This summer's blockbuster movies may be escapism, but they’re powerful expressions of major trends in American politics. Movies as diverse as Sam Raimi’s foreclosure horror flick DragMetoHell and Adam McKay’s financial meltdown cop comedy TheOtherGuys have explored the rage and helplessness of an economy that may be altered forever. James Cameron’s science-fiction epic Avatarsparked as many, if not more, environmental debates than Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. And, Hollywood director Michael Bay soughtout the Defense Department's cooperation when he started making his Transformersmovies, the third of which arrives in theaters on June 29, and switches American troops from fighting Afghans and Iraqis to fighting giant robots, symbolically referencing the human cost of our ongoing wars. Rather than trying to escape politics in our entertainment, it’s time to embrace them. In the next few months, a trio of superhero movies is poised to exploit post-bin Laden American triumphalism. In the midst of our sluggish economic recovery, a new crop of comedies are poised to help audiences adjust their economic expectations. And the most controversial education reform movie since Waiting for Superman stars Cameron Diaz. We may think we're seeking mindless entertainment when we buy tickets to an action movie or a romantic comedy, but those films are both the product of our politics and an expression of them. Welcome to The Progress Report's progressive guide to summer movie season.
OLD ENEMIES AND NEW ONES: In future summers, we'll see an explosion of action movies based on Osama bin Laden's death. Kathryn Bigelow, director of the Oscar-winning movie The Hurt Locker, was alreadyworking on a movie about an attempt on Bin Laden's life when President Obama announced that the terrorist had been killed. Universal greenlitan adaptation of Marcus Luttrell's memoir about his service as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan. And Disney's movedtotrademark the term "Seal Team 6," locking up the name of the squad that got Bin Laden, now a valuable bit of intellectual property. But this year, superhero movies are turning back to old enemies, and to conflicts where the exercise of American power was decidedly less complicated than it is now. CaptainAmerica:TheFirstAvenger, due out on July 22, is an origin story, but it's also very much a period piece, a high-gloss flashback to World War II. Captain America will fight terrorists in that movie, butterroristswhoareactingasagentsoftheNazistate under the command of the Red Skull, a super villain who, according to some origin stories, was recruited by Hitler himself. Unlike Tony Stark, who has to destroy a terrorist cell who kidnapped him while avoiding civilian casualties so he can keep the allegiance of Afghan citizens, Captain America won't be required to show much restraint. Similarly,X-Men: FirstClass goes back to the '60s to bring its titular mutant heroes together for the first time. The X-Men aren't agents of the government -- in fact, they're precisely the opposite, a group of people whose extraordinary abilities make them despised rather than prized, and whose struggle to figure out if they should assimilate into society or withdraw in it is a major metaphor for gay rights. But in this origin story, the characters have a chance to earn their spurs as heroes and a place in mainstream America by acting as a fail-safe for President Kennedy when his brinksmanship on the Cuban Missile Crisis goes awry. By contrast, Michael Bay'sTransformer: DarkoftheMoon, is dipping into more contemporary politics. The movie is relying on American distaste for Julian Assange and Wikileaks -- as well on the rather contradictory pleasure of watching our major cities get destroyed on-screen -- to power a script in which giant robots try to bring down the United States government by revealingstatesecrets.
ON ECONOMY, LAUGH OR CRY: While our foreign policy plays out on a superheroic scale this summer, a new spate of comedies suggests that we'd better buck up about the economy, because we're stuck with its hardships. The people who get hit by hard times in these movies range up and down the economic spectrum. In a subplot of the ensemble wedding comedyJumpingtheBroom, economic issues create strain for a couple rushing to the altar. In Bridesmaids, comedian Kristin Wiig's Annie is a failed entrepreneur, working in a jewelry store after her bakery became a victim of the downturn, taking with it her boyfriend and business partner. And at the lower end of the scale, Tom Hanks is a big-box store veteran who loses not just his chance for a promotion but his job because he doesn't have a college degree in LarryCrowne, which opens on July 1. All of these movies mine the indignities of economic disasters for laughs, sometimes uncomfortable ones. The pretensions of the wealthy family in Jumping the Broom often make them look ridiculous. Losing her life savings propels Annie into sharing a house with two deeply strange roommates and into a job at a jewelry store where she subtly undermines her lovebird customers. And the pursuit of his degree places Larry in a community college that makesCommunity'sGreendale look almost legitimate by comparison. That humor aims to make the recession bearable. But these movies also take a hopeful tack, recasting hardship as an opportunity to revitalize your soured relationship with your husband, win back your shattered personal and professional confidence, or build the life you always wanted on a foundation of a used motorbike, clothes out of the back of a truck, and a romance with a burned-out speech professor. It's the comedy of resignation, using humor to acclimate us to changes in our economic expectations that on some days seem worrisomely permanent. The exception is Seth Gordon's HorribleBosses, due out on July 8, which suggests that if you're stuck in a job where your employer forces you to drink so he can cast you as an alcoholic, makes you discriminate against your coworkers, or you're being sexually harassed by Jennifer Aniston, offing your supervisor may be your only option, but though the solution's less uplifting, the desperation is the same. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
THE BIG ISSUES: And while studios normally save their big, pointed issue movies for the winter Oscar-bait season, sometimes a few sneak into the summer lineup -- however unintentionally. BadTeacher, in theaters on June 24, may be the first dark sex comedy built around standardized testing. Cameron Diaz, a burned-out teacher, seizes on the idea that breast implants are her ticket to marriage to Justin Timberlake, a wealthy man who has chosen to teach rather than go into his family's business. Her plan to get the money? Winning a bonus awarded to the teacher whose students do best on a state achievement test. Whether Bad Teacher ends up being ammunition against testing,anargumentagainstmeritpay, or just another step forward for the burgeoning women's raunch-comedy movement remains an open question. And coming out on the same day, and in loose sync with President Obama's renewed call for immigration reform, is Chris Weitz's ABetterLife, which follows a man trying to build a landscaping business in Los Angeles while avoiding the constant risk of deportation. Weitz's last project was vampire phenomenon Twilight: New Moon, and he's never been involved in an explicitly political project before. But hisgrandmotherisaMexicanimmigrant, and if Weitz can sell an immigration reform drama to the Twilight fanbase, it could be the summer's best piece of pop activism.
OLD ENEMIES AND NEW ONES: In future summers, we'll see an explosion of action movies based on Osama bin Laden's death. Kathryn Bigelow, director of the Oscar-winning movie The Hurt Locker, was alreadyworking on a movie about an attempt on Bin Laden's life when President Obama announced that the terrorist had been killed. Universal greenlitan adaptation of Marcus Luttrell's memoir about his service as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan. And Disney's movedtotrademark the term "Seal Team 6," locking up the name of the squad that got Bin Laden, now a valuable bit of intellectual property. But this year, superhero movies are turning back to old enemies, and to conflicts where the exercise of American power was decidedly less complicated than it is now. CaptainAmerica:TheFirstAvenger, due out on July 22, is an origin story, but it's also very much a period piece, a high-gloss flashback to World War II. Captain America will fight terrorists in that movie, butterroristswhoareactingasagentsoftheNazistate under the command of the Red Skull, a super villain who, according to some origin stories, was recruited by Hitler himself. Unlike Tony Stark, who has to destroy a terrorist cell who kidnapped him while avoiding civilian casualties so he can keep the allegiance of Afghan citizens, Captain America won't be required to show much restraint. Similarly,X-Men: FirstClass goes back to the '60s to bring its titular mutant heroes together for the first time. The X-Men aren't agents of the government -- in fact, they're precisely the opposite, a group of people whose extraordinary abilities make them despised rather than prized, and whose struggle to figure out if they should assimilate into society or withdraw in it is a major metaphor for gay rights. But in this origin story, the characters have a chance to earn their spurs as heroes and a place in mainstream America by acting as a fail-safe for President Kennedy when his brinksmanship on the Cuban Missile Crisis goes awry. By contrast, Michael Bay'sTransformer: DarkoftheMoon, is dipping into more contemporary politics. The movie is relying on American distaste for Julian Assange and Wikileaks -- as well on the rather contradictory pleasure of watching our major cities get destroyed on-screen -- to power a script in which giant robots try to bring down the United States government by revealingstatesecrets.
ON ECONOMY, LAUGH OR CRY: While our foreign policy plays out on a superheroic scale this summer, a new spate of comedies suggests that we'd better buck up about the economy, because we're stuck with its hardships. The people who get hit by hard times in these movies range up and down the economic spectrum. In a subplot of the ensemble wedding comedyJumpingtheBroom, economic issues create strain for a couple rushing to the altar. In Bridesmaids, comedian Kristin Wiig's Annie is a failed entrepreneur, working in a jewelry store after her bakery became a victim of the downturn, taking with it her boyfriend and business partner. And at the lower end of the scale, Tom Hanks is a big-box store veteran who loses not just his chance for a promotion but his job because he doesn't have a college degree in LarryCrowne, which opens on July 1. All of these movies mine the indignities of economic disasters for laughs, sometimes uncomfortable ones. The pretensions of the wealthy family in Jumping the Broom often make them look ridiculous. Losing her life savings propels Annie into sharing a house with two deeply strange roommates and into a job at a jewelry store where she subtly undermines her lovebird customers. And the pursuit of his degree places Larry in a community college that makesCommunity'sGreendale look almost legitimate by comparison. That humor aims to make the recession bearable. But these movies also take a hopeful tack, recasting hardship as an opportunity to revitalize your soured relationship with your husband, win back your shattered personal and professional confidence, or build the life you always wanted on a foundation of a used motorbike, clothes out of the back of a truck, and a romance with a burned-out speech professor. It's the comedy of resignation, using humor to acclimate us to changes in our economic expectations that on some days seem worrisomely permanent. The exception is Seth Gordon's HorribleBosses, due out on July 8, which suggests that if you're stuck in a job where your employer forces you to drink so he can cast you as an alcoholic, makes you discriminate against your coworkers, or you're being sexually harassed by Jennifer Aniston, offing your supervisor may be your only option, but though the solution's less uplifting, the desperation is the same. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
THE BIG ISSUES: And while studios normally save their big, pointed issue movies for the winter Oscar-bait season, sometimes a few sneak into the summer lineup -- however unintentionally. BadTeacher, in theaters on June 24, may be the first dark sex comedy built around standardized testing. Cameron Diaz, a burned-out teacher, seizes on the idea that breast implants are her ticket to marriage to Justin Timberlake, a wealthy man who has chosen to teach rather than go into his family's business. Her plan to get the money? Winning a bonus awarded to the teacher whose students do best on a state achievement test. Whether Bad Teacher ends up being ammunition against testing,anargumentagainstmeritpay, or just another step forward for the burgeoning women's raunch-comedy movement remains an open question. And coming out on the same day, and in loose sync with President Obama's renewed call for immigration reform, is Chris Weitz's ABetterLife, which follows a man trying to build a landscaping business in Los Angeles while avoiding the constant risk of deportation. Weitz's last project was vampire phenomenon Twilight: New Moon, and he's never been involved in an explicitly political project before. But hisgrandmotherisaMexicanimmigrant, and if Weitz can sell an immigration reform drama to the Twilight fanbase, it could be the summer's best piece of pop activism.
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