Lindsey Meyers '09: McCain's Hollywood advantage
BROWN DAILY HERALD
The conventional wisdom among many Brits is that the Democrats have a virtual lock on the 2008 U.S. presidential election. How can it be otherwise, they ask, when Republican policies have led to an unpopular war and the possibility of a disastrous recession?
However, as the American Revolutionary War attests, Brits have a long and distinguished record of misunderstanding Americans, exceeded only by Americans' inability to understand themselves. This helps to explain why Brits and Americans alike are baffled by John McCain's continued strength in the polls.
Some pundits on both sides of the Atlantic seek to make sense of this anomaly by referencing demographics. Others point to the internecine conflict between Obama and Clinton. Still others parse poll numbers the way ancient seers predicted the future by studying the flight patterns of birds.
However, too many fail to consider that most Republicans and many independents support McCain because he exemplifies their vision of traditional American values more completely than Clinton or Obama. While voters do not always agree with McCain's policies, they generally regard him as a plain-spoken American hero.
This impression creates a sharp contrast: Where Clinton pretends to have dodged a sniper attack, McCain actually faced enemy fire. And where some voters associate Obama with his former pastor's anti-Americanism, McCain remained loyal to America even when he was tortured as a POW in Vietnam.
Although a recent poll shows that 81 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, there are different rubrics for gauging the political mood of the country, especially for those who believe that cultural trends have significant political implications.
If Americans vote at the ballot box, they also express their political preferences at the box office. And recent cinematic trends suggest that conservatism is not as moribund as some hope and others fear.
An intriguing case in point is the inability of Hollywood to translate the unpopularity of the war into domestic box office success. Major studios have produced movies highly critical of Bush's war on terror with some of Hollywood's most bankable stars.
However, every one of these movies bombed at the box office. Consider "Rendition" with Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, "In the Valley of Elah" with Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Thereon or "Lions for Lambs" with Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. These box office flops led Jon Stewart to quip at the Oscars that "Withdrawing the Iraq movies would only embolden the audience. We cannot let the audience win."
By contrast, recent movies with distinctly conservative messages have been huge hits. Judd Apatow's recent films are a case in point. "Knocked Up," and "Superbad," earned a combined domestic gross in excess of $270,000,000.
With their drug use, drinking and gross humor, these movies might seem like unlikely platforms for traditional values. However, no less an authoritative source than Seth Rogen, star of "Knocked Up" and co-writer of "Superbad," said, "We make extremely right-wing movies with extremely filthy dialogue."
The thematic content of these movies supports Rogen's point. Each movie is a traditional morality tale, a poignantly humorous work where characters come of age by overcoming modern temptations and embracing conservative principles.
"Superbad" is the story of two geeky boys about to graduate high school who spend a night quixotically searching for liquor and meaningless sex, only to find that they do not need the former or desire the latter.
"Knocked Up" also unabashedly celebrates traditional mores. Rogen plays a stoner and a slacker who impregnates a young career woman during a night of drunken sex. However, the young woman decides to have her child even though an unplanned pregnancy might jeopardize her budding career as a television reporter.
Equally as telling, Rogen's character redeems his feckless life by committing himself to his partner and their child. The result is a movie that is as expressly pro-monogamy as it is implicitly anti-abortion.
Apatow's ability to translate social conservatism into box office success should be an object lesson for Democrats and Republicans alike. If voter dissatisfaction with the Republican handling of the war and the economy is an irresistible force, social conservatism may be an immovable object. As a result, no presidential candidate will be able to decisively win or effectively govern without operating within the framework of traditional social values.
Lindsey Meyers '09 follows the political dictum that the only movement is perpetual movement
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