Neoconservative Politics are Narrative Politics, or: Screw It, I'll Buy "Iron Man"

Separated at birth?

The Republican Arizona debate was on tv the other night, and while I lost interest in the specifics of this national clusterf*ck back in January, the general principles at play still fascinate me.  You might think this has nothing to do with movies, but in fact, what fascinates me so much about all this is how both big-budget action films and Republican campaign platforms are structured so similarly -- nay, identically.

In the paraphrased words of Lewis Black, the way you define a neoconservative is a guy who watches The Matrix and thinks it's real.

The Democratic party greatly favors the lecture as their preferred form of communication.  The Republicans favor the drama.  That's why Republican elections get more coverage than Democratic ones (and snappier slogans).  The GOP knows how to put on a good show.

Any Republican candidate worth his party's nomination has got to elect a villain for the race, as the hero is already decided.  This year, as is no surprise, Obama is the one who's filling the role of primary antagonist for virtually every candidate.  They speak of him in absolutes.  That keeps the conflict simple.  

Thus, there's a journey to undertake, trials to overcome, speeches to be made, battles to be fought, a monster to be vanquished -- and nobody has to get confused by the gray areas of life.  

As opposed to a Democratic race, which just generally devolves into a series of "talks."

The Democrats have been doing their damnedest to learn from the Republican example, such as when Obama opened his latest State of the Union address with the announcement that he had killed Bin Laden, rather than discussing, say, the recent downswing in unemployment, which is having an arguably much greater impact on our way of life.  

New to the game of neoconservative platforming, the announcement came off as awkward and half-assed.

Of course, the neoconservatives did not invent the drama.  The dramatists did.

Other writers (myself included) have pointed out that many recent blockbusters have seemingly mirrored neoconservative politics.  The Dark Knight at least appears to be pretty pro-Patriot Act.  Iron Man is the veritable cinematic embodiment of the Bush administration's jingoistic foreign policies.  And Fox's 24 came under fire for its positive depictions of anti-terrorist activities (namely, torture).

These observations were so personally upsetting that I didn't even buy Iron Man when it hit $7 on Amazon.  

But now I realize that it's not the films that are imitating the neoconservatives; rather, the neoconservatives are imitating the films.  These films are not supposed to represent accurate depictions of true-to-life politics.  They're supposed to be great stories.  And they are.

The fault lies with the neoconservatives, who are clearly in the wrong profession, though I don't believe they possess the real acting chops to enter Hollywood -- Gingrich, the waistline.

Drama operates with the benefit of absolutes: good versus evil, black versus white, etc, etc.  There are no such absolutes in real life, and for the neoconservatives to pretend that there is no gray in the world is criminally misleading, is sociopathically negligent.

It's not enough for lying, bigoted schemers like Santorum and Gingrich to lose the nomination.  They need to lose and go broke. They need to lose and go into exile.  They need to leave the rocketing over to the Middle East and wiping out anyone they deem a threat to the American dream to Tony Stark.

Expect a follow-up post outlining all the things that we can do to become real heroes in this confusing, ambiguous, cloudy-gray world of ours once I... you know... figure out just how to do that.

--Serge