“I’m A Virgo”: captures capitalist crisis and Big Fascists

I’m a Virgo is a new TV series that depicts the coming-of-age story of a 13-foot tall 19-year-old Black giant named “Cootie.” Boots Riley, the series director, was raised in the Progressive Labor Party—in interviews, he often recounts how, in his teenage years, the Party took him on a summer project to organize farm workers in California. I’m a Virgo still retains and forwards elements of PLP’s line: the Big Fascists (liberal finance capitalists masquerading as friends of the working class, see Glossary, page 6) are the greatest threat to the working class and Black workers are key to revolution.

Black Workers Against Social Murder
Centered on the perspective of a 19-year-old Black teenager, I’m A Virgo works dialectically to show how workers develop class consciousness through trial and error. We see the failures of Cootie’s parents, Lafrancine and Martisse, who attempt to shelter Cootie to keep him safe from capitalism while raising him to be a revolutionary. The Marxist theme of discipline is displayed through his parents' expectations for Cootie to read for 10 hours a day, exercise for three, dedicate an hour to hygiene, and a lifetime of abstaining from fast food. But being cut off from the world becomes intolerable for Cootie who wants to learn for himself what it means to live as a Black giant despite the dangers.

Venturing out into the world, Cootie first attempts to play into the capitalist system by being a fashion model but finds himself exploited, unfulfilled, and unable to save his newfound friend Scat from ruling-class social murder. Scat gets into an accident and is turned away at the emergency room because of a lack of health insurance. Scat later dies an ignoble death but in a way that sparks fightback from Cootie, his friends, his comrades, and fellow workers.

The shape of the fightback takes on two forms: Cootie’s anarchism and their friend Jones’ communism. Jones, a Black tenant organizer, explains that the capitalist healthcare system requires workers’ deaths to maximize profit. To fight back, Jones organizes workers to picket and strike against the hospital and greedy insurance executives. Meanwhile, Cootie runs across a police line to write graffiti only to be swiftly arrested by a Big Fascist supercop played by Walton Goggins named “The Hero.” The lesson here is key, individualism in acting does not build toward a revolution—it just leads to a month of Cootie’s house arrest. This struggle between Cootie’s anarchism and Jones’ communist politics becomes the focus of the TV series as they grapple with the brutality and misleading nature of the comic book “Hero’s” liberalism.

The Big Fascists are the Main Danger
Against Marvel’s individualistic, righteous superheroes, “The Hero” symbolizes police terror cloaked in liberal slogans of “justice” and order. As a billionaire, he openly uses marketing and comics for children to delude workers into believing that a white-knight, high-tech billionaire is on the side of the working class. His rhetoric of law, order, and the struggle against “crime” is so seductive that it even gets Cootie on  “The Hero’s” side.

Cootie has to learn through class struggle that as a Black worker, “The Hero’s” fight against crime is really a fight against Cootie and his entire class. In a Dark Night of lower class consciousness, workers must learn the same lesson and overthrow Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and their ilk. The only way I’m a Virgo could be even stronger in this critique is to have “The Hero” be a non-white person, since the Big Fascists increasingly hide behind multicultural faces like NYC Mayor Eric Adams, NJ Mayor Baraka and Mexico’s President AMLO to inflict capitalist terror.

For all the strengths of I’m a Virgo in showing communist politics in an easily digestible TV series, this season's ending leaves much to be desired. First, there is only ever focus on exceptional, individual characters rather than workers or the working class. Jones, a communist leader, hogs much of the limelight while the workers she organizes remain as a prop in the backdrop. This is in contrast to Soviet films in which the workers that compose the backdrop are essential since it is always about the working class breaking into the frame to make history for themselves. Second, this focus on the exceptionality of Jones leads to an ending in which she uses words and reason to defeat the Big Fascist “Hero.” This is after “The Hero” has tricked Cootie into believing he is on the side of the workers, despite previously brutalizing Cootie and taunting him with advertisements of a 13-foot jail fit for a giant. Rather than showing the power of the workers or that workers need to organize to fight fascism, Jones merely explains Marxist theory to “The Hero” who submits and flies away. This is dangerous wishful thinking! The ruling class will never hand over power peacefully, and fascists do not respond positively to reasoned discussions. We hope workers' power and fightback will play a more significant role in Season 2 of the series.

Young People Need PLP!
Despite its flaws, I’m a Virgo is a sharp depiction of what working-class youth experience and learn through struggle. While the entire premise and style of I’m a Virgo might be off-puttingly absurd and weird for some, it captures the absurdity of the deepening capitalist crises we are living through. After all, it is absurd that young workers are to accept being exploited by capitalists while the climate, housing, healthcare, education, and political crises accelerate. Dealing with capitalist social murder and genocide while business as usual continues every day can can undoubtedly feel absurd without the guidance of a Party. In the face of rising fascism, we need young workers to learn the lessons that Cootie does: we need an organized, internationalist, revolutionary communist Party committed to defeating racism and sexism. In other words, just as teenage Boots Riley on his first summer project: we need PLP!

Astrology, anti-scientific mind trap
Astrology is a device for liberal fascist rule. With there being an exorbitant amount of surplus labor and workers being disillusioned with conditions under capitalism, oftentimes astrology is used as a tool for workers to attempt to learn more information about the world, connect with one another and find solace in decisions that they cannot control. At this stage of capitalism, the use of astrology is a tool to exploit the working class, further drives individualism, false identities and divisions within the working class, and worst of all attaches pitfalls of the ruling class to star, moon, and sun transits.