Movies about the media, Part 1

Articles in this Topic Discussions in this Topic

May 4, 2001

Hollywood, always a bastion for presenting reality as Hollywood wants it seen and nowadays a bastion of political correctness (which is always an enemy of free speech), has let a few good movies critical of media slip through over the past few years that actually get close to telling the truth about how media presents what those in power want us to digest, covering up the truth.

It started with the movie "Network" in the late seventies. Don't ask me who was in it and the names of the characters. This is the one that gave rise to the line "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore." This is the one that showed how media censors splice out the truth and put in disconnected footage and images. This is the one with a Dan Rather-type pretty boy donning fake tears over a war scene somewhere, I don't remember.

I've seen two movies about the media--present and future--over the past few weeks, on TBS and USA, that cut even closer to the truth.

The one set in the present is "Wag the Dog" featuring both Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino (and Willie Nelson, bless his heart) and Anne Heche. Good God, what a cast! Mirroring Clinton's broohahah and covering up of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, among others, through getting this nation's military to bomb a Sudan pharmaceutical factory and lead us into Kosovo, the movie has DeNiro finagling Heche and others into covering up the fictitious president's bomber scandal by splicing together a phony war with Albania.

"Albania? Why?" Heche says.

"Why not?" DeNiro answers.

Albania? Now that turns out to be an interesting choice! Did the producers know something?

First, DeNiro gets producer Pacino to make a mock-up of "the fighting 403" (or whatever--don't get me involved in trying to remember to much details) which goes in and "rescues" folks like that "Albanian girl with kitten" (a computer generated "news clip"), and warmongering "fighting 403" propaganda to go with it. But that's not stagey enough--Heche has to find a "disposable" type to play out an "Albania hostage" ruse to really whip up hysteria when the prez' scandal comes back on track--a mental patient named Schumacher. And what a name it is--now they can get Willie Nelson and some old timey black blues musician to put out "Good Ol' Shoe", complete with 45 rpm vinyl record and old-styled recording techniques to make it seem like the record was cut in the 40s! Good enough to convince folks, those "patriots" out there, to throw their old shoes over telephone wires.

Go To Page: 1 2

The copyright of the article Movies about the media, Part 1 in Media Issues is owned by Deborah Lagarde. Permission to republish Movies about the media, Part 1 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.