Ra-Ra-Riot

Riotsville, a simulation town with a Main Street, shops, and an administrative hall, betrays its paranoia in its name. Several of these towns were built on the heels of urban uprisings in the late 1960s—elaborate stage-sets where tactical forces ran through counter-riot exercises. Drawing on government films of these maneuvers, among other transfixing archival footage from the era, Riotsville, USA (directed by Sierra Pettengill, with narration written by Tobi Haslett), weaves the simulation towns in a web of failed promises, political neglect, racist urban planning, and of course, police brutality. A particularly fascinating segment recounts Buckminster Fuller and poet June Jordan’s collaborative utopic re-envisioning of public housing in Harlem, only to have Esquire publish the scheme under the heading “slum clearance.” Ultimately, the film contends with the mass manufacturing of consent to remake US cities—not in an idealistic vein, but in a spirit of cultural anxiety that produced the militarized law enforcement we live with today.