The movie stars a chief executive (Michael Douglas) who is progressive yet practical: he says that gun control is hard to pass because people do not understand the link between guns and gun-related crime. The predictable turn occurs after he falls in love with an environmental lobbyist (Annette Bening), and he has to face an evil senator (Richard Dreyfuss) who is turning the unthinking masses against him by making nasty comments about his new lady friend.
The president’s approval ratings tumble, and the White House staff bemoans the people’s willingness to believe anyone with a microphone. At a climactic moment, the domestic policy adviser (Michael J. Fox) compares Americans to nomads who need a drink of water but get a glass of sand. The president bitterly replies: “They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.” Unbelievably, the American voter is depicted as unable to distinguish between the truth and fiction!
Why do so many political films show such contempt for the majority of the American people? It is my humble opinion that convenience plays a big part in their thinking. If moviemakers simply assume a brain-dead public, then they need not spend valuable screen time explaining how evil or cynical characters can bend opinion to their will. It's also lazy writing in my opinion. Nuance is way tougher to write than black and white.
Furthermore, Hollywood is not exactly bubbling with ideological diversity. To paraphrase William Buckley, although moviemakers talk about hearing other points of view, it shocks them to learn that there are other points of view. When Michael Douglas’s fictional president proudly proclaims his membership in the American Civil Liberties Union, moviemakers assume that no rational person could disagree. Yet polls and election returns suggest that the ACLU’s positions are consistently unpopular, so the film community naturally assumes widespread craziness and stupidity.
Look, when you write a script, or song, or book, that creative output usually corresponds with a your personal desire for change. Whether you pen an anti-war anthem, or a cynical book on politics, there is buried (or sometimes not so buried) in the content a message designed to induce conformity with your ideas and worldview. Your art, your message, so to speak.
But what we have seen develop is an entire creative culture that believes that they know best, that the average American are too stupid to grasp the inner workings of our republic, and that at the core of our being we desire to be led around by the nose by those who deem themselves smarter than us.
Don't believe me? Here are two more examples of Hollywood showing their contempt for the masses.
In “Citizens Kane” (1941), Orson Welles plays a legendary newspaper publisher who can whip his readers into a war frenzy with far-fetched stories about Spanish galleons off the Jersey coast. During a domestic argument, his wife says, “Really, Charles, people will think...” and he cuts in, “What I tell them to think!”
In “The Candidate” (1972), an idealistic Senate contender (Robert Redford) runs an issue-based campaign against a stodgy incumbent (Don Porter-who, like Richard Dreyfuss in “The American President,” sports the stereotypical dark suit and short white hair). He seems certain to lose until he starts speaking in platitudes. The mushier his statements get, the better he does in the polls. Beguiled by his increasingly inane speeches and slick ads, the voters of California send him to the Senate.
And I could go on and on . . .
