BOSTON — These are dark days. We are living in a time when
people are obsessively contemplating the mote in their brother’s
eye, but failing to consider the beam lodged in their own. Any
utterance by the enemies of our beliefs, regardless of merit, is
dismissed as extremist blather, while extremism in the service of a
cause we believe in is accepted as just. Right. Left. Liberal.
Conservative. These are the markers we have been left with, while
right and wrong have become road kill on the highway of popular
culture.
These were some of the thoughts that ran through my head
watching Team America: World Police Saturday night in a
huge theater right outside a raucous Fenway Park. Like many others,
I took plenty of pleasure in the mocking of that toad, Kim Jong Il,
and giggled at the portrait of actor Matt Damon as a half-wit who
could only manage to shout his own name over and over again. For
the record, I also thought Saddam Hussein being portrayed as
Satan’s gay lover in hell in the South Park movie was a
stroke of genius.
But I couldn’t help but feel ill at ease as hundreds cheered and
pumped their fists in the air at the bloody evisceration of puppets
modeled after Alec Baldwin, Janeane Garofalo, Sean Penn, and
others. I mean, come on. I know it’s an election season, but can we
please be serious here for a minute? Baldwin is a good actor with
daffy lefty political views and a big mouth. Why should seeing his
effigy shot full of holes makes conservatives so happy? Have Susan
Sarandon’s meanderings really become so vital to the survival of
our country that an on screen decapitation is a joyous occasion?
Celebrities with silly political views are not comparable to Kim
Jong Il.
Nevertheless, conservative websites have been publishing
gleeful, untroubled endorsements of the film for nearly a week now.
Aren’t these the same sites who have been complaining about
MoveOn.org comparing George W. Bush to Hitler for the last year?
Haven’t they posted condemnation after condemnation of the rhetoric
and merchandise of the Bush haters? I can’t say I enjoy being in
the position of defending Michael Moore, but here it goes: He may
be the purveyor of conspiratorial, fraudulent documentaries, but he
is not a suicide bomber.
I INVITE THOSE WHO HAVE already begun composing letters in their
heads condemning this column to consider for a moment how they
would have reacted if Fahrenheit 9/11 had a scene in which
a puppet of George W. Bush strapped with explosives walked into the
U.N. General Assembly and blew himself up. Would that have been
simple political satire to be laughed off, or would that have been
a cause for outrage? Or what if a local Democratic group had a
fundraiser where dolls of Bush Administration figures could be
attacked with hammers (even in a hypothetical, Dems would be too
scared to use rifles) for a dollar a pop? Would that be right or
wrong?
Conservative reviewers of the film seem to argue that Team
America is different because it is a balanced critique,
skewering equally left and right. This is simply false. The first
half of the film does indeed mock American hubris in the War on
Terror. Team America absent-mindedly destroys Paris and Cairo while
defending the world from the terrorists, for example, and the
group’s theme song going into battle is “America, F**k Yeah!” Its
headquarters is in Mount Rushmore, for God’s sake. Every action
movie cliché and archetypal character is magnified to the
nth degree, and it is at times hilarious.
But none of this is done in a personal way. The characters are
all composites. As such, they bear resemblance to an idea of what
some Americans are like but aren’t assigned the identity of anyone
in particular. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condi are not
carved into wood and pranced around. Even Gary, the reluctant hero
of the film — “You’re an actor with a double major in theater and
world languages! Hell, you’re the perfect weapon!” the Team America
leader gushes — is not based on any actor in particular, and so,
in a way, he becomes all actors. But, by using the names and
likenesses of left-leaning actors, the film makes its attacks on
that side intensely personal. The message is simple: These are
traitors who serve our enemies. If the filmmakers had opted to use
composite characters for these characters as well, it would have
made for a much more effective satire, since satire, by nature,
relies on exaggeration. Even the use of actual characters without
violent death would have been more palatable. Instead, this just
feels like a settling of Hollywood scores.
NO ONE IS ASKING for anything more than this from the creators of
South Park. They openly admit that they are in the shock
value business, and are clearly very talented at it. If
conservatives want to embrace this sort of violent satire, fine.
We, as a nation, can edge that much closer to the day when we deem
the differences between red and blue America so irreconcilable that
everyone on the other side of the fence is a fraud or a traitor. Of
course, labeling people as such will make them considerably less
likely to give audience to your ideas, but then this stopped being
about ideas a long time ago. If politics was about ideas today
there would be no need to demonize the opposition.
But those who revel in seeing Hans Blix eaten by sharks or
watching Tim Robbins get shot in the face should realize every time
they complain about Bush being called a fascist or being portrayed
as a demon on a protester’s sign, it is an act of hypocrisy. Either
there are rules of decorum and civility or there are not. We cannot
abandon these in good conscience simply because the fanatical
elements of the left have done so. Otherwise, what’s the difference
between us and them?
Walking out of the theater, I could hear the Red Sox fans in
Fenway chanting, “Yankees suck! Yankees suck!” and caught myself
thinking: Maybe some day we’ll find a way to raise political
discourse to the same level.
