Group Think Media
Funny thing about media. One of the lessons I learned from my boss was that all media teaches. His theory was that Friends, innocuous as it was, taught people that it was cool to sit around, having coffee and throw shit at each other. Laugh as you may, but why then is Starbuck’s so damned popular?
So it was interesting to watch three films in the past few weeks that might have some hidden meanings to them.
First up, The Incredibles. I wasn’t really impressed with this film since I thought the timings were slightly off, leaving some parts of it dangling away without much point or humour. The really funny parts were hilarious but again, pacing was off. What was interesting about this Disney offering (and follow the paper trail back to the political affiliations in your own time), was the portrayal of Bomb Voyage, a rather pointless French villain who blew things up and was rather stereotypically French. I don’t quite think the Americans have forgiven the French for their “betrayal” during the UN shenanigans before the Iraq War.
Have they replaced the Germans as the bad boys of Hollywood?
Apparently not. Catching that cinematic masterpiece, Dodgeball, the goose-stepping militaristic Germans are portrayed as an alternative team to face our less than average heroes, the Average Joes. We can always rely on those damned krauts to provide us, the Allies, with so much amusement. Oh, how we laughed after 1918 when we humiliated the pants off them, stripped them of their national pride and then did it all again 28 years later. Perhaps it’s time to move on from rubbing it in? While we take great joy hearing the Germans apologise for that terrible war, it can only be pushed so far. Trust me, both the Germans and the Japanese do have strong sense of national dignity, and our zeal to “put them in their place” may be a contributory factor to having it happen all again.
The last film which I thought somewhat amusing was Rocky IV, whose franchise is enjoying a run on Star Movies. Rocky IV, for those who missed out on it, pitted Rocky Balboa (Stallone) against the might of the Soviet institution, distilled into Drago (Ludgren). While it isn’t brain candy, I suspect the film makers were trying to make a political statement about the world should just hug each other and sing cum bae ya. I was more interested in the social statement they made with the film being set in the 80’s. Rocky, the all-American hero, goes to train in the countryside of Russia armed with only peasant tools, rocks and what is available to him. Drago, on the other hand, is scientifically engineered and trained to be in the best physical condition with top of the line technology and performance enhancing drugs.
It’s curious to watch the good guys (i.e. the Americans, if y’all missed that) using pure heart to win through and the ever moralistic film makers suggest that the human spirit wins through over tech. What’s interesting is that in two previous wars the Americans fought, Vietnam and Iraq, that they consistently believe in technology winning through over a more simplistic people. In the former, they lost that completely and utterly, while in the latter, they seem to be having no luck at all subduing the Iraqi insurgents.
From the forerunner in the fight against a possible Soviet tyranny, which incidentally was no laughing matter as Stalin happily slaughtered his own people, the US has gone from guiding the way to losing their way. For a country that once abhorred the idea that communism presented only one idea, one perception and one right way to think, the US needs to look at its own media sometimes with a critical eye lest they themselves become the totalitarians they worked so hard to defeat.
