Since the air is abuzz with political primaries and Hollywood awards, let’s dedicate a blog post to a politics meet the movies double feature. Herein we interpret the Democratic presidential nomination battle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton through two Academy Award winning films.
First up is Network…“The Mad as Hell” film. So let's sit back and watch how this multi-Oscar winner captures a Bernie Sanders presidency. The obvious connection of course is that Howard Beale, Network’s main character, is a forerunner of Bernie’s modern day Joshua, inspiring an army of fed-up millions to blow hard on their trumpets to bring Wall Street down. Bernie’s campaign is a clear echo of Howard Beale’s exhortation to his audience to throw open their windows and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
Unfortunately the parallel probably continues to the climatic scene in Network when Peter Finch’s Howard Beale is invited behind closed doors to meet with Ned Beatty’s Arthur Jensen. I don’t buy wholesale conspiracies of the illuminati-- privileged elites from government and finance who gather in secret to plot a New World Order to be imposed on the rest of us. Though I admit the last time I mixed movies and politics, I showed a pretty strong inclination in that direction, and yes I do believe that on the first day in office a new president is introduced to a new reality previously obscured by a mass of classified and confidential information suddenly available. A total outsider like Bernie Sanders, who’s probably never stepped foot inside a corporate board room, may know intuitively that the system is rigged, but can't possibly know how...and can’t possibly know which planks in the rigging can be removed without bringing the whole thing down on everyone--ordinary wage earners and working poor as well as the rich and privileged Something like that surely seemed enough to scare Barack Obama off from messing with things “Too Big to Fail.” So it’s not that hard to imagine Bernie’s first day in the Oval Office going something like this:
Next up…Casablanca. Now let's watch how this Oscar winner is the best picture for capturing the essence of a Hillary Clinton presidency...
Hillary's role is Humphrey Bogart’s Rick…connected, compromised, and comfortable. As Ronald Reagan was long-rumored to have been originally cast as Rick, Hillary has lately been cast as a Republican. Both rumors are untrue. At his place, Café Américain, Rick cynically plays host to both Nazis and refugees from Nazis…with a keen eye always on his own survival and well being. At the same time he maintains the undying loyalty of Sam, his black piano player who gives rhythm and soul to Rick’s place. When a reminder of his old idealism comes back into his life in the person of his former lover Ilsa, Rick is thrown into a quandary between continuing the triangulating ways of his later years and the anti-Nazi activism of his earlier ones.
Bernie Sanders is Laszlo, the saintly resistance fighter who has a hold on Ilsa’s idealistic heart. But Rick holds the letters of transit, the key to idealism’s ultimate triumph. Rick cons the corrupt Captain Renault into releasing Laszlo from imprisonment on a minor charge with the promise of helping to entrap him later on a major one. As Rick helps Laszlo escape (back to the underground), he turns to Ilsa and says, “I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."
Rick then shoots Nazi Strasser von Trump, Renault orders a round up of the usual suspects, and Rick and Renault stroll off musing on the start of a beautiful friendship.
Not a dry eye in the house.