Where Have You Gone, Roland Emmerich? A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You
David Weigel | October 20, 2006, 4:51pm
Over at the liberal-but-good Boston Phoenix, Peter Keough has that rarest of things - an interesting analysis of upcoming films' political overtones. Before breaking down the anti-Bush, anti-GOP overtones of films like The Departed and Marie Antionette (but not Death of a President) he dials the wayback machine for the (Bill) Clinton era.
Beginning in 1996, when Bill Clinton handily won a second term, the films being released were almost uncannily prescient of the doom to come.
Alongside president-as-action-hero films, such as Roland Emmerich's 1996 Independence Day (President Bill Paxton leads a triumphant counterattack against the aliens) and Wolfgang Peterson's 1997 Air Force One (President Harrison Ford battles terrorists who have hijacked the title plane), emerged more realistic plot lines. As the Whitewater investigation plugged along and Paula Jones pushed her law suit, filmmakers started pitching hints of the president's extracurricular activities as box-office bait. In Absolute Power (1997), Clint Eastwood is the only witness to the adulterer in chief's murderous disposal of his latest Oval Office tryst, and in Murder at 1600 (1997) presidential hanky-panky again goes hand in hand with homicide and conspiratorial cover-ups.
The analysis of upcoming films with anti-administration subtexts is intriguing, and could go even further. As much as Hollywood-bashing provides the cultural right with a steady revenue/outrage stream, the Medveds and Bozells of the world haven't internalized just how decisively most Americans have turned against Republican rule.
Ghenghis Kahn | October 22, 2006, 1:30pm | #
I doubt the plotlines of Hollywood screenwriters represent the feelings of most americans.
That is true. Nonetheless, Hollywood and the MSM exert a huge influence (and they know it) on the thoughts and feelings of most Americans anyway.
The MSM blatantly lied to the American public about Vietnam. I will be amazed if historians don't later demonstrate that the same happens with Iraq.
Also, the government lied about Vietnam as well, and probably is about Iraq.
Of course many wise little brains around here claim THERE IS NO MEDIA BIAS in this country. Which is really easy to do if you basically agree with the bias.
The purpose of a free press is to allow debate, which (ultimately) leads to truth. That's great when everybody gets the facts, so the facts can be debated. What do you suppose happens when the press, and the government, are telling their own lies instead?
The Left, who does dominate the MSM, shows no awareness of the fact that if the free press doesn't give the masses in our "democracy" the straight truth, so it can be debated -- then there is little value in
having a free press.
And that, friends and neighbors, is a bigger threat to the existence of a free press, than anything else on the playing field. Ultimately people will not defend it, because it fails to deliver the only goods that matter.
The next time somebody says "the Democrats protect civil liberties" I'm going to barf. The Democrats don't protect civil liberties. They protect their own right to mislead, for their own purposes.
So does the government. What do you think Bush's "expansion of powers" is all about? And did anybody really expect him to behave any differently?
The people may or may not be unhappy with the Republicans. This does not mean the Democrats are worth running to.
