Dana Stevens Strained Political Analogy Watch

The self-parody continues apace:

In Harry and his pals' fifth year at Hogwarts, the stalwart headmaster, Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), is in the process of being overthrown by Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), a Ministry-appointed prig who wants to whip the students into shape for their upcoming wizardry exams, the OWLs. Her blind allegiance to standardized testing, not to mention her relentless chipping away at civil liberties, recall a certain U.S. president, but the analogy is never overplayed. (emphasis mine)

I'm sure it isn't.

The real question is how long Stevens can keep this up. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry comes out next week; that should provide fodder for some digs at GOP homophobia. Then there's The Simpsons movie, which is bound to have at least a few political jokes for her to batten on; then The Bourne Ultimatum (Stevens: "Bourne is the ultimate rebuke to neocon imperialism: he's blowback incarnate, the nightmare that haunts Dick Cheney's dreams"); then an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's fairy tale Stardust ("As the fallen star, Claire Danes' fragile radiance symbolizes the beauties of the natural world that are imperiled by the Bush Administration's stonewalling on global warming"); and then, of course, there's Nicole Kidman's The Invasion, about pod people taking over Washington: the strained analogy practically writes itself.

Sure, it's going to be pretty hard for her to top comparing Decepticons and Autobots to Republicans and Democrats. But I have faith - just like a certain U.S. President.

Comments

Haven't seen the movie, but in the book the analogy isn't all that strained.

Posted by Gabriel | July 10, 2007 11:05 PM

I was going to agree with Gabriel at first, but upon further reflection, Ross is right, Umbridge's character traits don't necessarily bring to mind Bush unless you leave a lot of stuff out and twist the other stuff. Stevens will have a better case in the sixth book, where the Minister of Magic wants to seem "tough" to the public so he locks up several innocents without charging them, while actually making very little progress in the war.

Posted by Algernon | July 10, 2007 11:26 PM

Interestingly enough, this blind squirrel might eventually find a nut when the SIXTH Harry Potter movie comes out. The side plot involving the Ministry's indefinite detention of an innocent character is an obviously intentional dig at the Bush/Blair approach to fighting terrorism. Scrimgeour is never depicted as a villain, though. He's portrayed as a capable, yet flawed leader.

The Umbridge/Bush comparison is laughable, of course. Umbridge is attempting to downplay the threat posed by evil and prevent the children from arming themselves in self-defense, for God's sake.

Posted by Random Troublemaker | July 10, 2007 11:28 PM

Okay Ross, I agree with you that implausible political analogies constitute an irritating tic and easily distract from and bias the effort to judge a movie on its merits. But I would challenge you to describe what you regard as effective political satire (I'm not asking you to list examples, but the features of the examples). IMHO one of the ways we can look at a political issue like standardized testing more clearly is precisely to extract it from the usual debating points with which it is associated (accountability, soft bigotry of low expectations, social promotion, blah blah) and to see how it plays out in a narrative context utterly foreign to our own. Of course, a filmmaker adds nothing to an exploration of the topic if she presents its effects or the motives of its advocates as simplistic. It's actually the subtle effects of a policy that standard-issue political debate often misses and that film or fiction can help elucidate.

Posted by jason | July 11, 2007 1:12 AM

I think the de-politicization of pop culture and critiques of pop culture is the strongest argument for a return to a more bipartisan spirit. I really dislike having every movie I watch be some sort of political deconstruction. Simply trying not to care only seems to go so far ..

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | July 11, 2007 2:11 AM

Amen, Nicholas. It's not original to me, but one of the very good things about the end of the Bush administration is that filmmakers, songwriters, etc. will not feel compelled to interlace their work with some insipid commentary and present it as profound, brave "truth to power."

Posted by Michael Simpson | July 11, 2007 9:26 AM

One of your funniest posts ever. Hopefully Stevens will take the bait again and you'll have yet another opportunity to shred her apart (just like a certain US president is inclined to shred our most cherished civil liberties...)

Posted by Mitch | July 11, 2007 10:15 AM

For the ultimate in political stool-pushing by a film critic just read Michael Medved's inane crap.
On second thought, don't.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 11, 2007 11:06 AM

MoelarryandJesus is right on.

The clowns at The Corner also tend toward this tic, most recently in dicussing Knocked Up as if it was an anti-abortion PSA

Posted by Tiparillo | July 11, 2007 12:26 PM

Not to be outdone by hack liberal film reviewers, The Corner presents an even stupider Harry Potter political analogy from someone who obviously hasn't even seen the movie.

Just in case you're inclined to defend the Corner on this one, it's been widely reported that Rowling is a close personal friend of Gordon Brown and his wife.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 11, 2007 2:02 PM

A blind allegiance to standardized testing and an erosion of civil liberties sounds more British than American, in terms of policies, so maybe there is something there. A-Levels, anyone?

After hearing GOP pols crying "Appeasement! Munich!" ad naseum -- actually one of the less objectionable historical analogies proffered recently -- there is a bit of irony in your criticism. Please direct me to the posts where Ross analyzes the bogus comparisons made by serious people on the right, and not a bit of un-serious fun from Slate.

Chuck and Larry, a movie whose basic concept is stupid and offensive, is not such a strained analogy to the GOP these days IMO. Since we have to live through this nightmare we might as well be allowed to amuse ourself by taking potshots at the clusterf&^k of fools that got us into this mess, even if the basis for the comparison is stretched.

Posted by ScottS | July 11, 2007 2:11 PM

Everyone does recall that this is a story written by a British woman and was conceived in the mid-late 90's fleshed out in 200 - 2002 and published in 2003. And the movie is supposed to be about Bush how again?

But, just wait, this nonsense is going to get so much worse come December. That is when the Golden Compass hits the theaters. The books on which it is based are anti-church, Christianity specifically (states one character in the book: "the Christian religion…is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all.") anti-government, it has fallen angels (Good Guys) battling heaven (bad guys), the Christian heaven is run by harpies, god is a merciless tyrant and the lead villain is named Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman)who physically separates young children from their souls.

All of this, again, with little if any American creative involvement that was written over ten years ago in another country.

Love it or hate it, we will be in for a lot of psuedo-intellectual deconstruction of pop culture by blow hards of the right and left, just in time for this year's War on Xmas.

Strap yourself in. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Posted by Matthew White | July 11, 2007 2:18 PM

ScottS - If I recall, Ross did almost precisely that sort of analysis of right and left wing historical comparisons in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed a couple years back. I'm too lazy to find the article, but he made clear in a subsequent bloggingheads discussion that he thought all of those analogies were bullshit.

Posted by Mitch | July 11, 2007 3:57 PM

Ok, I will challenge all comers to best me as a Harry Potter fan, and I'm telling you that neither Umbridge nor Scrimgeour is supposed to represent Bush. The twin dangers they stand for -- appeasement and tyranny -- were already present in the series by the fourth book. We learned in that book that Barty Crouch, Sr., the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and de facto Minister for Magic during Voldemort's first rise, was a Scrimgeour-like figure who authorized the use of the Unforgivables against suspects and had people imprisoned without trial (including Sirius). Meanwhile, Cornelius Fudge had already started his Voldemort denial; at the very end of Goblet, Harry, Dumbledore, and Snape all try to convince him Voldemort's back, and he refuses to believe a word of it.

Scrimgeour is just Crouch redux; Umbridge's conduct in Phoenix is at Fudge's behest and is the logical extension of his attitude in the prior book.

Why does this matter? Because Goblet came out in 2000, before any War on Terror issues even existed. Rowling clearly had already decided she was going to play with these two political themes long before real life caught up with her, and there's no need to theorize that Umbridge or Scrimgeour represent Bush. They represent something far more fundamental, and far more interesting -- Scylla and Charybdis.

Posted by Ivanova | July 11, 2007 8:15 PM

"... then, of course, there's Nicole Kidman's The Invasion, about pod people taking over Washington: the strained analogy practically writes itself."

If drawing the analogy is so easy, then it isn't strained.

Posted by Kyle | July 15, 2007 4:00 PM

Ivanova's got the plot down just right.

Posted by Auhin | July 21, 2007 11:53 AM