Movies Are Silly!

Welcome back Yourpopfiltroids. This time we’re tackling an issue I’ve long put off but deserves treatment nonetheless. Politics find their way into movies far too often, no matter what your philosophy dictates.

 

Politics

Humans are political animals. We can’t really do much of anything without some level of “politics” becoming involved. From “How do we decide who gets to plan the Christmas party?” to “How do we decide who gets to nuke whom first?” every question of human interaction is answered by “politics.” For the purpose of this article, however, I’m referring to national-level politics and questions of state and governance. These questions are relevant and interesting to most people on the planet, particularly those who live in developed countries, and so they make good subjects for film.

However, their treatment in a movie is a delicate balance. Movies (other than art-house films, and who really watches those?) must still generate profit or they will not get made. This means that film-makers will usually not risk isolating large segments of their potential audience by being TOO political. They’re still humans though, and want their voices and opinions to be heard and their movie to be interesting. So the temptation to subtly insert political message into your film is oftentimes too great to resist. This can have mixed results but those results are usually silly.

 

Political Elements

Most people agree that Hollywood and American Films have a “liberal” bias. This is not to say that no “conservative”-leaning movies get made… but the trend is obvious. No matter what your political inclination, however, I think you’ll agree that unless a film is overtly political in nature politics should generally be left out.

One of the most common ways movies unnecessarily insert politics into their plots is through allegory. I’ve already talked your ear off about that though so suffice to say that most of the time it’s just a cheap way to generate some interest about the film and the film-makers rarely follow through on them. If they ARE using allegory to give voice to some political idea the film usually comes off as preachy or self-involved once you notice the connection.

Another way politics finds its way into a film is through the introduction of current hot-button topics or subjects into the plot. I feel pretty confident saying this is always used to up a films visibility and boost ticket sales. Rarely is the subject explored in depth and rarer still does the film actual educate its audience about said subject.

In Skyfall cyber-terrorism is the main weapon the villain wields. It’s no coincidence this film was also released while headlines often talk about this Asian government being caught attempting to hack into that US government website and the rising threat of hacker groups such as Anonymous (please don’t tell them I mentioned them, internet; we already get tons of spam comments here at yourpopfilter and we definitely can’t handle even the weakest DoS attack). But did you learn anything about cyber-terrorism by watching the movie? Did you feel even slightly informed about the issues surrounding increased internet access and the dangers it poses to entrenched and outdated security systems? Or was it just cool to (spoilah alaht!) see a guy blow up the MI6 headquarters with a computer?

 

Documentaries

Everybody has their biases and even if you earnestly desire to treat a subject evenhandedly your personal leanings are going to show through when you’re doing something as complicated as filming and editing a documentary. But when did it become de rigueur for documentaries to have a blatant political bias or even go so far as to openly shill for a particular political philosophy or, worse still, political party? These “documentaries” are using the respect for the genre that’s been built by earnest and informative documentary films to lend credibility to their personal political cause. Personally, I find this sort of hijacking to be one of the most egregious corruptions of films for political reasons. On top of this these documentaries almost always get carried away and present conjecture and unverified studies as facts and science, opening them to political attack from the “other side.” Did An Inconvenient Truth help or hurt the movement to fight climate change? The question is up to debate because of the blatant exaggerations and flimsy claims Al Gore made in the film. The clear loser is the genre of documentary which had its credibility chipped away by this film and others like it.

 

Biopics

Some films, commonly referred to as “biopics,” are about an iconic or interesting historical figure and often these figures are politicians or political activists. Including politics in these is not really optional so it’s perfectly forgivable when it happens. These films get off track though when they get too into their subject. The subject of the film then becomes just that: a subject and not a person. Now they are either worshiped as a hero or vilified as a monster and the end result is a potentially interesting look at a political figure as a person becomes a film about their particular political philosophy or struggle and they are reduced to a symbol. Every biopic has this to some extent, even particularly good ones like Lincoln. He was a great statesman to be sure, but did some anonymous soldier ever fawn over him as being a perfectly suited politician for his time? I doubt it.

 

Some films are political and that’s ok. It’s a part of everyone’s life and everyone has a vested interest in it. Where political films go wrong is when they lose what little objectivity they had to begin with or blatantly commandeer political subjects or figures to sell tickets. Making a great political film is a difficult thing to do, I recognize, and I doubt I could do it myself. But if you’re not up to the task don’t tackle it in the first place. That’s just silly.