Wag the Dog

I recently watched Wag the Dog starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro; the plot of this movie follows two men as they stage a war to boost the Presidents rating fourteen days before the election. This movie shows the government is capable of covering up scandals and problems in the world by simply creating false news to feed to the general public. While this movie is a comedy there is a certain level of fear that consumes some audience members because this movie makes it seem incredibly easy to misguide the American people. Imagery is a central issue in this movie because people are coming up with ways to tap into the human psyche in order to fool them into endorsing a fake war. The use of Kristen Dunst as the poor Albanian child with a cat showed the sensitive side of Americans and the amount of effort Dustin Hoffman and his team went through to create Dunst’s image illustrates how a much impact a single can have on regular people as well as how each distinct aspect of her appearance can create a large range of emotional responses.

Wag the Dog

"Wag the Dog," A 1997 film directed by Barry Levison and written by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet, is a satire of American politics, media, and war. The film takes place as an unnamed and unseen president up for re-election is caught in a sex scandal with a young girl only fourteen days before election day. As the news of the president's scandal starts to leak, an adviser named Conrad Brean played by Robert DeNiro is brought in to create a diversion in order to save the president's re-election bid. By teaming up with a Hollywood producer (played by Dustin Hoffman), Conrad and his team create a fictional war with Albania. A media campaign is created complete with a theme song and heroic soldier figure, effectively obscurring the president's scandal and ensuring his reelection. Ultimately, Wag the Dog is a disturbingly satirical look at how war is portrayed in the modern media and how it can be manipulated and propagated to a population. The film also has disturbing similarities to both the Clinton impeachment scandal as well as the media coverage of the beginnig of the Iraq war. What makes the film all the more profound is that it was filmed and produced before both of these events, making the film seem not so far-fetched. The satire of the film and its exaggerated nature make it at once humorous, eye-opening, and disturbingly plausible. Overall, Wag the Dog is an essential film for anyone interested in politics and war and how they are presented and skewed in the mainstream media.

Here's a clip from the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-FXkj-r9Mc