Loopy
I’ve been watching a little bit of the first season of The West Wingon DVD recently, and while it’s an enjoyable show, there’s something about the idealism of it all that prevents me from really loving it. The show is witty, fast-paced, and compelling, but it’s run through with a streak of sunny moderate optimism that sometimes undercuts the drama. I guess that’s to be expected from a show that casts Martin Sheen as a Democratic president that somehow combines elements of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter with the affable persona of Ronald Reagan. Crises arise that test the resolve and the ideals of the President and his staff, and idealism and savvy politics usually win out the day. When compromise rears its head, these seasoned DC veterans almost always find a way to worm around the thorny ethical questions with a bit of parlimentarian jiujitsu.
Which is why it was so refreshing to see In The Loop this weekend. Where The West Wing feels like a sunshiney promise that the good will triumph through strength of character, In The Loop paints a much more plausible picture of competing interests scrambling to subvert, undermine, intimidate, spin, counterspin, suppress, and expose each other in various layers of subterfuge and blind groping in the dark. TheWest Wing’s Bartlett administration is constantly finding ways to have its cake and eat it too, while the various players of In The Loop are more concerned with what the cake is currently being called in the press, who’s currently slicing it, if they’re going to get a piece, and whether or not this cake even exists.
To call the film fast-paced would be like calling Usain Bolt a brisk runner. Not more than three minutes in, the shit hits the fan, and from that point on, the British communications director unleashes a deluge of brow-beating profanity punctuated by withering denigrations, in a desperate (and hilarious) attempt to contain the damage from a radio interview in which a foppish and ineffectual minister called a potential Middle Eastern conflict as unforeseeable. Nobody ever has quite the full picture, but it never stops anyone from trying to twist the latest development to their favor.
The action (if a series of official and unofficial meetings, conferences, and asides can be called action) doesn’t let up, as the political machinery of two countries tumbles haphazardly into what may or may not be a war, for motives that are never entirely clear but are nevertheless passionately advocated. Or, equally passionately dissembled upon, int he hopes of appearing neither too favorable or too unfavorable. One imagines this must be how these things actually come about, amidst a jumble of confusion and disinformation, with those who can’t keep track of the play hoping only to land in a position that will do them the least political damage, rather than the one that will create the greatest good.
