On Masochism

A few words about 'Reagan'

Photo: ShowBiz Direct

I don’t know what it is about me, what deep damage to my psyche, has made me into the kind of person who rolls out on a fine Saturday afternoon to see the hagiographic new biopic about Ronald Reagan. It’s an impulse I’ve got, to peer into the dumbest, most annoying cultural spaces. I’ve got lines. I don’t seek out 4chan threads. Those bore me, frankly. The unadulterated, joyous evil of online trolls isn’t compelling to me. Delusion is compelling to me. And Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid as the late president and world historic villain, is a fine example of compelling delusion. What I mean to say is, it’s terrible.

I don’t really need to enumerate all the ways Reagan is bad. This is not a review, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a conservative propaganda movie made by a Christian producer and directed by the guy who did Bratz and Soul Surfer is poor cinema. Nobody needs it told to them that the filmmaking has all the quality of a bad cable movie, or that the dialogue rarely sounds human, not helped by performances unfit even for community theatre. This is all obvious, though I’m not sure its primary audience, who mostly sustain themselves on terrible reality TV and Hallmark movies, would notice the aesthetic issues. More likely, they saw the narrative jumping around in time and thought to themselves, “Wow, this is just like Oppenheimer!” Fitting then that the movie stars the father of Jack Quaid, who appeared in Oppenheimer, and also implies Robert Oppenheimer was indeed a communist thwarting American power for the sake of a USSR-backed world order.

Ronald Reagan, as we all now know thanks to the new film Reagan, was essentially delivered unto the world by God to defeat the USSR. There is, in fact, a scene in which a pastor played by Kevin Sorbo brings a defector played by Elya Baskin to his church to speak on the evils of communism. This, of course, inspired a lifelong and extremely virulent anti-communism in a young Ronnie, who in the next scene gets baptized by Sorbo. Keep in mind, this anti-communism is presented as good and right. Reagan is probably the most hilariously anti-communist movie I’ve seen in a long time. Pretty much matches old red scare noirs from the ‘50s in its aburd, simplistic, apocalyptic read on the threat of communism to America and the world.

Politically speaking, the movie is pitched in a manner I found very, very funny. There are some things it skips over (JFK’s assassination, the Civil Rights Movement, Nixon’s resignation), but all the big, mythological moments of Reagan’s life and political career are all there. That includes the darker things, which for decades have been criticized by liberals and the left. No actual argument is made in the film, though. All these actions are presented as matter-of-factly good. Ronnie, as president of SAG, thwarting broader Hollywood unionization? Good. Ronnie ratting on his fellow actors and others in Hollywood to the FBI for communist affiliations? Good. Ronnie implementing trickle down economics? Good. Ronnie firing the air traffic controllers? Good. Ronnie ignoring the AIDS crisis? Good. Ronnie doing Iran-Contra? Good!

It’s genuinely laughable—I laughed, literally—how easily the movie simply refuses to engage with the actual criticism of his presidency. Obviously the movie would be taking Reagan’s side, but rather than mount an argument on his behalf, it simply presents him as God’s gift to America, and relies on the audience’s accpetance that communism is synonymous with evil, and that America’s left is in its thrall. Though there is some interesting admiration in the film for Democrats. Two Democrats specifically. JFK is treated kindly by the film, seemingly because he stood up against the Russkies. Then there’s Tip O’Neill, who famously had a friendly relationship with Reagan because they simply put aside politics when getting together. It’s the kind of thing I’m almost surprised to see in a film like this, during the MAGA era, but it occurred to me that this is all part of the ploy. It’s not for nothing that the film also features a scene in which Reagan talks about having grown up in a New Deal Democrat household, but that he didn’t leave the party, the party left him. Total drivel, politically and ideologically speaking, but fits right into the conspiratorial narrative on the right that it is somehow the wild excesses of the socialists who’ve taken over the Democratic Party that necessitates a descent into pure fascism.

There’s much to talk about in Reagan, including the scene where it’s implied the KGB was behind the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. Or the big climactic scene in which everyone’s on pins and needles waiting to see if Ronnie will actually say the words “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”—he does, indeed say the words, and as we all know, this directly led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s all just silly shit. A warped view of history by some of the dumbest “smart” people on the planet, made for the dumbest dumb people on the planet. I include myself among those dumb people, only because I paid for a ticket. The truth is, I just find this level of political stupidity in the form of terrible moviemaking really funny. I watch it because I’m committed to the bit.

It’s getting close to ten years ago now that I first wrote about conservative Evangelical cinema for Movie Mezzanine. That came after I’d developed a fascination with Pure Flix, which has produced movies like the God’s Not Dead series. These movies are all terrible, all in similar ways. I watch them as a gawker, staring in horror and amusement through a window into a whole other realm of reality. This is where whole swaths of Americans live. Some Canadians, too, amazingly. I don’t actually understand it at all, and that’s why I keep going back, like a masochist. I know I’ll never get clarity on this, but at least I’m exposed to how these people are thinking, and the media informing them. What good does that do me? Well, none at all. But at least I got to laugh it up with my buddy Jesse Hawken, who I saw Reagan with, and who will soon be releasing an episode of his Junk Filter podcast all about it.