Keith Ng, Asshole, Wellington
Monday, December 13, 2004
America - FUCK YEAH!
Team America: World Police is a reductive typological analysis of international affairs. The movie is philosophically underpinned by the premise that there are are three categories of agents in the world: dicks, pussies, and assholes.
"Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just want to fuck all the time without thinking it through. But then you got your assholes, Chuck. And all the assholes want us to shit all over everything! So, pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes, Chuck. And if they didn't fuck the assholes, you know what you'd get? You'd get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit!"
It makes me wonder why I wasted five years studying international relations.
It's hilarious, and it's certainly crass, but it's nothing we haven't seen from South Park. (Except for the puppet sex - nay, puppet porn - which is unimaginably wrong.) It's full of scatological humour and geek references, which is not for everyone, but the political satire is top notch.
The whole movie walks a fine line between mocking its subjects and satirising those who are mocking its subjects. For example, the Arab characters' dialogue:
"Durka durka, Mohammed jihad."
"Jihad jihad? Mohammed durka durka."
It's hardly intended as a mock of Arabs.
I thought Michael Moore didn't come out too badly, whereas the "Film Actors' Guild" (FAG) was brutally... er... taken apart. (Think puppet gore.)
The critics complain that TA depicts "leading liberals" from Hollywood in a very negative way, and is therefore pro-Bush. But this illustrates TA's very point - that these cocksuckers hog the international limelight when they're just fucking actors, with no moral, intellectual or legal authority to "lead" the left.
Moreover, the whole movie mocks the ideas and actions of the hawks/dicks, whereas the attacks on the left have been merely against personalities - morally and intellectually insignificant ones, at that (except for the Tarantino-eqsue diplomacy in the Hans Blix/UN scene).
Still, it would be inaccurate to say that the movie was anti-Bush, either. In the tradition of the darkest satires, it simply denies the proposition that someone has to be right. It suggests that dicks are necessary, but that doesn't make them good, or any less dicks. Same goes for pussies, and maybe even assholes.
But to paraphrase Freud, sometimes, a dick is just a dick.
Team America: World Police is a reductive typological analysis of international affairs. The movie is philosophically underpinned by the premise that there are are three categories of agents in the world: dicks, pussies, and assholes.
"Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just want to fuck all the time without thinking it through. But then you got your assholes, Chuck. And all the assholes want us to shit all over everything! So, pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes, Chuck. And if they didn't fuck the assholes, you know what you'd get? You'd get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit!"
It makes me wonder why I wasted five years studying international relations.
It's hilarious, and it's certainly crass, but it's nothing we haven't seen from South Park. (Except for the puppet sex - nay, puppet porn - which is unimaginably wrong.) It's full of scatological humour and geek references, which is not for everyone, but the political satire is top notch.
The whole movie walks a fine line between mocking its subjects and satirising those who are mocking its subjects. For example, the Arab characters' dialogue:
"Durka durka, Mohammed jihad."
"Jihad jihad? Mohammed durka durka."
It's hardly intended as a mock of Arabs.
I thought Michael Moore didn't come out too badly, whereas the "Film Actors' Guild" (FAG) was brutally... er... taken apart. (Think puppet gore.)
The critics complain that TA depicts "leading liberals" from Hollywood in a very negative way, and is therefore pro-Bush. But this illustrates TA's very point - that these cocksuckers hog the international limelight when they're just fucking actors, with no moral, intellectual or legal authority to "lead" the left.
Moreover, the whole movie mocks the ideas and actions of the hawks/dicks, whereas the attacks on the left have been merely against personalities - morally and intellectually insignificant ones, at that (except for the Tarantino-eqsue diplomacy in the Hans Blix/UN scene).
Still, it would be inaccurate to say that the movie was anti-Bush, either. In the tradition of the darkest satires, it simply denies the proposition that someone has to be right. It suggests that dicks are necessary, but that doesn't make them good, or any less dicks. Same goes for pussies, and maybe even assholes.
But to paraphrase Freud, sometimes, a dick is just a dick.
