The Birth of Columbia Part 3

Birth of Columbia part 3 ​

The Great Depression would change all of the conditions of the world that Samantha and her coworkers laboured under in a hurry however. With the implosion of the global markets came tens of millions of unemployed people in America with no jobs, no prospects, and no hope. While movie attendance rates were still high, anti-capitalist agitation took on a new form. With the greatest ever crisis of capital tearing its way through the economy, anger at the system tore its way through America, one of the hardest hit nations by the scourge of Black Thursday.

The recently rechristened Workers’ Communist Party of America collaborated with the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, the African National Congress, the Asiatic People’s Council, the Jewish-American Labor Bund, and the Native People’s League to form a united front to bring down the system. And they looked to any who could help give the toiling people a voice against that which had brought them to ruin.

Caught up in the storm, the three and their companions would produce a slew of cartoons in the years of the Hoover presidency. Mercilessly attacking the incompetence of the capitalist class for their inability to even forestall the crisis that was consuming the nation. Their work would soon take on a personal element as Samantha found herself struck by tragedy with the death of her youngest brother David; who was unable to afford his doctor’s treatments after being fired.

She pushed herself into her work more and more, believing the revolution was inevitable by this point and devoted more and more of her time to her Columbia project, creating an extensive “bible” for her new mythology and furiously sketching out character concepts.

In the meantime, to continue to earn their keep; Samantha’s team would provide many posters, newspaper cartoons, and even animated shorts and graphics for Thomas, Sinclair, Bedacht, and Browder’s efforts to take the reins of power in America.

Hoover and Longsworth bore the harshest brunt of their ire, depicting them as slave drivers in the modern age, a new James Buchanan who not only had failed the country with his incompetence, but who had actively steered it to ruin. Every Republican running for office across the country was attacked in some form, with New York’s Republicans suffering the worst of it, as they tore into every single campaign platform offered.

Meanwhile triumphalist visions of the new America to come were pushed forward, promising true justice for all, true democracy in government and at work, racial liberation, an end to poverty and homelessness, and never needing to worry about insurance again.

Certainly it was hardly the fairest campaign, but it managed to impress Upton Sinclair who called Samantha the “firebird of Brooklyn, spreading wings of righteous fury on the oppressor in any form.” She would even take to the streets to speak for the Worker’s Communist Party, and came to be nicknamed “Shouting Syndie Sammy”.

When word of the WCPA electoral victory came, her response was jubilant but with a note of caution. Even as she would conceive her sixth and final child during her celebrations with Spartak, she and her friends worried about the inevitable backlash to come. “They’re probably going to start trying to kill us rather than let us win you know,” she wrote as saying to Spartak as they lay in bed.

Believing that the bourgeoisie would never just give up their power, she strongly supported the preparation of arms and soviets for the inevitable confrontation. Though she herself had never been in battle, she had trained with fellow union members and was prepared to take up arms herself if need be. A firm member of the ultraleft of the WCPA, she was deeply cynical about the prospects of the powers that be quietly fading into oblivion.

When word of MacArthur’s coup came in, New York City was quick to crush most of the would be reactionaries and wave the red banner. With the speed that Manhattan was secured, the only armed participation the group would have in the civil war was the siege of the office of Time magazine. Henry Luce, a virulent anti-communist, had holed up in the building and declared that if need be, he alone would save New York from socialism. With their proximity to the office, they involved themselves in the siege from its start to its conclusion twelve hours later.

With most of the White militants holed up with Henry having already surrendered or died, Lucre himself would end the siege by emerging to orate a speech he had been writing about the righteousness of MacArthur’s cause and how his enemies had been duped by Russian agents. While Samantha and Spartak were too bemused by the quixotic display to fire, Samawal would be one of the sixty people to open fire on Luce less than twenty seconds into what was to be a sixteen thousand word long speech.

Following this, the trio spent most of their time producing agitprop. They were deemed to be of more use in their offices fighting the war for the minds of America than holding guns once New York City was safely in red hands, and while materials for the arts were often hard to come by due to the disruption of the conflict; they produced material at a feverish rate. Glued to any source of news available, the group’s work would be syndicated in the news publications circulating around red held territory, sometimes attacking the White regime and at other times working to convince people of the liberation to be offered by the Reds.

Once the revolution was won however, she decided now was the time to pitch her idea for building a new mythology for America and approached the newly settled in government and the unions in charge of film production with a new idea. Already having her foot in the door earlier and having made some scenes on her own time with her co-workers already, she was determined to get her stories out on the big screen at last.

[1] TTL, the establishment of New Utrecht does not lead to either Bay Ridge or Utrecht ceasing to be co-ed schools.

….

Were it not for their pre-existing connections with entertainer’s unions and WCPA leadership, it is unlikely that Commander Columbia would have ever been made. Despite talk of equalising the sexes and the races and not following the Muscovite orthodoxy slavishly, there was still a real discrimination against women and racial minorities within the newly formed UASR. Furthermore, the cult of socialist realism was strong and rankled at the idea of putting so many resources behind “a supernatural mythologised metaphor for geopolitics”.

Many would try to force the project to be downsized or even outright abandoned, preferring that the team use their talents to create more grounded works of film rather than waste time on fantasy and surreality. This of course; was a compromise that all those she worked with; but especially herself refused to countenance. And so when met with unacceptable edits or outright rejection she simply looked elsewhere.

For months she tried to find someone willing to back the idea, travelling with “All the baggage I could stuff into a rucksack and a well rehearsed and thoroughly repeated speech.” She ended up “seeing more of the country in a few months than I had in thirty years before hand”, but never stopped trying. So much did she come to annoy some people that Jacob Golos even tried to personally get her ejected from her position of authority in the animator’s union to “shut up and learn some humility.”

However, she had her supporters, including Upton Sinclair and recently elected head of the Proletkult Federation Charlie Chaplin. Furthermore, Samawal had friends in the New Afrikan Autonomous Council Socialist Republic, and in his visits to the republic drew on many young and talented would be African animators eager to show their talents.

Having worked with Chaplin before on a number of projects in her earlier years, Samantha had essentially convinced the famous actor that she had potential, and personally vouched for her in the Proletkult Federation. Though the effects of his endorsement are often exaggerated as she already had a number of supporters who championed the cause of women in the arts as well as “fantasticism”, it marked a turning point as resources from animator, film maker, and actors’ unions would be allocated to her project.

Initially the Ruby Orchestra Animation Collective (then simply called the Ruby group) was placed under the Termite Terrace Collective formed from the corpse of the Warner Brothers’ entertainment empire after Jack Warner fled the country, both to simplify resources and so that she could help the collective recover from the “brain drain” of many of its animators.

Upton Sinclair’s own personal endorsement after having a look at the preliminary work done by the Collective in its infancy by that point, was essentially a victory lap, but it did mark the start of official governmental interest in her project. “Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it” as Leon Trotsky is famous for saying, and the idea of a new mythology to promote the vision of a new America to itself (particularly its youth) and the world and show the planet America’s domination in animated art drew substantial interest once work began.

Scrutinised in a way that significantly exceeded the attentions given to the likes of Walt Disney or his Hyperion Collective or the Universal Film animation department, she found herself subject to a number of demands. Ideological commitment, sensitive treatment of allies, and being used as essentially the new Uncle Sam, a figure in all forms of propaganda.

However, government support also meant getting to work with a large studio amply supplied with manpower as well as the newest in animation technology, such as the Multiplane camera. It also meant guaranteed universal distribution across the Union of American Socialist Republics, its Latin American Allies, and perhaps most intimidating for many; the Soviet Union.

Despite it being rapidly clear that the Soviet Union would be the junior partner in the Comintern, Stalin’s government still carried substantial pull within the Third Communist International, and steps had to be taken to ensure that the films would not step on the man of steel’s toes. Governmental support also came with an incredibly demanding slate of films. Two feature length animations every year for ten years starting from 1938. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation