Politics 2.0

HOLLYWOOD IN A PITA

Pop culture, a super-size version of soap-operatic and punchline comic entertainment is a response to the culture of the day. High level politics can be manifested in 99 red balloons, the sinking of the Titanic can also have the greatest love story ever told, and a famine in Africacan sell a few records. Nothing wrong with that!

In the past few days, I have watched a few programs on TV that have attempted to reconcile the War in Iraq, terrorism and Islamophobia into the mainstream popular entertainment. Movies, such as American Dreamz and Pretty Persuasion, subtly try to expose the awkward relationship between America and the Muslim world since 9/11.

Popular culture as reflection of the times is nothing new, especially for anyone of the 60’s and 70’s where the Vietnam War shaped the culture and the sexual and drug liberation in San Francisco found its way into the songs of the Beatles. Today, Hollywood is trying dismally to do the same thing, by attempting to incorporate world events into prime time shows. A token Iraqi soldier in the show Lost is a prime example.

Hollywood’s infatuation with random placements of this east/west divide through the means of a camera, by placing token Muslims and random debates about Islamophobia in movies and TV shows, perhaps is a reflection of America’s discomfort around the issue and of its failure to come to terms with the changing world.

But by definition, popular culture does not set the trend and merely reflects it. Even so, movies like Three Kings, and movies with even subtle references to terrorism, such as Inside Man (where the police confuse a Sikh for a terrorist) fall far short from the cult-like movies like Apocalypse Now.

This awkward reflection of contemporary issues reminds me of Al Jolson dressing up as a minstrel as a response to the racial inequality of the day which is as out of place as a black boy sitting at the table of a white family in an I&J Family Meal advert. Perhaps then, pop is a reflection of contemporary culture, which is false and totally misunderstanding as to why there is global chaos in the first place.