/411/ What Kind of American Are You?
Added 2024-05-16 10:56:29 +0000 UTCOn Alex Garland’s new film, Civil War.
[Patreon Exclusive]
The boys discuss a film that seems designed to say something in the context of a US election year. But what? We ask:
What kind of film is this: a dystopian fantasy, a war movie, a road movie?
Why the focus on the media? Does the film celebrate or satirise journalists?
Does Garland’s dystopia tell us anything about the landscape of US politics today?
Why is political polarisation between liberals and populists seen in terms of civil war?
What would a civil war look like in geopolitical terms, along the lines Garland suggests?
What side would you choose?
Links:
Where will America's Civil War be fought?, Michael Lind, UnHerd
The Civil War Will Not Be Mediated, Nina Power, Compact
Civil War is a terrifying film, but Trump: The Sequel will be a real-life horror show, Simon Tisdall, The Guardian
Comments
It could also be the demented contents of Robert De Niro's thoughts before he goes to sleep at night.
Mouldy L
2024-05-28 16:07:10 +0000 UTCThe supposed ambiguities in this movie (antifia massacre et al) are just Garland's attempts to cover his tracks in what is a very unambiguously liberal hysteria movie in the vein of Paul Lynch's Prophet Song, or Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. I couldn't help feeling that I was watching these journos wishing events into existence, as if the horrors of the world existed only for the glory of some media class aspirant. The heroism of the soldier is replaced by the heroism of the cultured, educated photo journalist, whose weapon of choice is: The Truth. The movie as a whole is a kind of January 6th for liberals, the first January 6th being a kind of forum theatre piece which here gets rewritten as Hollywood revenge fantasy against Trump. It reminded me of Eisenstein's October, his storming of the winter palace recast with liberal media as the Bolsheviks. The contrast with October is how deliberately anti-climactic it is - because Trump doesn't deserve anything as grand as a storming of the winter palace. I can't help feel that Garland laments the fact that America won't get someone as massively evil as say Hitler, and that the depressing empty feeling the movie leaves me with, is this sense that it'll have to be one of the lesser, less cool, less tasteful, own brand tyrants like Gaddafi.
Mouldy L
2024-05-28 07:41:50 +0000 UTCAnd organ of the state security apparatus that Nick Trumperman no longer had any control of.
Ghost Runner
2024-05-19 23:56:20 +0000 UTCThe remark about disbanding the FBI is ambiguous as was the line about the antifa massacre. Perhaps the disbanded FBI became part of a regional militia fighting what is left of the federal government.
Ghost Runner
2024-05-19 20:17:46 +0000 UTC
