Chapter One - The Wag The Dog Story
Chapter One
Wag The Dog, like any good satire, succeeds because it reveals a hidden truth by detailing hypocrisy in life. The project began with the novel American Hero, a satirical thriller that proposes President George Bush faked the Gulf War to bolster his mediocre presidency.
Author Larry Beinhart supports his fable with sources ranging from studies like Triumph Without Victory to articles from The Nation. Beinhart's conclusion: the presentation of the Gulf War to the public were highly suspicious, the pageantry too great and so full of showmanship that it cast doubt on the event's actual occurrence.
Occasionally, a satire is so close to the truth that the events satirized are soon produced in real life. However, the release of Wag The Dog was uncannily timing. Just as the movie was released, a media storm was ignited when President Clinton was accused of having an affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The picture of Lewinsky hugging the President at a rally was so strikingly similar to the photograph of Wag The Dog's President hugging a "Firefly Girl" that audiences were left wondering if the moviemakers knew something they didn't.
In fact, updating the movie from the Gulf War to the Clinton White House shows simply that the filmmakers had their fingers on the pulse of America.
Wag The Dog, like any good satire, succeeds because it reveals a hidden truth by detailing hypocrisy in life. The project began with the novel American Hero, a satirical thriller that proposes President George Bush faked the Gulf War to bolster his mediocre presidency.
Author Larry Beinhart supports his fable with sources ranging from studies like Triumph Without Victory to articles from The Nation. Beinhart's conclusion: the presentation of the Gulf War to the public were highly suspicious, the pageantry too great and so full of showmanship that it cast doubt on the event's actual occurrence.
Occasionally, a satire is so close to the truth that the events satirized are soon produced in real life. However, the release of Wag The Dog was uncannily timing. Just as the movie was released, a media storm was ignited when President Clinton was accused of having an affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The picture of Lewinsky hugging the President at a rally was so strikingly similar to the photograph of Wag The Dog's President hugging a "Firefly Girl" that audiences were left wondering if the moviemakers knew something they didn't.
In fact, updating the movie from the Gulf War to the Clinton White House shows simply that the filmmakers had their fingers on the pulse of America.
posted by Xavier Casto | 04:00
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