Serious Political Discourse

The bargain bin can be a wonderful thing - forgotten movies from childhood, current movies hugging the middle of the road and movies you'd never own if they weren't $2 all meld together in this beautiful mixture of cinematic guilty pleasure and serious indictment of the film industry as a whole.

Fishing through the bargain bin, I ran across "The Running Man," the cheap-o 80s sci-fier about the riotous Ah-Nuld Schwarzennegger in a futuristic game show where he's hunted by a redneck with a chainsaw, a spandex-clad old guy with a flamethrower and a fat, opera singing rapist dressed as a Christmas tree who shoots electricity out of his ass. Seriously, watch the movie. It's terrible, but it's classic bargain bin. Needless to say, I snatched it.

This was a reissue from a couple years ago (2006, according to the box) and it's got decent special features on Ah-nuld and how they glued Christmas lights to a guy to make him look threatening. Seriously, watch the movie.

One special feature caught my eye, however. It was called "Down the Rabbit Hole" or some such. I clicked on it expecting a featurette on the story or the history of gladiatorial combat, but instead got a 45-minute documentary on the loss of civil liberties in the United States after 9/11.

Seriously, watch the movie.

Folks from the ACLU, respected professors from lauded institutions of higher learning, constitutional attorneys and political activists all decided to participate in this documentary which was created solely as a special feature on The Running Man. I was surprised, and then confused. First off, The Running Man is a political movie much like Batman is an exploration of multiple personality disorder. It's politics are very small and the whiz-bang is really big, by design. It wasn't made as a serious political statement and everything from the packaging to the special features to the disk itself screams "action flick," not "political expression." And then you have the 45-minute documentary.

Here's the conclusion I reached - somewhere in the depth of Columbia/Tri-Star Home Video sits a man with long facial hair and some manner of leather sandal on his feet, spending most of his working day on The Daily Kos and Atrios. And he, apparently, has some sort of power, saw an opening, and took it. You can't really blame him (as my politics tend to line up with the views of the documentary) but you have to believe someone had an opportunity and made a call. And there you go.

Just watch the movie.