Satire of Bush in 'American Dreamz'

USA Today was kind enough to ask our opinion recently of the forthcoming comedy "American Dreamz," which happens to satirize President Bush (among others). As described by USA Today, the film "makes light of a president who has a reputation for ignoring security briefing memos, tangles his words while making speeches, has sinking job-approval numbers and is locked in a Middle Eastern war."

"Hollywood Confidential's" Jason Apuzzo is quoted in USA Today's article on the film's politically charged marketing: "The idea of doing broad-based satire is fine," but the marketing of the film may have already alienated a good portion of its potential audience.

"The poster for the film states wryly: 'Imagine a country where the president never reads the newspaper, where the government goes to war for all the wrong reasons, and more people vote for a pop idol than their next president.'"

To further set the context, here are other excerpts from the USA Today piece:

"Not since Ronald Reagan did his own acting has a president been such a prominent figure in the movies as George W. Bush. Two films opening within a week of each other cast a skeptical eye on the Bush White House - through silliness. 'American Dreamz,' opening Friday, features a reality-TV-obsessed commander in chief and a bumbling terrorist who becomes an American Idol-style singing sensation.

"It sends up the current administration with Bush and Dick Cheney look-alikes [Dennis Quaid and Willem Dafoe, respectively]."

Dafoe, by the way, says the Cheney look wasn't meant to be so exact. His "chief of staff" character is supposed to be a "mixture of the two," Dafoe told Monsters and Critics. "I think the character looks quite a bit like Cheney, but I didn't intend to look so much like him. [The character's] probably more Karl Rove, though. The truth is, while a lot of references are thinly veiled in this, that particular character is sort of an invention."

USA Today adds that "'American Dreamz' is more hopeful than cruel about whether a president can pull out of a second-term slump and renew the public's faith in him, says writer/director Paul Weitz ["American Pie," "About a Boy"]. 'I definitely thought certain people from the right would be annoyed with a sendup of the administration, and some from the left would feel I let the president off the hook,' Weitz says. 'In the end, the president is a fairly sympathetic character in the movie.'"

Most of what we discussed with USA Today was the question of "diversity" or variety in Hollywood's message about President Bush and the war. That message, incidentally, is something communicated not merely through films but also through celebrity activism.

Hollywood's message about the war, directly or indirectly, has been that it's a fraud or public relations stunt ("Fahrenheit 9/11," "Jarhead," "Syriana," "V For Vendetta").

Hollywood's message about Bush has generally been that he is either a) a bumbling incompetent; b) a kind of proto-Hitler; c) a tool of multinational corporations. (Cue sinister mood music.) This is the sort of thing we get either directly or indirectly in "Fahrenheit 9/11," "Silver City," "The Day After Tomorrow," "The Manchurian Candidate," "Syriana," "V For Vendetta" and by implication in "Good Night, and Good Luck" (right wing politicians as blowing a chill wind on free speech, etc.).

We're now even getting Bush-hatred as a plot device in romantic comedies - to wit, the new film "Blue State."

"American Dreamz," whatever its cutesy gentility or good cheer, will otherwise continue this line of thinking - and at a certain point one begins to ask the question, does Hollywood have anything positive to say whatsoever about the current Administration? Alternately, are there any other politicians Hollywood is interested in satirizing? How about Hillary?

Our sense is that Republicans don't mind the occasional chuckle at President Bush's expense - in point of fact, even President Bush enjoys the occasional chuckle at President Bush's expense - but that seems to be the only type of "satire" Hollywood is interested in these days. Much as in academia, there is no diversity in Hollywood today, only a kind of monoculture in which Bush/Republicans/conservatives are treated as "the other" - as non-persons to be satirized, belittled, even shot in the head ("V For Vendetta"). And some of us aren't finding it all that funny anymore.