Image by Jeremy Yep.
When I need to relax for just half an hour, I often enjoy watching films on Netflix or Amazon about disasters. Popular entertainments that I am sure no cinema connoisseur would tolerate. The James Bond films, yes!, and the Jason Bourne adventures and also those with Tom Cruise. And the three movies starring Denzel Washington, as well as movies from the special category, films with female action heroes— Atomic Blond or Salt for example. And single-shot productions, White House Down or Olympus Has Fallen, for example, are sometimes good. There are a lot of such movies, so obviously they must be popular. I wouldn’t argue for the aesthetic merits of these violent artworks, but, speaking here as a political philosopher, they strike me as worth serious attention. Why do we enjoy them?
These films are exciting right now because of what they tell about our responses to the world of real politics, by which I mean events in the news. Consider, for example, Bourne’s Mission Impossible franchise, whose basic premise is that a rogue government agency has trained this automaton, who is ready and able to kill on demand. Or Cruise’s films, there there is a whole secret bureau that acts outside the law. And of course there’s Bond, who is not really a spy, but an assassin. In Washington’s three Equalizer films, extreme close up violence seems to have put off some reviewers. But in truth, all these disaster films seem heavily dependent upon cinematic blood shedding. And upon wholesale destruction of expensive cars. It’s true, of course, that the high culture of traditional theater and opera also deals frequently in extreme violence. And thanks to novel film making technologies, it’s now possible to amplify the effect of these scenes. You only compare the fight scenes in the early Bond movies with those in the recent films starring Daniel Craig to see this dramatic difference. As in the culture at large, technology progresses while social morality does not.
In responding to these artworks, it’s useful to consider what assumptions we take for granted— what conventions we find unproblematic. We assume, for example, that the hero is invulnerable. All the many shots fired at him miss, while the few bullets he gets off inevitably hit their targets. But after all, having the hero be killed would not leave much of interest to happen in the rest of the film. Typically the lone hero overcomes all obstacles. In the Die Hard franchise he suffers dramatically, I grant, but he does triumph in the end. The vast array of surveillance operatives never have a chance against the lone Matt Damon, so fast and skilled as he is. But after all, a film about a group of secret agents is hardly likely to be as exciting as the story about one, adept, very good-looking man. With some exceptions: but the Mission Impossible films present a gang of characters. A certain suspension of disbelief is needed, especially when the female action hero can disarm any number of male bullies, sometimes without removing her high heels or getting her makeup messed up. I once read a political critique of the Bond films, which to me seemed like a bizarre waste of time; I mean, who doesn’t see that Bond is about as politically incorrect as someone can be. Nor do I see these films as what used to be called ‘camp’.
No one thinks that any mere mortal could survive as do these male or female cinematic heroes. Heroes cannot fly, except of course for Batman and Superman, who have special powers. And no one can survive the destruction of the body, as does the Terminator, but of course he’s not human at all. But what then can be said about the more general picture of our political institutions in these films? I have the disconcerting sense that right now, wildly paranoid films are barely keeping up with reality. Might the government finance costly quasi-military operatives that operate outside of the law? Why not! Alas! Sometimes I find these disaster fictions more soothing than news from actual reality. The series Designated Survivor starts with an unparalleled disaster, everyone but the secretary of housing and one senator blown up at the presidential inauguration. But then these survivors act in restrained rational ways compared with some of our present leaders. Often in disaster films the world is saved only thanks to what looks like sheer good luck. But some films of cinematic disasters, the Schwarzenegger films, for example, we get pure terror, with no happy endings. Who knows that their deep pessimism may not turn out to be truthful.
The older classic disaster film, which is a masterpiece, is Doctor Strangelove (1964). Catastrophe can be funny— that’s a challenging idea to say the least. And from what we know now, that ending wasn’t altogether impossible. None of the recent disaster films which I’ve mentioned were intentionally funny. I don’t know what to make of that. In my settled opinion: In a better country, we wouldn’t allow such films to be made. (Or, if you will, no one would want to watch them.) And were I a better person, I wouldn’t watch them. But in this country here and now cinematic disasters attract many viewers, myself amongst them. I don’t say that to suggest that watching them makes me feel guilty. I feel guilt about many things, but not from these cinematic pleasures.
I do believe that total disaster is a real possibility right now. Civil War (2024) shows an unhappy ending in graphic realistic terms. That’s why I found that film almost unwatchable, unlike these scenes of cinematic disasters. I felt the same way about Netflix’s production of The Alternate History, Man in the High Tower. But when I watch Bond save the world, yet again!, I think: real life’s not so bad, not yet! I am vaguely aware that I will not take these mere games too literally in agreeing to watch them. Like the battle scenes of my favorite painter, Nicolas Poussin, these films showing cinematic disasters are just fantasies. Now I’m just watching Zero Day. Scary! So stay tuned!
