What's he on about now?

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   Wednesday, October 20, 2004

MOVING TARGETS:
More on Satire

My friend Jeff and I went to see "Team America: World Police" the other night and laughed all the way through it (with one brief exception -- more on that at the end). The puppets are hilariously unrealistic while the sets housing them are beautifully intricate (and the 'here come the panthers' gag is both blindingly obvious and one that's still making me laugh days later). The movie is astonishingly filthy yet a pitch-perfect parody of horrible patriotic action films like "Top Gun" or "Pearl Harbour."

But is it a satire? We all went it thinking it would be an attack on the Bush administration's hamfisted bungling of the 'War on Terror' but the movie spends most of its time attacking Hollywood liberals. In the end, "Team America" pointedly resists any sort of political viewpoint, which led Roger Ebert to hate the film:

If I were asked to extract a political position from the movie, I'd be baffled. It is neither for nor against the war on terrorism, just dedicated to ridiculing those who wage it and those who oppose it...to sneer at both sides -- indeed, at anyone who takes the current world situation seriously.

But Ebert has actually identified the movie's politics -- it's not satirizing politics, it's satirizing seriousness -- specifically, the rampaging egos of both America as a country (with it's rousing theme song, "America -- FUCK YEAH!") and celebrites who think their opinions can sway the public (Alec Baldwin is particularly savaged). Trey Parker and Matt Stone aren't making fun of an idea or philosophy, they're making fun of an attitude.

A similar thing happens in John Waters' A Dirty Shame, which makes Baltimore the battleground between moralistic, repressed prudes and a 'congregation' of sexual compulsives and fetishists. We know going in where Waters' sympathies lie but the movie takes an odd turn by making the 'liberated' characters as creepy and demented as the 'neuters' opposing them. By the end of the film, one wonders if we might actually need a League of Decency.

A USA Today interview with Waters brought this up:

Q: What message are you sending with "A Dirty Shame?" You aren't really promoting people who are obsessed with sex. You're knocking the neuters and their conservatism, but they have a point.

A: You're right. I'm on both sides. I agree with the neuters sometimes. What I find oddest in all the sexual minorities is they have no humor about it.

Q: So, what are you saying?

A: Have safe sex and laugh. That's the wave of the future. Maybe I should take over Michael Eisner's job at Disney.

(I saw a box at the video store once called "Sex Toy Story" so someone may have beaten him to it.)

So again, it's not any one position or idea or 'side' that Waters is mocking, but an attitude. In the end, he and Trey Parker and Matt Stone just want everyone, regardless of belief, so stop taking themselves so seriously. This is a point that Roger Ebert obviously disagrees with whereas I find myself stuck.

I just don't think it's pretentious to say that I take war and prejudice seriously. Many do and I'm not sure these views deserve mockery. People are asking big questions and I'm not sure "oh, lighten up" is a helpful response. On the other hand, anyone looking to a movie for definite answers is truly an idiot. Art can truly only show us the doorways -- it can't pick one and hold it open for us.

Mocking all sides might truly be the best way to get people thinking, I suppose, but I still think of great satires like "Dr. Strangelove" or "Brazil" that articulated a clear moral viewpoint with razor precision. "Team America" and "A Dirty Shame" just seem too scattershot in their approach to have much effect.

A couple postscripts:

1) John Waters and I seem to have the same love for ridiculous lounge music so I really enjoyed hearing this:

I also have three albums coming out with New Line records. The first one is the "Dirty Shame" soundtrack. The second is called "The John Waters Christmas," which is 12 of the most bizarre carols you have never heard. Then next year comes "A Date With John Waters," which is my idea of ludicrous romance music. I don't have a deal, but I want to do "Breaking Up With John Waters."

2) The Hollywood left-wing traitors in "Team America" are part of the Film Actors Guild, so that when Tim Robbins appears on TV, it reads, "Tim Robbins, FAG." The Alec Baldwin puppets asserts that "peace is the FAG way." Parker and Stone beat us over the head with variations on this gag until I could feel my teeth clench. It's not so much that I take it personally (though I'd be lying if I said not at all), but that it's just not funny and, as satire, there's no point.

The good news is that the audience we saw the movie with seemed bored by the joke, too. The first couple got a snicker, one guy briefly laughed out loud during the barrage in Baldwin's speech, but most of it was met with silence. That was great to (not) hear.