10 Political Satires

In America, political satire is as old and august a tradition as politics itself. Descended from the newspaper cartoons and humor writing that deflated politicians full of hot air while shining a light on governmental hypocrisies, political satire has granted American cinema some of its funniest and most deviously clever comedies. In some instances, it’s allowed filmmakers a a buffer to implicitly comment on the hot-button issues of the day, though the majority attack on a much broader scale, implicating the unsavory realities of politicking in general. “Our Brand Is Crisis,” the new political dramedy from David Gordon Green (our review here), falls squarely into the latter category. Revolving around a hard-fought campaign for the 2002 Bolivian Presidency, the film recasts the fun and games of dirty campaigning as literal fun and actual games.

When Sandra Bullock’s live-wire campaign strategist sets her mind to crushing her constant professional nemesis (a cueball Billy Bob Thornton) once and for all, no move is too sophomoric or underhanded if it means emerging triumphant. High-speed bus chases, makeshift trebuchets, and runaway trains all add a dose of levity to a story of socioeconomic unrest in a volatile political climate. “Crisis” ends up refining its focus to the same theme every political satire must eventually confront: is there room for morality in politics? (The answer, speaking volumes about American pop-cultural attitudes, is most frequently “hell no!”)

The Playlist has collected ten of the most essential political satires on film for your entertainment and edification, ranging from the cynical to the extremely cynical. Give your local representatives a call today to let them know which one is your favorite, and while you’re at it, demand that they never abandon their principles in the face of immovable institutional dictates.

“Wag The Dog” (1997)
It’s never clear whether Barry Levinson’s black-hearted comedy is a political satire that secretly eviscerates Hollywood, or a showbiz satire that secretly eviscerates Washington. Either way, there’s plenty of sin to go around in this deeply cynical piece of work. With both Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman nearing the tail-end of the “Doing Good Movies” phases of their careers, Levinson managed to get top-tier work out of both of them. De Niro and Hoffman star, respectively, as a political spin doctor and the Hollywood heavy-hitter he employs to manufacture an ersatz war, as a diversion to distract from a Presidential sex scandal. In one of the most specific instances of life imitating art on record, “Wag the Dog” opened a mere month before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. When the Clinton administration approved the bombing of Sudan’s al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant shortly afterward, it certainly appeared as if they had taken a page from Levinson’s playbook. Though admittedly, no members of the Clinton administration had to deal with a criminally insane rapist Woody Harrelson undermining the campaign to turn him into the faux-war’s poster boy, or coordinate a fake funeral. But the darkest elements present themselves incidentally, like collateral damage in a much larger and screwed-up scheme. In a massive operation, things fall through the cracks. And in the complicated machine that is a film production, it’s usually easy enough to move past oversights, but when the stakes have risen to treasonous levels of national import, lives are on the line. Due in no small part to the muscular script from David Mamet, “Wag the Dog” ultimately concludes that politics is a more evil business than entertainment, but it’s a close-run race. “Bulworth” (1998)
Three words: rapping Warren Beatty. One hundred and ninety-eight more: director/writer/star/producer/craft-services coordinator (probably) Beatty’s attempt to lighten up on politics after his sweeping historical epic “Reds,” made a handful of crucial miscalculations. As Jay Bulworth, an embittered politico who turns to suicide by surprise assassination after accepting how powerless he is in the face of the system’s grinding machinery, Beatty deals himself an unenviable actorly task. It falls on him to sell the most dubious of transitions once Bulworth cuts the BS, starts hanging with the urban impoverished, and returns from the ‘hood to spit some game in the public arena, partisan-style. The film plays uncomfortably in an America where the term “cultural appropriation” is widely in use, and the actual verses themselves that Beatty limply delivers are cheek-reddeningly bad. But there was still something (very )quietly revolutionary about the film’s utter exhaustion with the pussyfooting around when it came to issues of class and race. How far has American pop culture come since the days of “Bulworth”? The film’s most incendiary quote went a little like “Everybody just gotta keep fuckin’ everybody ’til they’re all the same color”… and a similar sentiment was expressed on the last season of “Broad City.”

“Bob Roberts” (1992) Tim Robbins started off relatively easy in his directorial debut, circumventing some of directing’s challenges by shooting his nasty political satire in the mockumentary style. Most of the film plays out through the lens of a British documentarian’s camera as he tracks the titular folk singer (Robbins, pulling double duty) as he tries his hand in the political game. As folk singers go, he only affects the appearance of a Bob Dylan or a Woody Guthrie, two figures that Robbins alludes to liberally in the script. In fact, he’s conservative to the core, cloaking reactionary rhetoric on the lazy-ass poor and the evils of ‘60s-era social turbulence in pan-fried folksiness. The dispiriting thing, is that it works like gangbusters. Not even rumors of ties to shadowy CIA drug- trafficking operation can diminish Roberts’s Everyman appeal, though it could spell doom for the journalist (Giancarlo Esposito, years away from getting his due via his “Breaking Bad” gig) intent on uncovering it. Robbins favors lunges over jabs in his pointed critiques, swinging at such easy targets as huckster neoconservatives and pseudo-simple-hearted people’s candidates. Although, the film packs more of a theoretical wallop when the viewer instead focuses on the little-seen documentarian, helpless to intervene as he watches a man of decidedly questionable character rise to power. He’s British, but his position in the film echoes that of the lowly American citizen, constrained to the sidelines while influence changes hands behind closed doors.