This week in the Deep Hurting Project: The Undefeated, the last fake documentary to make it into the Project. It's basically a documentary about Sarah Palin. Yes, they named a documentary about someone whose biggest claim to fame is being the vice-presidential also-ran in 2008 "The Undefeated."
And full disclosure: this has to be the least coherent documentary I've ever seen.
And full disclosure: this has to be the least coherent documentary I've ever seen.
- The first few minutes are devoted to the hostile media reception towards Sarah Palin with the presumed assumption that it's all unfair. While ten years on, you start to see the misogynistic tropes in quite a bit of it, A) since she's part of a party that's devoted the past 50 years or so to trying to prop up the old-fashioned values that reinforce those misogynistic attitudes, it's kind of hypocritical, and B) Well, Republicans have been so virulent towards Barack Obama that they managed to give open white supremacists unprecedented levels of popularity SOLELY BECAUSE HE WAS IN THE WHITE HOUSE, complaining about people comparing about Sarah Palin is profoundly hypocritical (to be fair, that rise in white supremacy happened after this film premiered in 2011.)
- "By Your Fruits Shall Ye Know Them." (My #3 favourite film, Night of the Hunter starts with Lillian Gish using this quote from The Sermon on the Mount to use as a jumping-off point to start off the plot. And this movie does the same.)
- And also, the opening titles, well, it's just a montage with a poor-quality audio track of what appears to be a rough home-recorded demo of a hymn.
- And then when the movie proper starts, it's just a long story about Sarah Palin (apparently from the audiobook of Going Rogue) talking about how the Exxon Valdez crash prompted her to get into politics. And the major question in my mind: why isn't Sarah Palin actually being interviewed here? It's not like this is one of those documentaries where they go into detail about the problematic nature of the person in question. It's a borderline hagiography, so there's no reason she shouldn't be involved. And it's not like she's too busy; she resigned as governor in 2009, and she was also working a bit on Sarah Palin's Alaska. Could she really not find the time to work on her own fucking hagiography?
- And then, it spends several minutes as an informercial for Alaska, with bunch of people talking about how they came there and how much they've grown to love it. And of course, it gets back to Sarah Palin's story about her early years.
- Well, it's not like it's Vaxxed or Hilary's America or Death of a Nation where I'm actually familiar with the subject at hand and can readily debunk the bullshit, I'm not particularly well-versed on Alaskan politics, and am thus not able to burst the narrative Steve Bannon is trying to showcase. I suspect they're fucking up the truth, but I can't be certain.
- Don't worry, Sarah, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington isn't that corny. It's actually a bit more cynical than one tends to give Frank Capra credit for. Bear in mind, the one thing that kept the big filibuster from being a total failure is the fact that Claude Rains has a sudden attack of conscience and decides to confirm it all just after attempting suicide in the Capitol. If not for that, as much as the people want to rally around him, the Taylor Machine ended up being big enough that they could easily squelch all opposition and it's only because of a deus ex machina that there's even a happy ending and Jimmy Stewart's big filibuster even accomplished anything other than wasting 28 hours of the Senate's time, blowing out his vocal cords, and getting expelled from the senate.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.