|
|
Reel Phallic:
Triumph of The Bill O’Reilly
Why The Day After Tomorrow Makes Me Want a Prius
by Sam Kuhlmann
I just realized that Bill O’Reilly and his porterhouse snorting cronies are right. The media is totally liberal. I don’t just mean that tampon commercials are getting more and more outrageous, but that the people behind most media content are, like, flower-planting, sign-waving, chai-drinking, fucking liberals. The preview for The Day After Tomorrow just came on for the second time today and what appeared to be a benign piece of adventure film has, upon closer viewing, revealed itself as a forum for paranoid Democratic protest.
Terms such as “social consciousness”, “activism” or “anti-establishment” aren’t often thrown into the same sentence as the name Roland Emmerich. Mr Emmerich has directed some of the most politically inoffensive (if not outright aesthetically offensive) films of the past decade. (He did Stargate and Godzilla.) His latest, The Day After Tomorrow, however, appears to be as soaked with left wing propaganda as Michael Moore’s saggy drawers. The trailer chronicles a super storm that causes environmental destruction and complete societal chaos. Clues in the trailer indicate that there’s meant to be a correlation between this movie chaos and the world’s current political climate. Taking it a step further, Mr Emmerich basically blames the environmental destruction and resulting anarchy on the present American government, namely the Bush administration and the Republican Party. The Day After Tomorrow is essentially a Democrat’s wet dream. Why else would there be so many shots of a flooded Upper East Side Manhattan?
The trailer for The Day After Tomorrow seems apolitical at first. But several associations can be made between the crisis on screen and current liberal fears about a Republican-lead America. It begins ominously as large flocks of birds fly south and people look to the sky with worried eyes. We see a slow build up of a huge storm that results in an Atlantic swell flooding New York, and some sort of tornado onslaught destroying Los Angeles. The film’s title seems to refer to the state of affairs after the storm, a post-apocalyptic world. New York is shown frozen over with snow and ice, only the tops of skyscrapers poking out of the immense drifts. While not in this preview, I suppose Los Angeles was finally whisked over the rainbow and is busy dealing with homosexual scarecrows. As an explanation for the storm, the trailer asserts that, “Polar melting has disrupted the North Atlantic current”. The issue of environmental destruction is certainly a Democratic worry. Furthermore, it’s an issue commonly used to attack the Bush administration. It’s evident that C02 emissions play a role in polar melting. C02 emissions are partly a result of oil use, and Bush is inextricably tied to the oil industry. Therefore, Mr Emmerich has made an analogy between the cause of the storm in his film and the Bush administration in real life.
This correlation is extended in the second half of the trailer with shots of the storm’s brutal devastation. The disaster is chaotic and violent, not unlike recent Hollywood portrayals of war. Another main Democratic quarrel with the Bush administration is of course, the war in Iraq. A common liberal accusation is that Bush took the world to war to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. By suggesting war, Roland Emmerich certainly exposes a liberal anxiety towards the Bush administration. This analogy logically leads to the assertion, or hidden message from the trailer, that Bush is guiding the world towards the annihilation of civilization on account of oil, both directly (C02 emissions) and indirectly (war).
There are two important shots in the trailer that provide concrete proof of Mr Emmerich’s analogy between the cause of the storm and the Bush administration. The first is a shot of the Capitol building. It is shrouded in darkness and clouds; several lightning bolts illuminate the scene. It’s a foreboding image, suggesting evil. The next shot shows our hero, an environmental scientist aware of the impending storm, played by Dennis Quaid, trying to warn the Vice President that action must be taken to save people. The actor chosen to play the Vice President is a dead ringer for Dick Cheney, which could not have been a coincidence. Roland Emmerich is basically expressing the fear that the current administration is ignoring the fact that our civilization has a huge fucking storm in its path.
If you contrast The Day After Tomorrow with an earlier piece of donkey fellating by Mr Emmerich, Independence Day, the Democratic leanings are even more evident. The main difference is the action of the government. Independence Day’s president, played by Bill Pullman, helps defend the world against aliens by personally flying a fighter jet. In The Day After Tomorrow trailer, Dennis Quaid is ignored by the government/president and left alone to fight against the storm. Why would Mr Emmerich’s portrayal of the government change so drastically between these two disaster films? The obvious answer is that Independence Day came out in 1996 amidst a Democratic administration, while Tomorrow is reflecting the current Republican one. Could Bill Clinton fly an F-16?
The Quaid story line proposes relief from the destruction, and the trailer makes the transition from liberal nightmare to Democratic fantasy. The few people that are aware of the impending storm are all presented under the umbrella of liberal America: college students, a professor and an African American homeless guy. The educated and meek comprehend the problem. The professor, played by Ian Holm, is seen calling Dennis Quaid to warn him of the storm, and from here on, Mr Quaid does what he can to save as many as he can. Mr Quaid is seen striving to rescue survivors of the storm or veterans of the destruction/war. He’s seen in Washington, pleading with the administration to fix things, showing that he’s a link between the little people and Washington. If this all sounds a bit like some John Kerry ad campaign, that’s because it’s supposed to. At one point Mr Quaid says, “The Storm is just going to get worse; I will come for you.” That could be a Kerry campaign slogan right there. Mr Emmerich turns Dennis Quaid into John Kerry; he’s the best bet we have against the destruction of the storm or Bush.
I don’t know if Dennis Quaid should be leading this attack on the Bush administration and trying to rebuild our destroyed civilization. Shit, he couldn’t even save his marriage to Meg Ryan. Mr Quaid would need to do more than just be the “not-Bush.” Like, maybe he could reconcile with Ms Ryan. I’d definitely vote for him then; she’d make a perfect first lady. Or, worst-case scenario, he’d need to promise to appoint her to Secretary of the Image Transforming Hair-do.
Overreacting idiots often compare George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler. Granted, from certain angles it does seem as if Bush has capitalized on the fears of the American people to further his personal aims. On the other side of the same coin, however, the mainstream media creators utilize some eerily reminiscent tactics. The Nazi’s understood the power of media, and film in particular, to influence large groups of people. While David Cross and Al Franken get all of the attention for their brand of straightforward, left wing dissent, there is a large sector of mainstream media that is burying Democratic campaign advertisements inside seemingly fluffy piles of trash, such as The Day After Tomorrow, for the purpose of political gain. Hail Emmerich. Goebbels would be proud.
|
Volume 2, Issue 3 contents |
|
|
