On the Oscars and Satire in Film

This year in film, what is perhaps most noticeable is what the Oscars and the Golden Globes both failed to notice – or, more accurately, recognize.
In 2004, we saw three different kinds of political movies: The Passion of the Christ, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Team America. The first thing to notice about these three movies is that they are each completely different from the others. The first is at first glance not a political movie at all – only an expression of faith. The second is a work of propaganda. The third is a work of satire.
Western civilization can be summed up as the tension between Athens and Jerusalem. Between free inquiry and obedient love – or, philosophy and faith. Since Descartes, we have been moving away from Jerusalem and toward Athens. The Passion was a reaffirmation of the increasingly neglected half of our civilization. As such, it is eminently political – and not just because a few people cannot tell the difference between the negative portrayal of a few historical Jewish people and true anti-Semitism (such critics ignore the fact that 1) many Jews in the film were portrayed positively, 2) Jesus was a Jew, and 3) Jesus’ crucifixion is not a negative thing for Christians – for without that death, there would be so salvation), which is only political in the most superficial sense of the word. In the truest sense of the political, it was meant to pull together those who share faith in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. This is why the movie upset so many people.
In the second half of the 20th century, philosophy increasingly gave way to pure rhetoric – and thus to postmodernism, which emphasizes propaganda by insisting that all communication is propaganda, since there is no truth. Its ultimate expression is in movies such as Fahrenheit 9/11, where the argument is made by clever editing (postmodern theory points out that you can create causal relationships in the minds of one’s audience by simply placing two things next to each other, or sandwiching, say, one news clip between two others, so that the two related clips create an association with the inserted, unrelated, clip in the minds of the viewers). Through editing, one can manipulate an audience to believe falsehoods, while also claiming (correctly) that everything you showed was factual. And it was, technically, based in fact. The facts were carefully selected and organized to make the particular argument he wished. And Michael Moore is not the only one doing this – pollsters have been doing this for years, since the way one asks the questions typically determines the answers. And the answers you want determines the way you word the questions. Thus, we get in the postmodern era the complete separation of truth and facts – so that facts do not have to have anything to do with the truth at all.
Satire does not try to provide answers, so it is a different kind of thing yet. Satire laughs at faith believed blindly, at people who support immoral things in the name or morality, at all the things we do that make us fall short of excellence. In Team America, nationalistic fervor and overenthusiasm, the tacit support of dictators by people on the Left, and poorly written and acted movies are all satirized. The topics range from art to politics – from Right to Left. Michael Moore is made to kill himself as a suicide bomber precisely because he’s a postmodern propagandist.
What is missing – and what, ironically, it is a movie like Team America that points out indirectly is missing – is philosophy. No one is engaging in free enquiry. We have religious faith only, or believe in cleverly edited propaganda pieces. Team America satirizes the fact that none of the characters in the movie – and none of the people the characters are satires of – care a thing about the truth (this is also why they satirize bad movies – since if "art tells the truth in the general form of a lie" as Nietzsche says, then bad art is equally far from the truth), which can only be discovered by truly free inquiry. It is ironic that it is a film described by someone as an "obscene puppet movie" that is trying to point out what is missing.
It is not surprising, perhaps, that Team America was ignored by the Oscars – satires are rarely recognized as art until decades, or even centuries, later. I doubt Team America crossed the minds of anybody when choosing Oscar nominees. And Hollywood is not religious enough to nominate The Passion. The surprise is the snubbing of Fahrenheit 9/11, which did, after all, win a People’s Choice Award. Perhaps even Hollywood is growing tired of Michael Moore. Self-righteous propaganda preferring dictators to democrats may involve good editing, b ut it does not equal good art.