Naomi Klein's documentary about the spread of neoliberal policies throughout the world does not pretend to be objective. It doesn't have to. Quite often, what passes for "objective" is truly little more than pandering to the well known, well accepted truisms of our society. A film that clearly takes side is as respectable as anything else. As a matter of fact, in a world so deeply dominated by mindless entertainment, a serious, profound message with implications in our everyday life is sorely needed, even if it's to criticize the status quo and propose an alternative (does Klein propose an alternative? If so, I'm afraid I missed it... unless her idea of an alternative is just to return to the old Keynesianism, which only worked because there was a clear Communist threat that forced capitalism to show its "human face").

So, that's not my problem with The Shock Doctrine. My problem is twofold. On the one hand, the whole film reads like a rehash of things that we already knew all along (well, at least anyone who bothers to read the news with a bit of a critical mind). What's the news? That Milton Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" collaborated with the murderous regime of Pinochet in Chile? We already knew that. That the US was behind many of the coups in Latin America, as well as the bloody repression that they unleashed in the 1970s? We already knew that. That Reagan and Thatcher spoke of freedom but didn't doubt a moment to squash it if the victims were people demanding social justice & demonstrating against the interests of large corporations. We also knew that. Even worse, Reagan (I'm not sure about Thatcher) spoke of "small government" while presiding over a substantial increase of the US Government, its expenditures and, of course, its debt. Don't believe me? Just do a quick search. In other words, Klein doesn't show us anything that we didn't know already (unless you didn't bother to ask questions, I suppose).

Is that my only problem with the documentary? No, not really. As I said above, I have a second problem that is, perhaps, even more central to the core of the film. The whole premise of Klein's idea (i.e., that the powers that be are unleashing a "shock therapy" taking advantage of any crisis they come across of in order to expand the interests of large corporations and "numb" us all in a psychiatric fashion) is quite preposterous. There is no "shock therapy". No strategy based on the idea of "shock". They are just taking advantage of the circumstances (i.e., a situation where labor is seriously weakened after decades of anti-labor propaganda and policies, as well as the general demobilization of people) to impose their own interests. Nothing new here. It's been done before, and it has absolutely nothing to do with "shock therapies" or advanced psychiatric experiments to learn how our minds function (that's how she starts the documentary). An old-school Marxist would immediately recognize it for what it is: class struggle. When labor is weak, capital takes advantage of the situation. It's quite simple.

Entertaiment factor:5/10
Intellectual factor: 5/10