Cult Film Series: Eat the Rich

’80s cult classic good food for thought today

By Patrick Bigger

Alex is really not your typical hero. For starters, Alex doesn’t have a gender pronoun attached to Alex. Also, Alex is helping foment a proletarian revolution in England by forcibly re-appropriating the fancy restaurant Alex used to work at, renaming it Bastards, and feeding the obnoxious politicians, socialites, and idle wealthy to one another.

This is the backdrop for Peter Richardson’s 1987 tour de force Eat the Rich, showing as part of the Cult Film Series at Al’s Bar on Wednesday, April 14. Lanah (Alan) Pillay, Britain’s first transsexual superstar, plays Alex, a down and out waitperson who is totally fed-up with flaky friends, rude social servants, populist rightwing politicians, and capitalism. The logical response, obviously, is to go door to door signing up other disaffected poor people. Alex is aided in the struggle by such diverse characters as Lemmy from Motörhead (who also provides the stellar soundtrack) as a shady arms dealer and Christopher Malcolm of Absolutely Fabulous as a Soviet double agent who surreptitiously guides Alex and their misfit crew of class warriors against the reactionary forces that dominate every aspect of their lives.

In terms of the villainy, Nosher Powell plays Nosh, the boorish British Home Secretary with aspirations to become Prime Minister. The anti-poor rhetoric of Nosh is hilariously, if eerily, familiar. “Some of us are very, very rich. But most of you are very, very poor. And you know why? Because you’re all lazy bastards!” Nosh’s drunken macho crap gets him into a number of tough spots (his wife kicks him out for carousing with the Queen and philandering with double agents), and yet he remains as popular as ever with the public.

While it’s a caricature, Nosh’s vitriolic injunctions against the poor, the left, immigrants, women, terrorists, liquor store clerks, and Paul McCartney pretty well capture the political climate of Thatcherite Britain. Margaret Thatcher was elected in the midst of the economic crisis of the late 1970s, and promptly went to work dismantling the social support structures won by the British working class throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Her use of brutal tactics against striking miners provided the template for breaking the Air Traffic Controller’s union in the United States and anticipated the rise of Neoliberalism worldwide.

Eat the Rich was a comical snapshot of the frustration many working people felt at the time, but its message remains important. The current Teabaggers/Tea Partiers and other fascists would undoubtedly welcome a popular charismatic politician like Nosh into their ranks. Hell, Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin could probably stand to take some lessons from Eat the Rich.

The question is, where is Alex in 21^st century America? Following the catastrophic failure of Soviet Communism, the pathetic disarray of leftwing rhetoric and organization that is more likely to reproduce the conservative practices they used to oppose than challenge them, and the explicit betrayal of progressive promises made by Democratic politicians, Alex’s message is as important as ever.

Am I suggesting we should feed rich people to each other? Not really. But is it awesome to watch this bizarre working-class fantasy play out on screen? Absolutely.

Eat the Rich will screen Wednesday, April 14 at 7 p.m. at Al’s Bar (corner of 6^th and Limestone) as part of the Cult Film Series.

PULL OUT QUOTES

Nosh’s vitriolic injunctions against the poor, the left, immigrants, women, terrorists, liquor store clerks, and Paul McCartney pretty well capture the political climate of Thatcherite Britain

Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin could probably stand to take some lessons from Eat the Rich.