Hey. I recently re-watched The Candidate, Michael Ritchie’s (still!) revealing dry-as-bone satire on American politics/campaigning. The film has a few too many montages, and struck me in this viewing as stretched from a more perfect 80-90 minute stripped-down narrative into a slightly-bloated two hours. (Compared to the complicated fun of Tanner ’88, which admittedly had a few hours to tease out more narrative entanglements.) But Redford is … well, he’s as good at suggesting an ironic critique of flat pretty surface as Warren Beatty has been. And there are some great character actors around–Peter Boyle all shrewd competence; Allen Garfield cartoonishly brass; Melvyn Douglass suggesting depths of political chicanery despite only a few minutes of screen time. But the star is Ritchie–this is one hell of a good film, still a model for every strong political film since, interweaving footage of real politics with savage straight-faced lampooning.
I watched it in prep for a senior seminar I’m doing on politics and American narratives–only a couple films watched together (this one plus Robert Drew’s doc on the ’60 campaign, Primary). But I hope to lay out a strong annotated list of other options (for their own independent research). I was wondering both about your votes for the best or most incisive or interesting–and if there are any lesser-known gems I might have missed. (One caveat: I’m limiting our discussion of political narratives to the explicitly mainstream and systemic–they must have campaigning or governing as a somewhat central focus.)
I’m pooped so I can’t comment at length, but it just so happens that I was just talking to a friend of mine about this film (in the context of hist late 60s, early 70s films like “Downhill Racer” and so on). “The Candidate” is a great film with a great final line: “What do we do now?” My friend pointed out that it reminded him of the final shot of “The Graduate,” when Benjamin and Elaine glance at each other and stare nervously at us from the back of the bus that takes them to who knows where.
I’d vote for “Bob Roberts.” It is not perhaps a great movie, but certainly as one that does a good job of showing the triumph of style over substance, and it might speak to today’s undergrads better than older, classic political movies.
You mention Warren Beatty, so I assume you have considered “Bulworth” which is heavy-handed but fun.
And how about “Being There” as a tangential take on what people look for in an American politician?
Mike–why are you restricting the focus to mainstream electoral politics–for the sake of focus and/or to take apart the idea of “the mainstream?” In any case I’d second “Bulworth” and add Medium Cool, which, though dated, gives the students a chance to see a film made in the midst of actual events. How about some bits from the compelling but smug West Wing…and of course The Simpsons episode where Clinton and Dole die in outer space and Kang and Kodos run on “opposed” platforms. how about a special unit devoted to the great tragic-comic figure of Nixon who must have more films made about him than any other president: Nixon; Millhouse: a White Comedy; Secret Honor; Dick; All the President’s Men; Final Days; How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Anyone seen this recent film with Sean Penn called “The Assassination of Richard Nixon?” sock it to me??
care of Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror_VII
Kang (as President Clinton): Ladies and gentlemen, when I was a young boy I dreamed of being a baseball. But we have to go forward, not backwards, upwards, not forwards, and always twirling, twirling, twirling, towards freedom!
Dave
but seriously, you should make them watch The West Wing next fall as I think it has the makings of being really good television and, potentially, the high point of the series.
Piss. I’d just written a bunch of this and lost it. And, no, I can’t hit back and find it again. Gone! Gone I tells ya!
So, reconstructed:
Some reactions and extensions, in order, from easiest to hardest–
1. I have “Bulworth” on the list, along with “Bob Roberts” and “Dave” and a number of the Nixon films you noted, Michael. I forgot about “Being There”–that’s a great one, Chris–and “The Simpsons” stuff is also really handy as a point of reference. The course is much more focused on written narrative, but as I said I want to have a very broad, varied list of potential film sources, too.
2. “The West Wing”… as a shared on-going narrative–I like that idea. It opens up some interesting problems about medium, audience, as well as being somewhat mutable in its version of “the political narrative.” (Although it leans–like “Dave” and “Mr. Smith”–toward ye olde Romanticized liberal take on the goodness of the individual challenging the corruptions of the system. But, then again, my favorite character has always been Toby, who rarely romanticizes the system but works within its limits… blah blah.)
That all said, we meet on Wednesday nights from 6:30-9:30, so we’d have to tape it. I doubt I can rely on that, for myself or for the group. I suppose if I run out of things to say I can always just turn the tv on in class.
And speaking of television, I may require at least occasional forays onto “The Daily Show” and Fox and CNN and the talking heads and so on.
3. Why stick to mainstream electoral politics?
Well… a bunch of answers. (FYI: the objective in our seminars is to set up a set of issues in the first half of class, using some representative texts; the second half, the seniors present their own developing scholarship, building on our shared issues or extending in different directions. My texts: R. P. Warren’s _All the King’s Men_, HSThompson’s _Fear and Loathing on Campaign Trail_, Didion’s _Democracy_, Chesnutt’s _The Marrow of Tradition_, Lewis’ _It Can’t Happen Here_, Anthony’s _Brother Termite_, and Coover’s _The Public Burning_.)
–I’m kind of trying to get at the range of genres and the limitations of genre, given the constraints of mainstream politics. In part, I think it’ll be kind of challenging and useful to have people imagine a very constricted set of narrative events which nonetheless serve as a springboard to numerous quasi-mythological and ideological and cultural kinds of stories. In short, it’s a genre class, getting people to think about how one studies genre–whether “narrative” or “the political narrative” or “comedy,” “tragedy,” etc….
–I’m a junkie for this shit, am sickeningly addicted to the pundits and the horserace and all of it. I even watch Bill Schneider, who’s a fatuous twinkly-eyed ass. So it’s my limitations, at least in part.
–There doesn’t seem to be as much fiction about alternative political movements–or at least it’s not as “central”.
–And the “centrality” of the narrative–what stories get excluded, whose stories get excluded–is also a subject for the class.
–I have in mind at least some small hope that the stuff we do–a hopefully rigorous, not dull-close-reading-in-the-sky textual analysis–will have some sociopolitical significance, for the students individually … and/or for their connections to politics elsewhere. (I have the vice-president of our student congress in the class, and another student is involved in Green and eco-movement politics.)
–Nixon. Yeah, I wanted to do a whole damn class on Nixon–the films and the fictions. Coover’s novel has Nixon buggered by Uncle Sam, at the end; another Coover novel has Nixon forgoing politics to play pro football. He pops up in lots of fiction… so it’s a ripe subject. I figured everyone but me would get bored by a whole semester of Tricky Dick. (Or even a whole semester locked into depictions of the President, whether a real or fictive one.)
sounds like a graduate seminar . . . I’d like some of your students when you’re finished with them as my feeling is they will be well trained
It does sound like a great class. It tells you all you need to know about political science, that it is not being taught in a Political Science Department.
I forgot “Primary Colors†but that’s because it was such a forgettable movie. Travolta in full smirking mode. Why is Tarantino the only director to get a decent performance out of Travolta in the last quarter century? OK, maybe John Woo.
I would make watching “The Daily Show†a requirement for the course; frankly, as a professional political scientist (endorsement coming), that’s the only place I go for informed commentary. That and “Get your war on.†If recording Stewart’s opening monologue and any sequence with Steven Colbert every night is too much of a pain, the DVD collection of “Indecision 2004″ just came out so you could mine that.
West Wing. Is that any good these days? It seemed to jump the shark after 9/11 (I remember Toby making some pious comment in “the terrorism†episode about terrorism never succeeding and wondering which history book Aaron Sorkin was using), and I stopped watching in 2002 when Sorkin handed over to whoever he handed over to. Somehow, during the Clinton years, West Wing made me think that perhaps some better liberal politics was possible, but during the Bush years, it just seems naive and – Frisoli had it perfect – smug. But it has been three years since I watched, so if it is getting better, I’ll try again.
The show got a tad too incestuous and after Sorkin departed it definitely fell to pieces. But this past season was really smart, focusing primarily on the upcoming presidential elections. Sheen’s character will leaving the show next January after a November sweeps weeks election arc that pits Jimmy Smitz’ “honest talking” Hispanic democrat vs. the coolest Republican ever, Alan Alda, who supports choice and doesn’t seem in any way shaped by conservative evangelicals and their deep pockets. It’s like the utopic version of what could have been if this country wasn’t so fucked up (that alone makes it a text worth investigating). Most of the characters have fanned out and are involved in the various candidates and their campaigns. It’s opened the show up in a smart and credible way, and the episodes have been well-conceieved and well-written. I have high hopes for the fall.
Get Your War On is pure goodness.