Mocking Democracy
By Eric Cox
More than 60 million people tuned in to the first Presidential debate last week, and another 43 million watched this week's Vice Presidential debate. Those figures would both represent great opening weekends for most Hollywood movies, and with good reason: The debates are great political theater. Voters, just like movie audiences, like good drama. The three-way Presidential race in 1992--with allegations of draft-dodging and adultery flying around, and that crazy Texan with the big ears drawing a laugh practically every time he opened his even bigger mouth--drew huge debate audiences. Many political observers believe that the razor-close 2000 election may have been decided by the highly entertaining three Presidential debates, which were so effectively satirized on "Saturday Night Live."
As those SNL skits demonstrated, the key to great political satire is honesty. A genuine satirist casts an unsentimental and unflinching critical gaze on his subjects, and allows the essential truth to guide the viewer to the true nature of the person or thing being examined.
One of the problems with films intended as political satires, by contrast, is that they are so non-specific in their critique that they spin into parody, thereby losing their satirical edge.
The most recent example of this is Fahrenheit 9/11, just out on DVD.
Whether Fahrenheit 9/11 is best described as a documentary, a political ad, or agitprop chicanery, there can be little doubt that its aim is to satirize the Bush administration.
My theory on the film's success is that it raises some important questions that are not sufficiently debated--or even recognized--in the mainstream media, such as Saudi Arabia's influence on American foreign policy. In fact, before Michael Moore's film, the only memorable coverage of this topic that I can recall was a National Review cover story entitled "Desert Rats."
However, there are so many specious and ill-founded arguments made or insinuated in Fahrenheit 9/11 that the film loses its focus. Moore's effectiveness as a filmmaker--when he is effective--is that he is entertaining in addition to being passionate about his subject. But in Fahrenheit 9/11, as in his previous film, Bowling for Columbine (2002), the passion and entertainment come at the expense of coherence.
My colleague John Clark, incidentally, has written a thoughtful analysis of the issues raised in Fahrenheit 9/11, pointing out the legitimate concerns behind the "Daily Show"-like barbs Moore throws at the Bush administration.
But as I said, Fahrenheit 9/11 is only the most recent case of an alleged political satire spinning into parody. Other examples include the sprawling and vacuous Primary Colors (1998), Bulworth (1998), Wag the Dog (1997), and Bob Roberts (1992). These films heap scorn on cartoonish conservative candidates or ideas while presenting liberal orthodoxy as a shining example of sophistication and enlightenment. As a result, they lack a crucial element of the genre: a genuine sense of humor.
The films about politics that actually are funny are typically not satires at all, and usually not even about politics. These include comedies such as My Fellow Americans (1996), The American President (1995), and Dave (1993). The political positions espoused by politicians in these films are ancillary to the love story or farcical plot, and are frequently as laughable as the rest of the comedic shtick. In Dave, for example, the President promises a federal jobs program guaranteed to employ everybody in the country; in The American President, the title character intones "I am going to get the guns!"
Humorless, one-sided political films are not a recent invention, however. All the King's Men (1949), for instance, based loosely on the rise of demagogue Huey Long, is unworthy of the Robert Penn Warren novel on which it is supposedly based. Likewise, The Last Hurrah (1958) bastardizes the classic novel of the same name, a hilarious depiction of the final mayoral campaign of a Democratic Party machine boss. Similarly, Frank Capra's State of the Union (1948) and Gore Vidal's The Best Man (1964) share the tendency of the worst satires to over-moralize in preachy, condescending fashion.
On the other hand, one can exaggerate without distorting. In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Capra's caricatured villains come closer to capturing reality than do many political documentaries, and his idealized hero embodies all the principles that draw good people into politics. Preston Sturges's The Great McGinty (1940) is another wonderful political melodrama, a multiple Academy Award-winner about the rise and fall of a politician on the take.
The best political satire I have seen is The Candidate (1972). The main target of criticism in that film is the cadre of media consultants and political handlers who have turned political campaigns into contests of image rather than substance. Bill McKay (Robert Redford), the film's protagonist, becomes a willing conspirator in--and benefits from--this dumbing-down of political debate by taking the counsel of his Madison Avenue advisors, obscuring his quite liberal political beliefs in an attempt to win votes among the white middle class. Near the end of the campaign, when he has pulled within striking distance of his heavily favored Republican opponent, McKay has an attack of conscience and reverts to some of his earlier leftist rhetoric, but couches it in generalities and softens the blow by ending his speeches with Clintonesque clichés such as, "We're in this together; we sink or swim together."
In the film's most famous scene, McKay, riding in the back of a car between campaign stops, recites a self-mocking parody of his boilerplate speeches: "They're demanding a government of the people, peopled by people...our faith, our compassion, our courage on the gridiron...the basic indifference that made this country great...vote once, vote twice, for Bill McKay! You middle-class honkies!" McKay's pandering is accompanied by other, more seriously sleazy acts: he cheats on his wife, and makes a corrupt bargain with a union boss to get elected.
There's democracy for you.
And speaking of democracy, one final film worth mentioning is Secret Ballot (2001), a political satire set in Iran. The film is particularly relevant to this campaign season, as it deals with the challenges of instituting democracy in an area of the world that is not accustomed to self-government. The conflict between modernity and tradition is personified in the film by its two central characters: A pro-democracy female election official who must travel house-to-house collecting votes, and the anti-democracy soldier who escorts her.
In the course of a single day, the film dramatizes the many subtle complexities of introducing democracy to a fundamentally antidemocratic society, and it does so with humor and wit.
Here's hoping for a little of both from the remaining debates.
Eric Cox is a research fellow at the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research and a movie columnist for TAEmag.com.
