Wag the Dog Movie Analysis

In the movie "Wag the Dog" Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman manufacture a faux war to obscure the story of the President sexually assaulting a woman two weeks before the election. They do so by manipulating the media and calling in personal favors. The movie ends with them successfully getting the President re-elected but when Dustin Hoffman wants some public glory for the work he's done he is killed and his death is ruled as a heart attack.

One of the main things the movie talks bout is how easy it is to control media in reality it is easier to do than planting a question during a press conference, which in the movie is the first moment when public perception switches from the sexual assault to the fake war. In mid-2018 a video on the internet circulated about a large number of seemingly local news stations warning about biased news sources warning that it is "extremely dangerous to our democracy" the problem was that all the news stations were using the identical script and all the stations are owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group one of the largest media conglomerates in the United States. While this may be funny at first, it becomes less funny when that centrally controlled media apparatus is put against the will of the majority instead inflaming a vocal minority using lies like what happened during the 2016 election or the Brexit vote.

The final straw for Dustin Hoffman's character that causes him to decide he must have recognition for his work is watching two news reporters talk about how well the campaign ads, the ones Dustin Hoffman's character has been badgering on about the whole movie, must have contributed to the re-election of the president. Much like in the movie there is usually a lot more that goes into the success of a candidate than the ads that they run.

The malleability of public opinion is sort of the crux of the whole movie and I think it's important to talk about just how marble the American public is on any given subject. I would mainly like to focus on the automobile hijacking of the American dream. Before the car became a staple of American life it was a status symbol, owned by only the rich and influential. That was until the creation of the modern production line by Henry Ford. With this, the car became very cheap with more cars meant more deaths, tons of more deaths, in the four years after WWI more Americans were killed by cars than Americans were killed IN WWI. People were not happy and were calling on their elected officials to do something petitions were signed to put laws in place that capped speeds in urban centers to 20 miles an hour to combat this car manufacturers put out propaganda essentially calling those killed by cars jaywalkers, jay at the time be an insult meaning county-bunkers and will I bit more lobbying it worked. Now we live in a world where in most major cities there are more parking spaces than cars. All of that is to say that public opinion is very easily manipulated, even more now with how easy it is to send a completely unbacked statement to tons of people with almost no recourse.

To put it in simple terms the movie is pretty good satire, unfortunately, it is attempting to satirize the American government which has been proved impossible, most notably by the movie "Don't Look Up" released in 2021 whose central plot revolves around a meteor coming to destroy the earth and the only potential solution being stopped so that one man might make more money, With one notable line being "we are for the jobs the meteor will create" echoing politicians refusal to do even the slightest Action to curb the grip the focal fuel industry has and everyday American life. At the end of the day, The main takeaway of the movie is: always follow the money and never trust the government.