D.O.A.P.

Sitting here on a rainy Saturday night (gracias Ernesto, you bastard), and thought I would opine on this new British movie that is making its debut at the Toronto Film Festival: "Death of a President." The movie is cast as a "docudrama" that purports to depict events in America following the assassination of President Bush at a Chicago function in October 2007. To make the fictional "assassination" seem as real as possible, they digitally superimposed President Bush's face onto the actor who is gunned down during the assassination scene. Nice touch.

In the wake of President Bush's "murder," the film depicts all of the fallout, including the subsequent media frenzy and the targeting of Muslims as culprits before the evidence is clear. According to what I have read, a Syrian-born man is ultimately fingered as the likely assassin. The producers of the film assert that their goal in the movie is to show how Americans have been affected by the War on Terror after 9/11. The only still photo that I have seen from the movie (see above) looks eerily like old footage from Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in 1968.

So.... what to make of this movie? Based on what I have seen and read so far, and understanding that I have yet to see this film, I find that I am of two minds about it.

First, while I am far from a nationalist, I have to say that I find the basic concept of this movie -- the realistic depiction of an assassination of a sitting American President -- to be vulgar and offensive. There is something truly disgusting about mass marketing a movie that shows the murder of a living leader who is still in office, trying to serve his country in what has become a pretty thankless job. On a human level, I can symphathize with how sickening it would be to see a film depicting my assassination on screen, with the entire world paying admission to see it. Knowing that some very bad people are making every effort, on a daily basis, to assassinate me for real. This film is classless. Just another sorry step in the direction of voyeuristic "reality" sensationalism, using the latest digital technology.

It's doubly offensive when you consider that most of the world probably would be quite pleased -- joyous even -- if the events depicted in this film became a reality. In fact, if Osama Bin Laden likes to masturbate -- and since he's a man, this is a foregone conclusion -- this movie is going to be primo jerk-off material for him. Somehow, I know that an 8 year-old kid on a mule is going to be hand-delivering a pristine copy of this movie to Bin Laden's cave, along with some Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn, Vaseline, and Kleenex. "Here you go Osama, get busy."

I feel this way about D.O.A.P. without even having seen the movie (though I plan to), and notwithstanding the distinctly negative feelings I have about President Bush and his policies, some of which are documented in prior entries. I think Bush is utterly misguided, unintelligent, short-sighted, self-interested, clueless about foreign cultures and dependent on advisers with agendas to inform him of same, blind to reality, a liar (though he certainly does not have a monopoly on this, as Presidents go), cronyist (if that's a word), hypocritical, and generally uninformed. He's been a below-average President in my opinion, and he only gets a "D+," because he happened to be in office during 9/11 and faced pretty difficult circumstances early on. He has made colossal mistakes and undermined U.S. national security with his policies, which have seemed suspiciously calculated to get him reelected, regardless of the cost.

Plainly, there is no love lost between me and Bushie.

But is the man an "evildoer"? Is he part of the "Leadership Axis of Evil" -- Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Stalin? Not in my mind. As wrongheaded and misguided as Bush has been as President, I still believe that on the whole, he has pursued policies that he BELIEVES are beneficial and in the country's best interest. Sure, he lied going into the Iraq war, and I think he and Cheney knew they were full of shit from the beginning. But I believe they lied because they felt they needed to do whatever was required to get popular support for the invasion of Iraq, which they and others in their administration felt was in the best interest of the United States (and Halliburton). In their sad, Machiavellian view of the world, the ends justified the means.

I think my view of President Bush is best summarized by the following exchange between a psychiatrist who is being visited by a very sick, delusional schizophrenic:

"Yes, I understand you are seeing and hearing strange things. Yes, I comprehend what you are telling me about the paranoid, topsy-turvy way in which you view the world. I believe that YOU BELIEVE that what you are seeing and hearing is very real. Now here, I am going to prescribe this Lithium for you. I want you to take two pills twice a day, every time you start thinking that the invasion of Iraq has made us safer, or that there is no civil war going on in that country. If you keep seeing Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein in the shower, or if you suddenly feel the urge to tap the phone of every American without seeing a judge first, take another one."

I don't think that anyone's opinion about this film should be colored by their politics, though. It would be profoundly hypocritical -- and kind of stupid -- for someone to have no problem with this particular film, but to be okay with one showing President Clinton's assassination while he was in office. Or vice-versa. I'm hoping that the very sad state of politics in this country hasn't deteriorated to that level.

Notwithstanding the above, I also have a second view about this movie. It's art, and it should not be censored. It should be shown in the United States. Theatres should carry it, and if people want to go see it, they should be able to. The bottom line is, I have a real problem with hypocrisy, which probably supersedes any outrage I feel about this film. If you are going to uphold the First Amendment in this country, allow the KKK to march in African-American neighborhoods, Neo-Nazis to march in Jewish neighborhoods, and anti-abortion protestors to protest near abortion clinics, it would be ridiculous to try to prevent this movie from being shown here.

Remember how outraged Muslims were when those satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammed were shown in Dutch papers not too long ago? How about the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie after "The Satanic Verses" came out? Or the murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in 2004 after he made a 10-minute movie called "The Submission" depicting violence against women in Islamic societies?

At the time of these events, I remember thinking: "What the fuck is wrong with these people? This is art. Books and movies. Ideas. No one deserves to die over this. People have the right to see and read what they want, even if it's offensive. How do you kill someone over art? Why should an idea be censored?"

This is what makes me think that the manner in which D.O.A.P. is approached in the U.S. when it comes out is going to say a lot about this country. About Americans. Are we fine with showing and selling offensive movies and books as long as they are insulting somebody else? Or are we going to practice the freedom of speech and tolerance that we preach to the rest of the world?

We shall see.