Hollywood hasn’t been kind to most of its Presidents, least of all to George W. Bush, who held office between 2001 and 2009. In fact, the irreverent Michael Moore’s feature-length documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) had attacked the Bush doctrine so vehemently that it ignited a controversy for alleged “inaccuracies”. It also became the highest-grossing documentary in film history, besides receiving a standing ovation and the prestigious Palme D’Or award at the Cannes International Film Festival. So when former President Bush declared in Mumbai on Tuesday at an exclusive address to corporate czars that he doesn’t like Hollywood films because they present “an incorrect picture” of the US, the remark wasn’t exactly a bolt from the blue. Indeed the statement indicates that he is still licking his wounds after being thrashed, time and again, for his Iraq war policy. Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-grabbing The Hurt Locker (2009) and Brian De Palma’s Venice film festival garlanded Reducted (2007) are just two of the anti-war films which reflected the American public sentiment, unafraid of official reprisal. Oliver Stone, never known to mince his words, belted out World Trade Center (2006) and the unsparing George W. Bush biopic titled W (2008).
Moreover, A-list actors Matt Damon and Helen Hunt had expressed their anti-Dubya sentiments, loud and clear, on public fora. The former President was constantly bush-whacked by the majority of the show business community. Hence, the smirch of “incorrectness”?
According to the perceptive critic Ben Shapiro, during the former Preside-nt’s tenure, box office-smashers advertently or inadvertently defended Bush’s simplistic policy of how good must overcome evil, with every resource at hand. Shapiro believes that the top moneyspinner The Dark Knight reinforced tactics in the war of terror with such snatches of dialogue as, “Some people just want to watch the world burn.” Like the becloaked Batman knight, Bush would burn out the forces of evil. Similarly, the critic points out that there is a political undercurrent to the line, “With great war comes greater responsibility”, addressed to Spider-Man. Be that as it may, while Hollywood today overwhelmingly tilts towards the fantasticated and the conservative, what with the preponderance of special effects and 3-D, it does retain its voice. Films do question not only international political policies but are also concerned with the state of the economy, environmental hazards, and the lingering prejudice against diverse communities. Issue-centric cinema may be on the margins, but it’s a significant one which say, Bollywood — a larger film-production centre than the US — lacks chronically. A nation, it is believed, gets the cinema it deserves in sync with the temperament and tastes of an era. For example, Bill Clinton’s tenure is associated with the softly romantic and yet grandiosely mounted Titanic. Roughly between the 1940s-50s, McCarthyism had sparked the witch-hunt of film writers and directors with Communist beliefs or leanings. Mercifully, Holly-wood has not had to endure such a draconian repression ever again. Among the many names which had been blacklisted were screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, actor-singer Paul Robeson and actress Judy Holliday. A sufficient number of US films do have a critical edge, mandatory for cinema to be a reflection of its times. Despite the excessive reliance on technical hardware, the influential film production is also vital for its emotional quotient evidenced in such films as Brothers (2009), which touched upon the after-effects of war-mongering. Plus, experiments in style continue with the interplay between the abstract and reality. Proof: the recently released The Tree of Life. Hollywood, then, may have its hyper-commercial, no-brainer flaws. Undeniably, though there are exceptions which joust again the formulaic rules. Circa 2009, a feisty Mumbai-produced stage play adapted into a film, The President is Coming, had lampooned the former President’s visit to Mumbai in 2006. Off the beaten track, the micro-budgeted comedy may not have attracted a huge audience, but was appreciated by the cognoscenti for its satirical chutzpah. It is hardly likely that Bush knows about the film — or else he may well have held Indian cinema as guilty of conveying “an incorrect picture”.