The Impact of Television on Our Perception of Reality: A Joint Review of Three Recent American Films

Year 1998, Issue: 8, 93 - 97, 01.10.1998

Michael Oppermann

Abstract

Wag the Dog is based on Larry Beinhart’s novel American Hero 1994 . Directed by Levinson and adapted to the screen by David Mamet, the film is a fairly stunning satire on the power of US media and their apparently complete control of people’s lives. It tells the tale of the final triumph of oblivion. In Wag the Dog an imaginary war is being created in order to detract public consciousness from the US president’s most recent amorous affair with an adolescent. Cooperating with a Hollywood producer, the president’s adviser creates an artificial war situation with Albania; a virtual war which only exists on TV and which justifies itself entirely by the power of the images that have been created in Hollywood studios. At this point some of the representatives of the Old Power interfere. A group of CIA agents stop the president’s car in Los Angeles, maintaining that, according to their information, there is absolutely no war with that country. “Our satellite pictures reveal the truth!” replies Conrad Brean, the president’s advisor, and manages the situation admirably by giving a long lecture on tradition, duty and patriotism. He talks about loyalty and differentiates between a truth of the eye and a truth of the heart. In the end, the CIA agent William H. Macy is convinced. He is convinced that a good American believes in the latter—the truth of the heart.

References

• Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. Einzelheiten II. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984.