TAP Symposium: Soul of America
Even with its forgettable characters and poor storytelling, "Civil War" offers a rare insight into the minds of our liberal elite.
The American Postliberal Symposium: Saving the American Union
The American Postliberal is pleased to present a symposium in consideration of how to solve our crisis of national unity, in light of the recent film “Civil War,” directed by Alex Garland. We firmly believe that a civil war is not only unlikely, but that a “national divorce” is unwarranted and would be destructive to the American way of life. Therefore, the question of how we maintain the common good and national cohesion in a time of great polarization is of the utmost importance. This week, we will explore the thinking behind the film, the probability of national disunity, and finally, why maintaining our union is critical to the postliberal political project. Read the first essay, “Soul of America,” by Luca Adamo, below.
Civil War was terrible — and what a shame, considering its massive potential. With a premise as juicy and inexhaustible as “America, in the not-so-far future, is in a multi-factioned civil war,” the opportunities for excellent storytelling which speaks to our time are limitless. This premise begs the film to represent the “soul of America,” to borrow words from the sagacious Joe Biden.
However, I do not mean the phrase “the soul of America” in the way that Joe Biden means the phrase. I do not mean the insufferable “our democracy” liberal identity language that modern Democrat strategists and middling CNN contributors (I repeat myself, of course) have attempted to make up.
Instead, the phrase, properly taken, refers to the actual soul of America: the great swirl of political priorities and regional identities whose dissonant confluence makes up the American spirit. The spirit which somehow encompasses George Washington and jazz; William Faulker and Wall Street; California and Kansas; Mormonism and McDonalds; the Iraq War and the O.J. Trial. That thing, America.
How wonderful it would have been to see the threads of that great swirl magnified and examined. This movie, with the theme of “polarization” being a given, served as a golden opportunity to engage in world-class world-building. This movie, done right, could have been six hours long and had its audience on the edge of their seats the entire time. It could have been America’s dystopian, national epic poem, put to film.
It is sad to say that the film did not even break two hours, and was a boring wreck from start to finish. To sum up the plot, it follows a group of war-journalists (and some girl) as they make their way from New York to Washington, D.C., so they can photograph the Western Forces removing the president from power.
Along the way, they encounter some suspicious guys at a gas station; an evil guy torturing some looters (said evil guy is wearing a crucifix and pendant, by the way); a town who is pretending that the war is not happening; “ultranationalist” combatants who kill a freshly introduced journalist from Hong Kong because he is “from China” (get it, because right-wing people are stupid?); and a stadium-turned-refuge, where the girl smokes some weed.
This is all before accompanying the secessionists Western Forces into the White House, who murder their way through and summarily execute the three-term president in sadistic fashion. Then, the movie abruptly ends.
If this summary sounds dry as bones to you, just wait until you see the movie itself. How did the war start? We are not told. Why do the secessionists hate the president so much? We are not told. What separates all the different factions? We are told nothing. All that is explained is that everyone really hates each other.
The world-building falls short on a truly surprising scale; it was shocking to watch. The best we get is hamfisted references to high inflation, how much the electricity cuts out, or how there was at one point an “Antifa Massacre.”
The audience is expected to “ooh” and “ahh” at these moments, as if they are not lackluster and lazy. To make matters worse, the fascinating American identities that would obviously be forged in such polarizing times simply do not exist; all the different regions explored feel like the exact same place, and all the people encountered are culturally indistinguishable.
The characters all talk like snarky, vulgar, millennial urbanites. Those “threads of the great American swirl” are nowhere to be found. On top of all of that, there was no clever cinematography. All the scenes were shot in the same way, with the same boring lighting and framing; and the music was comically out of place at all times.
Given its potential, the biggest crime this movie could have committed was being boring. This movie did not even scratch the surface of the American spirit. Garland avoided saying anything substantive about America. This film (surprise, surprise) had nothing substantive to say at all. It twisted itself into knots trying to be “neutral” and “objective.”
That swirling soul of America that this movie could have explored was given zero screen time. While watching the movie, it seemed certain that the filmmaker was some Vox-esque millennial from the Beltway. Yet, the truth of the matter is even funnier: Alex Garland is British. He is not even an American.
As a Canadian myself, I could not even begin to think that I, of all people, had an intimate enough knowledge of America to do a subject matter like this any justice. The hubris of this man is astounding. It is no wonder that this film so utterly failed at representing America.
Yet, there are few, but some political lessons that can be drawn from the cinematographically void Civil War. The film, instead of representing the authentic “soul of America,” opts for the “our democracy” rhetoric. The evidence for this exists implicitly in the film, but is only actually made explicit in an interview with the filmmaker.
Garland, when explaining his decision to put California and Texas in a single secessionist alliance, states (in a British accent; very funny) that, “there is a fascist president ... killing his own citizens” and “two states who are in different political positions are more concerned with a fascist Constitution ... than we are about our political differences.”
Putting aside the insanity that none of this information is present within the film, this explanation reveals the filmmaker to be an “our sacred democracy!” liberal. In the typically moronic misuse of the term, the only thing that seems to make the president a “fascist” is that he is in office for a third term and has dissolved the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
These arbitrary factors, the same sorts of reasons that Donald Trump is called a “fascist,” shows that Garland is clearly analogizing the “fascist” president with the “MAGA” movement, with Texas and California’s unity being one of a shared liberalism.
Garland, and liberals like him, only view liberal policies as legitimate politics. This is what he means when he says that California and Texas uniting represents a triumph over “polarized politics,” in spite of there being an active Civil War: He does not see the MAGA president as being part of the political order. He is an extra-political enemy — “a fascist!” — whose destruction transcends politics itself. This is also why the journalists can be considered “neutral” and “unbiased” while clearly picking a side in this war.
This liberal claim, that anything outside of the strict liberal order is deemed extra-political, and therefore fascist, is a crucial one to understand. Liberals consider anything outside of their paradigm, from restrictions on abortion to Voter-ID laws, as “fascism.”
Of course, this awful film and its clueless filmmaker makes the point totally unwittingly. This distinction is the seam along which America is currently being torn apart, and so the film probably does correctly point out that if the Union were to split, and America were to fall into Civil War, it would be along these lines.
What the film gets totally wrong, however, is which side would be the villain. In Civil War, it is the MAGA President who persecutes his political opponents. It is the MAGA president who bombs his own citizens. Yet, in real life, it is the MAGA president who is being persecuted, and it is the “lovers of democracy” who have threatened to bomb their own citizens.
Thus, it is not only fitting, but telling, that the film considers the MAGA president to be the presentative of the “loyalist states.” In their hearts, liberals know they do not represent the real America.
The creators of this movie identify you, conservative, with the “fascist” MAGA president… the one that they giddily shoot in the head. Civil War, under the typical liberal pretense of “neutrality,” serves to remind conservatives just how much they hate us, and why we must exercise political will, guided by the virtue they lack, to fight back.
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