The Language of Politics in Newly Released Films

 

Why should we care about this film?

Lockout is probably a set up for Republicans: given that every film takes about 2 years to make it to the big screen, especially when the company producing it went into bankruptcy, the "prison take over" is probably the way Democrats were feeling about Republicans who won back a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives in the last round of elections (after they successfully got Republicans marginalized politically into "outer space") and, just as the prison inmates are threatening to run the prison into the world and crash it, Democrats probably feel that Republicans are going to run the country into the ground and crash the whole world. 

Is this how Democrats see Republicans?

It's also interesting that Snow (Guy Pearce) is an agent accused of espionage and murder being sent to MS-1 as a prisoner until the riot breaks out, then he's sent in as a way to stop the riots, which might refer to Democrats who have switched parties and are being looked to as possible arbiters. The prison riot is caused by Emilie, the president's daughter, there to research brain stagnation: this is probably a Liberal way of saying to voters who put the new Republicans into office that voters are suffering from brain stagnation because of voting them out. As I said, it's probably a pro-Democrat film, but I am basing this on the limited information in the trailer and what it looks like so far, but we'll see.

I'm a little nervous to say anything about this (it's obviously going to have twists), but the premise about going to an abandoned cabin (the real estate market that has been falling) but that keeps changing into something else all the time, might be the way voters feel about the Democratic promise of  "change" that isn't what voters had in mind (unless you consider socialism to be a change). Again, there is limited information in the trailer, but given that the film was made in 2009, just a year after Obama took office, it could be easy to read into it that someone was led into a situation where everything was changed on them and, instead of being a vacation, is now a life-threatening situation. Since Joss Wheadon also directs upcoming The Avengers, The Cabin In the Woods will probably give us a pretty good idea of what to expect from the superhero film.

I am going to see both films tomorrow; I will see one, write the review and get it posted on the blog, then go and see the other and get it posted sometime Saturday. I am starting (finally) to go back and pick back up on the series of film history and film noir, tomorrow's post being the 1947 Robert Mitchum film Out Of the Past, a crucial stopping point in the film noir journey but we will also be doing Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, probably also Sunset Boulevard and The Men (Marlon Brando's film debut) which doesn't count as a film noir, but that's part of the problem with the genre and since they were all coming out at the same time and borrowing from each other, they are all great films to examine.