The dread of the abyss.
How does a popular art engage an audience without offending their political points of view and so becoming divisive and so hurting the box office? High art doesn’t care. Mark Twain and George Eliot just said what was on their minds, Twain anti-slavery and Eliot in favor of parliamentary reform-- but then again “The West Wing'' clearly showed its Liberal biases. One way popular art can neutralize itself is to deal with politics by developing the characters of the public figures. That happens in movies like “Primary Colors'', which is about a fictionalized Clinton, a very nuanced George W. Bush in “W.”, and in “Hyde Park on the Hudson'', where emphasis is given to FDR’s sexual liaisons though getting in that FDR was scheming to prepare for FDR to get American support in an expected war between Enghland and Germany. Another alternative for popular art is to abstract out the opposing set of beliefs so as t6o divorce the movie context from actual events and controversies that viewers might find disputatious. Spencer Tracy in “Keeper of the Flame” presented as an imaginary group what was meant to convey the America Firsters or maybe a Lindberg like figure who gave into the view whereby a leader becomes autocratic and fascistic a few years before in the 1942 movie had opposed involvement in the European war between Britain and Germany. And “A Face in the Crowd” generalized populism when what it really had as its object McCarthyism, which was ginning up hatred for only selfish desires for power.
A current example of this second strategy is the movie “Civil War” which creates the emotions but not the issues of contention between the great divide that is present in current day America, and it is worth considering what is to be gained and lost by that artistic device.Ross Douthat provides the sufficient reasons why the United States would get into a hot civil war, including no regional or racial divides, though there ate enough of those to make it creditable. But think of what Trump might do in a political and legal equivalent of a civil war, one that would disestablish the constitution and American rights should Trump be elected and take both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court already in his pocket, two Justices tainted by corruption, and the Chief Justice failing to rein them in, and two other Justices dissembling during their confirmation hearings, claiming Roe v. Wade was settled law and overthrowing it when having risen to the bench. So the checks on a Trump presidency are weak. The Republican Congress has made the Speaker of the House an 2020 election denier and courts trump though it is to be said that Johnson listened to the intelligence professionals, who Trump did not heed or read, and so got through the funds to Israel and Ukraine.Butg Congress and an executive filled with political appointees might not protect Trump from doing what he says, which ios to get revenge, create detention centers for illegal aliens, help Putin destroy Ukraine, and become dictator for a day so he can build his border wall. Some say the Constitution and the entrenched ordinary conservatives who believe in less spending and more states rights will prevail and constrain a Trump reelection, but they seem a weak reed, given their general cowardice and putting reelection over statesmanship.
The first ten minutes of “Civil War” were off putting because the movie seemed to have two much the allegory about Trump leading to a new destruction lof American government in presenting the rebels as an alliance between Texas and California, one really a red country and the other a blue one, and so imagined only so as not to take sides. But I stayed with the movie because of its spectacular cinematography, including set pieces in NYC urban unrest and roads and forests in West Virginia. The plot theme was also familiar and time tested since “The Front Page” where journalists are heroes because they are cynical and well versed and dedicated to get the story and tell the truth. In this case, photojournalists are out to get the photos, uncertain that Reuters and some semblance of the NY Times can still print it, but devoted to covering the chaos when warfare is going on at least the East Coast. Journalists are the eyes and ears of the viewers, just as John Reed was in “Reds” or Spencer Tracy in “Keeper of the Flame”. “Civil War” seems stylized and artificial in that journalists are allowed to accompany a military attack close up and regarded as protected neutrals, but journalists were up close in Guadalcanal and Italy and Vietnam, though not more recently, until Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Ernie Pyle was killed in the Pacific. Moreover, the movie limits or stylizes its presentation by eliminating sex. The photojournalists don’t fool around with one another and no one gets raped. The movie is all about war which in its case means without ideology, a different kind of war, as a friend suggested to me, because wars always have ideological baggage as far back as “Henry V”, where lawyers explained why royal lineage justified one or another invasion, and ideology certainly present in world wars and the Cold War and present day wars.
Also appealing and approachable in “Civil War” is the story organized as a journey to the heart of darkness. “Civil War” follows the journalists as they travel from NY in a roundabout way to Charlottesville but find themselves eventually in D.C. I suspect that Alex Garland, the director of “Civil War” was modeling his movie after “Apocalypse, Now”, which begins in relatively civilized or at least organized territory and proceeds to a no man’s zone of anarchy where it is not clear who the other people are shooting at, tol a climactic battle at the center of things. There is a scene in “Civil War” of helicopters ferrying armored cars that is similar to but not up to Coppola having helicopters attack a Vietnamese village with “The Ride of the Valkyrie” on the soundtrack.
“Civil War” turned out to be an impressive movie. I was caught up in its aftershocks. For days, I expected a group of people loitering at a street corner to take out their rifles and kill me or for me to find a batch of bombed out rubble when I turned a corner or for the White House Press Secretary to announce martial law. And it was, after all, about Trump. Because he is the source of disruption and threat to the political order, threatening to use the American military to put down dissent. The sanitized movie finds its context.
And then I heard the White House Press Association Dinner on Sunday night, the President in attendance, as had Obama, but the event was suspended during the Trump years because he did not like the press and Trump had been roasted by Obama at a White House Press dinner Trump attended . Trump never forgets slights except when they are to his advantage, probably not noticing that he had at the time attacked Obama as born in Kenya and so a legitimate target for Obama. Tit for tat, and only a celebrity roast, but these things show just how deep these feelings are. Maybe it led Trump to run for President and Obama zinging Trump was not worth it.
The thing about the White House Press dinner was it was about fashion and celebrity, a version, as Vanessa Friedman said in the Times, a version of the Met Gala. People looked great. Kelly O’Donnell, the outgoing president, lost a lot of weight, but that made me worry if she is sick. I am a long-time worrier. The most important thing, however, was that none of the comedians were funny, not the warm up or the President or Colin Jost, the main speaker, who did get a good one at the husband of the vice president, saying he too was a second gentleman, he is married to Scarlett Johannson who was for a while the most beautiful woman in the world when she early on as “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”, a movie about herself as well as Vermeer, and so, like the Mona Lisa, one of the great women of the ages.
Why no laughs? Because whatever the celebration, the press corps, which is knowledgeable about politics, as they are in “Civil War”, is full of foreboding. Things are getting crazy and the press don’t know where they are heading. Jost said one guy is under four in indictments, one because of his involvemen with a porn star, and Biden is decent, and the polls show the two are tied? That makes no sense. What will the public decide? And so “Civil War” is indeed about Trump, about how these times are out of joint and full of foreboding about just how disruptive America could become if Trump were elected. Ending the correspondent dinner might be a very minor disruption, so dress up while you can, like the people in Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”.
Another prophetic omen of doom. Mitch MacConnell said on “Face the Nation” Sunday that he had thought antisemitism was past and held college presidents responsible for not having restored order. He thought there should be conversations between the protesters and their opponents to sort out the issues. But I do not think the present cultural climate is one in which Jews and pro Palestinians are likely to confer and come to some agreement. This is not a Socratic dialogue, if ever there were many of them in politics. There was no use for Franklin to try to get some concessions from the British elite. Why now? Everyone is bitter and aggrieved and Trump, who would probably, along with Gov. Abbott of Texas, quelch the pro Palestinians, has the same sense of grievance, while in an earlier generation, King modeled being polite and respectful when confrontational. As if the other side could be convinced. Trump isn’t trying conversion, just triumph. So what will happen after the deluge? Noone does and that is why press fashion is done in the awareness that we are on the edge of the abyss.