Bulworth: The Hip-Hop Nation Confronts Corporate Capitalism A Review Essay

Year 1998, Issue: 8, 73 - 80, 01.10.1998

James Allen Lawrence Goodheart

Abstract

Co-written, directed by, and starring Warren Beatty, Bulworth 1998 is a scathing political satire that ranks with Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1963 . While Kubrick skewered assumptions about nuclear strategy at the height of the Cold War, Beatty indicts the current corporate manipulation of American politics. Bulworth challenges the reigning capitalist mystique through a tragicomedy that blends manifesto with farce and the serious with slapstick, in a format that is as enlightening as it is entertaining. The film is a mix of genres and stereotypes, common to mass-marketed movies, that Beatty nonetheless recasts into a radical message. He calls for democratic socialism and heralds the black urban underclass as its vanguard in a manner reminiscent of Herbert Marcuse’s formulation of a generation ago.

References

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