I’m a Liberal, but when I saw Wag The Dog upon its release I saw similarities with the film and Clinton’s actions in the Balkans as a remedy for his political troubles.
I watched it again last year, and saw similarities between it and Bush’s invasion of Iraq and his linking of the WTC/Pentagon attacks with that country.
When I most recently watched it I didn’t watch it for any particular reason. It was on the shelf and I just decided to watch it. And events over the past year (working on a film, the abandonment of the film my the principal player, home improvements, getting a job, thinking about quitting the job, and life in general) have dimmed some of my recollections. I guess I’m going to have to watch it again. It’s interesting to me that I find that it can apply to two wildy different politicians.
So what do you think of Wag The Dog? What other films can you think of stand up over time in this way?
And speaking of the Balkans, I’m going to have to watch No Man’s Land again.
I first saw the film in the theater (funny side note: my companion for the showing resisted seeing it at first because, having only heard the title, she thought it’d be a family comedy about a dog named Wag) and immediately thought about Clinton although it seemed pretty obviously directed that way. Since then, I’ve seen it a couple more times and view it more in the sweeping terms of political misdirection and how easily the public is manipulated.
Not too long ago, I heard Bush giving one of his “Stay the Course” speeches and said to my girlfriend “Because you don’t change horses in midstream.” She didn’t get the reference because, as it turned out, she never saw the film. So we rented it and she loved it and started comparing it to the Bush presidency. I think that the material is just general enough and public mistrust of the government in general is such that it’s easy to make comparisons to it and whatever current military events are going on. I’m sure that, in six years, seeing it again will make me say “Hey, that’s just like our president now!” yet again. The fact that they never get into political parties or identify who belongs to who probably helps a lot in that.
I thought it was a great film, funny and thought-provoking. It’s not perfect – the parts with Woody Harrelson start to drag, for one, but it has aged well so far.
What did she think about that heartwarming film about a ragtag group of adorable mutts living on the outskirts of a city? It was called Reservoir Dogs.
I think there was a reference recently, in light of the ABC minseries (“Path to 9/11” – is that right?) to Wag the Dog. The reference was that there are congresspersons who accused Clinton of trying to use al Queda and Osama bin Laden as a diversion for his own troubles (the impeachment, etc.) One – and I cannot for the life of me remember who – made a reference to *Wag the Dog * and said it was really unfortunate that the movie came out when it did because it allowed people to discredit the administration’s efforts to bag the wily old terrorist. It sounded almost like the movie was being partly blamed for 9/11, but I can’t be sure.
Larry Beinhart, who wrote the book the movie was based on (American Hero) was inspired by conspiracy theories of the 80’s and early 90’s: that the Reagan administration’s invasion of Grenada was done to get the truck bomb attack on the marine base in Lebanon off of the front pages. The plot of the book is that Operation Desert Storm was entirely a Hollywood operation, done on sound stages, designed to boost GHW Bush’s approval ratings. The screenwriters, Beinhart and Hilary Henkin, created a parallel universe president and a sex scandal. The movie was well into production when the Lewinsky scandal broke.
Last Monday Glenn Greenwald posted a list of quotes from Republican politicians and pundits about Clinton’s actions in 1998: