Unlock document.
This document is partially blurred.
Unlock all pages and 1 million more documents.
Get Access
Chapter 11
The 1990s: FX Politics
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the post-Reagan economic boom times of the
1990s as characterized by the political films of the decade. The shift from the
conservative Reagan–Bush years to the two-term presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton—
the country’s first baby boom president and a man infatuated by and open to
Hollywood—yielded relatively few movies that pursued leftist causes very openly, but
even fewer that projected a traditional or conservative point of view. The corporatization
of the industry grew fiercer as traditional theaters gave way to multiplexes and
Hollywood bet more and more on special effects dominated films. An economic
recession and the Gulf War of the early part of the decade faded as the triangulated
politics of Clinton came to define the new era.
Objectives for Chapter 11:
1. Note the decline in political filmmaking and the box office poison of those few films
overtly about the political process.
2. Note the ascendance of special effects and high concept filmmaking, a style of
production not particularly conducive to political subjects.
3. Describe and analyze the politics of the satires Wag the Dog, Bulworth, and the
Clinton-based drama, Primary Colors.
4. Sketch the 1990s career of Tim Robbins, a politically concerned actor on the left,
and the independent filmmaking of left-leaning Oliver Stone and John Sayles.
5. Analyze the way the end of the Cold War and the breaking up of the Soviet Union
influenced films of the 1990s.
7. Note popular film’s return to Vietnam, headed by Oliver Stone in Born on the
Fourth of July and with films like Academy Award-winner Forrest Gump.
8. Describe the popularity of films about American politics, especially presidencies,
from romantic comedies like The American President to thrillers like In The Line of
Fire, and a few about Congress like The Distinguished Gentleman, an Eddie Murphy
comedy.
9. Review a few of the most overtly political films of the decade, those focused on the
American legal system and related policy issues.
10. Examine sci-fi and fantasy films and their paranoia about a parallel universe where
the real reality exists and exerts power over the fake real world that people have
been duped into believing is the only reality: The Truman Show, The Matrix, et al.
Discussion Questions for Chapter 11:
1. What happened to the Gulf War on film? The N.A.T.O. military engagement in
Bosnia and other areas of Eastern Europe?
2. Why was George H.W. Bush’s impersonation of Clint Eastwood unsuccessful
overall? (It isn’t only the fact that he pledged not to raise taxes and then did so that
made it so difficult for him to carry the mantle of president-as-actor inherited from
Reagan.)
3. In what way did Clinton usher in the president as celebrity and how does that
quality of the politics–film nexus differ from the way it was represented in the
presidency of Reagan?
4. What kinds of technological developments accompanied the turn to paranoia about
a parallel universe existing alongside what we perceive to be our reality? (i.e. how
did the development of cellphones and the Internet play a part in the fictionalization
of reality that is suggested by such films as The Matrix and The Truman Show?)
Essay Topics for Chapter 11:
1. While Bulworth is at least as critical of the Democratic party as it is of more
rightwing points of view, it also depends upon and exploits black-identified culture
and characters—the very crime Bulworth accuses Democrats of doing when they
take the black vote for granted in his speech at an African-American church. Write
an essay exploring the film’s stated and implicit views on racial politics as viewed
through the African-American experience represented in the film: urban, crime-
ridden, poor.
2. Notably absent from Wag the Dog, the film’s American president is ostensibly the
film’s focus. Write an essay arguing the meaning and effect of his literal absence
from the film.
3. Compare and contrast the politics–film nexus as embodied by Reagan on the one
hand and Clinton on the other: why is Clinton’s romance with Hollywood any worse
or better for the nation’s politics than Reagan’s fascination with film-as-fact?
