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  • Friday, 10 June 2005

    • Team America: World Police

      Film Star
      Dir.: Trey Parker

      Well I finally watched this last night, when I could have had a more productive, worthwhile, and indeed enjoyable evening staring at the wall just next to the TV.

      It's basically Thunderbirds from the makers of South Park i.e. Thunderbirds with confused politics, toilet humour, gratuitous puppet sex and violence and a lot of swearing.

      When the film came out it also raised the hackles of a lot of actors who were portrayed as spineless and naïve peacemakers at a time when something more was needed. Something more was "Team America" — a bunch of testosterone-fueled swaggering heroes who go around blowing things up and annoying people. This team is supposed to represent the US's heavy-handed approach to world politics, and presumably embody George W Bush's sense that really the world is like the Old West and he's the gunman with the rattling spurs who knows no law but his own.

      All very well, but in the end Team America saves the day and the people who wanted peace, well it turns out they were spineless, naïve peaceniks with no "balls" after all. With this script, to me the film is coming down firmly in support of Bush even though it pokes a little fun at him.

      But the tremendous irony of it all is that the bad guy TA saves the world from is Kim Jong Il, the same nutty (he kidnapped an actress to improve the quality of North Korean films for example) world leader with real WMD whom US foreign policy has been steadfastly ignoring all these years while it fritters away its "defence" budget in Iraq.

      And this is what is so dangerous about this film. It is either naive or intentionally deceptive to portray the US as a well-intentioned lumbering brute that gets there in the end. What the US says it is doing and what it is really doing are two different things. US foreign policy is all about changing the world to better suit the interests of Americans. Calling it "the war against terrorism" is a convenient excuse to get away with whatever it likes. Remember: you're either for the terrorists or for America.

      Posted by Matthew at 12:56:15 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Movies | Back to top

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