Wag the Dog Reaction

Wag the Dog: great political movie that shows the true power of persuasion and how it can be used in a negative light or an un-clever name for a bestiality porno? You be the judge! If you selected choice number one you’re correct, good for you, your mom would be proud. If you selected choice number two you need serious psychiatric help and may God have mercy on your soul, but then again I’m not here to judge... (Sinner). Too preachy? Anyway, on with the reaction.

This is one of the rare cases in which a movie is made and the content serves as a major foreshadower for the real life future, kind of like a whole life imitating art sort of thing. If you haven’t seen the movie, which if you’re reading this you should have because you’re either a fellow classmate who also has this assignment, or are the professor who has given the assignment and is getting tired of me stalling with this intro so we’ll continue, the movie is about this master of “spin,” played by Robert Deniro, which devises a plan to stage a fake war in order to divert the public’s minds away from a recent sex scandal involving the president. The plan is to stage a war in the country of Albania because few people know enough about the country to question the clever ruse. Although this movie is cleverly disguised as a comedy, it really does have a much deeper, powerful, and rather dark message of how politics and the media can be used and how easily we as a nation can be misled, or in this case, downright lied to. This movie became extremely controversial because it was made shortly before the Clinton/ Monica Lewinsky fiasco happened, where at the same time “coincidently enough” the president had just gave orders on a three day bombing of Iraq.

This was a little creepy to see I must admit, but at the same time it’s not as if we can just look back on that as a scary time in politics where perhaps a real life “wag the dog” was taking place because things in the movie still to this day directly correlate with some of the current administration actions taken under G.W. Bush. For instance, the scare tactics of a war used in the movie to scare the public into a blind faith of their current president sounds a little familiar doesn’t it… by the way, it’s code blue tomorrow so make sure to pack your rations in you backpacks. How about when Bush miraculously found Saddam Hussein in that spider hole in the middle of no where right around the same time as his reelection? The creepiest part of the movie was Deniro’s character and his complete lack of respect for common ethics. If this isn’t proof that some type of ethical foundation needs to be used in teaching ethics then I don’t know what is. Canrad (Deniro) has a complete Sophist-esque outlook on life in that perception is reality. Throughout the movie, he keeps making reference to if you see it on TV it must be true. Clearly he doesn’t actually believe that but he does know that that’s what most people believe. If the newsman says something it must be true. It’s like the Nazis and the theory of the great lie. If you say a lie enough, people will not only believe it but possibly embrace it. Conrad is a true believer in the end justifies the means or as Plato once said “It doesn't matter how the fuck you get there as long as you get there.”(Insert smile face here) A great example of this is when at the end of the movie Conrad has Stanley killed out of fear he will go public with their fake war. Now I’m not sure if I’m reading too much into this but, in the final shot where Conrad looks at Stanley for the last time through the window, the American flag is reflected on the window around Conrad’s face and it seems transparent. Perhaps this was the director’s way of saying that perhaps this flag that we hold so dear as a symbol of freedom and honor has now been made transparent or without substance with actions like that of Conrad. Or maybe he thought it was just a really cool camera shot… who knows? All I can say is that I really enjoyed this movie and call me crazy, but this unknown Deniro kid, I think maybe just maybe he’s got a future in this movie business.