As the Obama administration comes to an end and we seemingly enter a bad timeline in The Twilight Zone where Biff has a pleasure palace in Hill Valley and a stupid small-handed version of Lex Luthor becomes president, I thought it might make for an interesting diversion to look at politics in fiction. If the land of make-believe is a place where our wildest dreams and worst nightmares come true, what might that say about our reality-show based president?
Almost all of the current fictional TV politicians are either murderers, adulterers, or buffoons. And the state of politics in film and print is usually shaded as an occupation of the corrupt or bureaucratically ineffective.
So, on this inaugural eve, I thought we might look at which political movies and TV shows stand out as favorites? And which ones do you dislike?
- Why are demagogues like Donald Trump able to sway public opinion? The combination of celebrity, media, money and politics can be a dangerous mixture, and Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd argues that all it takes is someone with a charismatic personality and the right combination of showmanship and money to make an awful person marketable. Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith) is a drunk drifter that gets a chance to sing on a local Arkansas radio station. His humor and good singing voice gains a following that leads to a TV show in Memphis and then even bigger opportunities in New York, with different sponsors realizing Rhodes’s ability to influence the public in buying their products. However, as Rhodes's fame grows so does his ego and arrogance. Things begin to fray even more when some of those sponsors decide to use him to turn around a faltering presidential campaign. When the campaign takes the lead in national polls, Rhodes begins to plot how he will use his new power as the "Secretary for National Morale."
- David Simon's critically acclaimed The Wire took a much darker view of institutions and the people involved in politics. The main issue at the heart of the show is the futility and destructiveness of the War on Drugs. But the show is also deeply cynical about government and its ability to effect change and be changed. Over the course of the show, every institution, whether it be local or state government, labor unions, the public school district, the police department, or even the Baltimore Sun, is in some way corrupt or incompetent, and fails in its stated goals. And the "good" people who come into those institutions, with ideas and hope of changing things for the better, are either corrupted or ultimately crushed by the weight of the system.
- The 1962 Otto Preminger film Advise and Consent was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling novel of the same name by Allen Drury. The story concerns the nomination of a prominent liberal, Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda), to secretary of state during the height of the Cold War, and the problems that creates when he's accused of being a communist appeaser. Even though Drury, the film's trailer and even the United States Senate website denied it, the story is based on actual events and the characters seem to be stand-ins for historical figures. The cross-examination of Leffingwell by the Senate subcommittee is strongly reminiscent of the Alger Hiss hearings. The president is dying but concealing it from the public, and the vice president is largely ignored by the administration, with both seeming to be patterned after Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Playboy Senator Lafe Smith is modeled after John F. Kennedy, and it's probably a casting gag that Peter Lawford, Kennedy's brother-in-law, plays Smith in the movie. Senator Fred Van Ackerman (George Grizzard) is based on Joe McCarthy, although Van Ackerman is a left-wing extremist rather than a right-wing extremist. The events that occur with Utah Senator Brig Anderson (Don Murray) in the story is inspired by the very real incident that occurred with Wyoming Sen. Lester C. Hunt, who killed himself in the Capitol after being blackmailed over his son's homosexuality. The film is also interesting for the amount of access they were given in Washington, D.C. to make it. Much of the filming of Advise and Consent was done on location, in the Capitol, and the Russell Senate Office Building.
- Would it be possible to be a single man or woman and president of the United States in this day and age? In The American President, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Rob Reiner, Michael Douglas plays a widowed president who starts dating a lobbyist (Annette Bening), which becomes scandal fodder for his Republican opponents. At one point, Senator Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss) says in an interview: "I don't even know what we call her. Is she the First Mistress?"
- The most memorable line from 1972's The Candidate comes when Bill McKay (Robert Redford), the new senator-elect from California, looks at his campaign manager, Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle), and asks: "What do we do now?" Written by Jeremy Larner, a former speechwriter for Senator Eugene McCarthy, and directed by Michael Ritchie, the movie shows an idealistic candidate being slowly corrupted by a desire to win, as his campaign transitions more and more from stark policy choices to worrying about appearances and mealy mouthed phrases like "five-point programs" that mean nothing. This film is also an interesting contrast to Ritchie's other best-known film: The Bad News Bears. In both films, the lead characters are not taken seriously at first, but become seduced into becoming what they hate the most by the chance of winning. Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) decides there are things more important than winning, while McKay doesn't.
- Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing proceeds from an idealistic, Capraesque vision of American politics that believes in the positive aspects of government and, more importantly, the positive aspects of people in government. Some years back, Juli Weiner once had an article at Vanity Fair in which she argued Sorkin had been influential in shaping the current generation of public servants. In Sorkin's political universe, most of those in government are good public servants who are trying to do their best to make a difference. Those with principles are victorious over those who spread half-truths and distortions. And all that is necessary for the best political policy to carry the day, no matter how controversial it might be, is the guts to say what you mean and mean what you say.
- Both George Clooney's The Ides of March, an adaptation of Beau Willimon's play Farragut North, and Mike Nichols' Primary Colors, based on Joe Klein's novel of the same name, depict the corruption of young political aides as they sacrifice their ideals for career advancement and the lesser of evils. There's a scene in Primary Colors where Jack Stanton's campaign is crashing, but instead of being worried about his political survival, Stanton is across the street in a coffee shop talking to the guy behind the counter, worried about the worker's well-being. Stanton is a very flawed character, but one can see how people would fight for him. There's nothing like that in The Ides of March for George Clooney's Governor Morris. And it's probably my biggest problem with the film, since I just never felt Clooney's character was some sort of "great hope" that people would be willing to go to extraordinary depths to protect.
- The depiction of American politics in Shonda Rhimes's Scandal is both soap opera-ish and probably the darkest of any TV series. Scandal exists in a universe where it seems like every conspiracy theory may be true, and every rumor you've ever heard about a politician is probably true or much worse than is believed. Tony Goldwyn's President Fitzgerald "Fitz" Grant is a Republican that bears no resemblance to any Republican that's existed in American politics over the past three decades. He's also a murderer who was installed through a rigged election, his Sarah Palin-esque vice president seems to have murdered her husband, the first lady was raped by her father-in-law, the president's Democratic opponent in the last election killed his wife's lover in cold blood, and a super-secret spy agency that no one knows about and answers to no authority (not even the president) kills and imprisons with impunity. Critics have noted that within the show "no American institution—not governmental or corporate—has your best interests at heart, and human relationships are a kind of beautiful addiction, irresistible in the moment but spiraling outward to infect all they touch."
- Netflix's House of Cards, an adaption of the BBC miniseries of the same name that starred Ian Richardson, depicts politics as a chess game with disposable and usable pieces. Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood sets out on a quest of vengeance after being slighted, and destroys lives and fortunes as he accumulates power. The politics of House of Cards largely strain credulity. Frank's biggest legislative "achievements" are screwing over unions and raising the retirement age for Social Security, with both being achieved over the objections of the Republicans. So who in the hell is the base of the Democratic Party in the House of Cards universe?
- 24 is thought of by some as a conservative-leaning show and a product of the Bush era because of its depiction of torture. However, it's interesting to note that the only positive depiction of a politician in the show's history was Democratic President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), and one of the show's major villains was Republican President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin). The depiction of the American government though is one that is bureaucratic, corrupt, filled with moles for different interests, and willing to sell out Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) at every chance. But also of note is that the ultimate causes and sources of each season's terrorist attacks were usually based on left-wing concerns, such as corporate influence.
- Arguably, the most positive depiction of a politician in recent years is NBC's Parks and Recreation. Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) is a neurotic Pollyanna, but she's a dreamer that cares about people and wants to make a difference. And even though the show portrays the public as largely ignorant, the people of Pawnee, Indiana, actually give a shit about their community. They show up to public hearings and city council, even if it's to show up and say crazy shit.
- When we think of films of the past depicting politics, idealistic stories like Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington are usually the standard. However, the political world in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a rather dark one, since the United States Senate is more or less in the pocket of special interests. But the story is one where good triumphs through virtue and perseverance.
- Armando Iannucci's Veep, like its British sister-show The Thick of It, argues public policy is not borne out of good ideas, but is a product which results from spinning the bad ideas that didn't play well. Veep's Selina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) comes off as "What if Sarah Palin was a Democrat from Maryland?"
- When you mention politics to most people, they make a "eww" face and regard it as a concept they neither want to be a part of or believe affects them. But the truth is that politics, whether it be the capital "P" kind of governments or the little "p" type of relationships, permeate throughout society. Almost all interactions are to some degree built around influence and the use of that influence to further an agenda, whether personal or professional. No other show on television explores that dynamic as well as The Good Wife, created by husband-wife team Robert and Michelle King.
- If one doesn't mind subtitles or speaks Danish, they should probably try out Borgen. The title comes from the nickname for Denmark's seat of power, Christiansborg Palace, and the critically acclaimed series, created and written by producer Adam Price and co-writers Jeppe Gjervig Gram and Tobias Lindholm, follows Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen), who unexpectedly becomes Denmark’s first female prime minister. Nyborg is a principled and charismatic politician, and as the series progresses the compromises in policy and tactics affect her psyche and personal relationships.