Americans know that 2024 carries deep historical possibilities, and we fear for the worst. Now, a movie entitled “Civil War” puts those worst fears into big screen, widely distributed imagery. Why? Whatever the reason, let’s hope that whoever is trying to make it a catchy meme will fail.
Apparently the plot features two warring factions fighting over nothing that we’ve heard of in actual politics. The filmmaker “seems barely to care about any actual socio-political trends,” according to one review. First weekend surveys suggest that watchers didn’t bring their politics to the theater.
But movies can give odd credibility to ideas that haven’t yet congealed in the fronts of our brains. Could the backstory to this movie firm up a fear we hadn’t pictured? Might we come to assume that America is not “merely polarized to the point of armed conflict but an actual failed state, … in which any number of armed factions play endlessly for advantage?”
Perhaps the filmmakers’ goal was simply to pursue a dystopia-flick-monger’s ambition, marrying Hunger Games fantasy with sensationalist news reporting, Certainly people have the right to generate and market a product they feel will perfect a technique or make money. The question is whether we succumb to a movie’s subliminal power of suggestion. Would we take the plot’s implicit backstory of civic breakdown as credible possibility rather than fiction?
Because many of us do worry that the outcome of the November election will lead to “civil war,” one way or another. The last thing we need is to turn a movie’s play on that not-yet-yet-firmed-up fear into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The danger is probably not, as one commentator points out, that a movie triggers an actual civil war. But raising the meme, even if to say “no we don’t want a civil war,” will likely serve polarizing politics. Partisans have already been blaming each other for the possibility. Some use historical innuendo – “our side” is right, just as the winners were in the actual Civil War, saving democracy and fighting racism. Some believe the “other side” has already stolen an election. Talking in terms of civil war only makes winning it feel more important.
America needs more people to contemplate, embrace, and exemplify the real, singular, common premises that we share. The nation was conceived in a creed of personal rights. We have let our politicians bend the words to support their platforms, and “prove” the other sides’ wrong. Many actually cite the same creed, but use it for their purposes rather than following its principles. Can we find ways to put founding principle ahead of partisanship or cinematic thrills?
Common Conviction 