Movie Theme

Have you ever had those times when you see a preview for a movie that looks like it would be right up your alley and you start to get really excited about seeing it, then when it is released you do not have time to go to the theater or you forget all about it and before you know it some blockbuster film is released and you cannot go see the movie that you wanted to see because Casino Royale is playing on 5 screens? Yes? Well, it seems to happen to me quite often.

About a year ago, I began to see previews for a movie from which the tag line read something like this: "Imagine a country where the President never reads the newspaper, where the government goes to war for all the wrong reasons, and more people vote for a pop idol than their next President." It is common knowledge that my guilty pleasure during the spring television season is watching a little show about finding America's next great singing talent whilst copiously insulting hundreds of others in the process. My adoration for a particular British judge keeps me tuned in from week to week, that is until my favorite candidates are voted off and all that is left to occupy the stage is a gray-haired-harmonica-loving-head-thrusting-"soul" singer and a fake-as-the-LV-logo-on-the-purses-sold-on-Georgetown-street-corners McSlut. Needless to say, I was extremely interested in a movie about such a show with Hugh Grant playing a catty British judge. However, time got in the way, and I never ventured to the movie theater.

Last weekend, I stopped by Blockbuster video and picked up the dvd of American Dreamz. Given my love of satire, I assumed I would find the movie amusing, just as I find satirical sketches of modern issues on Saturday Night Live wildly hilarious. However, I hated it. The film is essentially an attack on the reelection of President Bush, the war in Iraq, and on the President's overall character and intelligence. I found it entirely too obvious and quite frankly, immature (not that Will Ferrell isn't, but this was different). It could have been that the attack on Christianity was too much for me to handle and it left a taste so bad in my mouth that I never quite recovered. I will admit to laughing at the relationship the Hugh Grant character developed with Mandy Moore's character (probably because it reminded me of how I pictured the relationship between Simon Cowell and McSlut on the last season of American Idol), but other than that I was unable to find much to laugh about (well, okay, I may have laughed at a few other things but I guarantee that I spent more time perplexed as to why someone would think such an obvious attack was even the slightest bit humorous).

Now, I bring this movie up because of a point I want to address. While reading this book today, I began to recall the movie I had watched over the weekend. Within the first few chapters, the author talks a lot of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the manner in which public discourse was addressed during those times. It was a typographical age. If you wanted to know what was going on in the country politically, religiously, or otherwise, you read. People sat and listened to political debates for hours on end, but these were not the type of political debates we know today. They spoke with an intellectual mind, without dumbing down their dialogue for the audience. Their words were spoken as if they were writing (most times, they did write their arguments in advance). I admit that if I myself were to read a speech or a debate transcript from this era, I would struggle to understand the subject matter on the first read-through. People expressed their ideas and their arguments through print, intellectual print.

As I was reading these chapters, I began to contemplate the movie once again. Paul Weitz (writer/director/producer) had an opinion he wanted to express. He was angry about the reelection of President Bush. He was angry that his country was/is involved in a senseless war with seemingly no end. He was angry that more of the American public was voting for the next big pop star on a ridiculous TV program. In the typographic age, a person would have written an article or a pamphlet in order to have their opinion spread across the country. This was the easiest way to reach people because everyone would have access to it and most would take the time to read it. We still have people writing their opinions and ideas in articles, but how many people will actually read one article out of one newspaper in one city? At best, the article could be published in a nationwide magazine such as Time or on a common news website such as CNN or MSNBC. However, the best way to get people to pay attention to what Paul Weitz felt he needed to express was to make a movie about it. Same idea with other films such as Fahrenheit 9/11 or An Inconvenient Truth. To me, this is a sad state of affairs.