feeling like you’re in a life-and-death struggle, an all-important war where your very way of life is at stake.

Obviously it’s not: Romper Stomper portrays Patriot Blue as a bunch of easily manipulated blowhards living out a pathetic fantasy. But in the same way the film showed how easy it was to be lured into one kind of violent lifestyle, this is doing the same for another kind, showing us a range of people that, for different reasons, thrive on conflict and are willing to push things as far as they can to achieve their goals. Only this time, by showing us the people who suffer because they don't share this love of violence, it may also show us a way out.

Anthony Morris