The current situation in the US is an order of magnitude more warped than anything portrayed in Wag the Dog. In the 1990s we could never have imagined that the democratic system could break down so severely, or that such openly malevolent bad actors would be permitted to game the system like this.
Wag the Dog: a pitch-black political comedy that’s never looked more relevant
Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman lead an all-star cast in this satire about a spin doctor and a film producer who fake a war to divert attention from a presidential sex scandal In a public discussion about the US election, the political commentator and one-time Keating speechwriter Don Watson posited that the American public finds it difficult to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Never were the lines more blurrily drawn than in Wag the Dog, Barry Levinson’s pitch-black comedy from 1997. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the tail wagging the dog describes a situation in which “an important or powerful person, organization, etc., is being controlled by someone or something that is much less important or powerful”. Continue reading...
Recently watching a series touching on the rise of the Videla regime in 1970s Argentina, and how it took Argentinians by surprise, that historical reality looks so much more like what is currently happening in the US. Wag the Dog is like a 1990s American fantasy of what a coup would look like.