With the general election just passing us here in Ireland, I figured we should put a political spin on this weeks Screen Savers. Looking at political movies as a whole, there’s a lot to choose from, but not much diversity as the entire genre seems fixed on the drama and showmanship that comes with the American political process. Finding a movie that varies from the usual campaign trail and managed to earn itself a negative review score wasn’t easy, but I think I’ve found a decent candidate in Chris Rock‘s 2003 film Head of State
Head of State is a black comedy based on the idea that after losing both the presidential and vice presidential candidates in a plane crash, a major political party chooses a local black man Mays Gilliam (Chris Rock) as their new candidate. The party chooses him because they were likely to lose the election, but hoped that choosing a minority candidate would set them up for future victories. The whole campaign is turned on its head when Mays decides to run his own campaign as opposed to listening to his advisors, and actually begins to turn the campaign in his favor with his unorthodox methods and blue-collar appeal.
It should be obvious this movie was made well before Obama was elected, when the idea of a minority winning support in the election would have been ludicrous. The idea for the script was based on a similar story during Ronald Reagan‘s campaign for president, when his opponents predicted their loss and decided to run Ms. Geraldine A. Ferraro as the first female VP candidate. However, it should be noted that despite the movies premise that a minority candidate would be utterly ridiculous, it was actually closer to a possibility than they believed. The movie came out only five years before Obama was elected and he won without appealing to any stereotypes unlike Rock‘s character in Head Of State.
Gilliam’s success in his campaign is completely hinged on the idea that America would rather vote for someone they relate to rather than a stuffed shirt conservative. In a lot of ways, this is correct, voters are much more likely to vote for someone they think they know rather than a mightier than thou stranger. But in a lot of ways the movie takes that idea and pushes it too far. What could have been a serious satirical look at the absurdity of American political stereotypes is quickly brushed aside by gags and black humor. A great example is the fact the entire story is narrated by a rapper who first shows up in front of Mount Rushmore with two dancers dressed as the American flag. Believe me when I say it’s almost impossible for me to take any satirical jabs at the current state of affairs seriously when someone is droning over the background rhyming “head of state” with “head of state”. Any potential that the movie could have had to make some real statements and make the public question why the idea of a black candidate was so hilarious was lost amongst a sea of one liners.
For all its problems though, I will give the movie credit that it wasn’t entirely awful. Despite the fact the satire gets buried under gags, there are still jabs to be found about the political process, the conservative candidate stereotype and in a few ways the lack of equality present at the time. There’s one particularly good line by Gilliam’s brother (Bernie Mac) where he says “I don’t care if you’re white collar or a tanktop, if you rob me, I’mma whoop yo’ ass!”. Not only did it make me laugh, I felt it was a nice nod to the idea that the richer people in society are afforded more leeway in prosecution and he’s right, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done, you still deserve to get your ass whooped!
In short, I think it’s safe to say that Head of State is another movie for the B-list, likely to be found in the bargain bin of your local Tesco somewhere around 2005. It had some nice ideas and there are some jokes worth hearing here and there, but all in all I don’t think it would have won an Oscar or brought about a political shift. It was just another comedy about an unlikely candidate being thrown into a major election. It’s just a shame that the unlikely candidate was a black man and the film couldn’t utilise that idea well enough to have an impact on peoples opinions at the time.
