http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VDc7-YH1LA
In The Loop is the funniest movie I've ever seen. It is a supreme satire. What is it satirizing? The decision making process in the bureaucracy in the UK and the US.
In the movie the US is trying to marshal support for a war against an unspecified Middle Eastern country, and the British Government is on the fence about committing to war. In comes a bumbling, well, idiot British politician, who creates an international crisis by saying the wrong thing at the wrong interview.
It relates to our course because you get to see just how garbled the information that goes to the top becomes. When bureaucrats are worried about their jobs, they become more concerned with covering up their mistakes and beating out their inter-office rivals. A government, then, is not always the smoothly oiled machine we would like to think it is. In The Loop shows this beautifully as the world hurtles towards conflict, and those in the position to stop it utterly fail to do so. This is a phenomenal film; everyone should watch it.
Also, it has the most profane scotsman I've ever seen in a movie. So it has that going for it.
Sounds interesting Wyatt! And like you said, this is a prime example of how politicians sometimes disregard the option that suits the people best and instead work on the "right moves" to keep there place in office. If a government is indeed to represent its people, a politician would have no true reasons to make excuses just to be on good terms with their colleagues and such. However, this hardly seems possible in today's political realm.
ReplyDeleteWyatt,
ReplyDeleteImagine a world with a hegemonic power that all states reported to. Do you think there would be more or less bureaucratic scandals and scams? Would politicians be more or less likely to lie and cheat their way through the system with this “Big Brother” type of organization watching their every move? And if the politicians were less likely to do so, then would we live in a world with that much less freedom?
Thanks for sharing about this film! At first I thought the idea of a global hegemony would be a good one to stop corruption, but I now also fear of the threats to individual rights that such an institution may cause.