Top 5 Political Movies That Aren’t Considered Political

From Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to last year’s Irresistible, political stories have been a Hollywood favorite for decades. But I’m such a political junkie I can hardly watch a movie anymore without seeing something political. Many insightful political messages are overlooked when a film is not billed as a political film. Here’s are the top five political movies that you didn’t even know were political. (Spoilers ahead)

#5 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Voldemort’s Monologue

It was a tough call between Earth Girl in Can’t Hardly Wait and Voldemort from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but I had to go with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named since his monologue is such a direct adaptation of the author that inspired both characters: Frederic Nietzsche. “There is no Good and Evil. There is only power and those too weak to seek it.” Voldemort’s attempt to join forces with Harry is one in a long line of power-at-all-costs movie villain philosophies inspired by the German philosopher. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argues that the qualities most relished by society, namely Christian-style morality and democratic rule, actually represent the worst mankind has to offer. He believes these systems are designed to trick the great into submitting to the weak. He argues that truly great men have, “an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant — not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power.”

Nietzsche’s arguments were an inspiration to Hitler, and for a long time he was seen as little more than a Fascist muse. Ironically, Nietzsche was a critic of both antisemitism and German nationalism, famously falling out with close friend and composer Richard Wagner over these matters. Today, his place among the great thinkers who changed the course of modern philosophy has been rightfully restored. He is also remembered for critiquing shared group mentality as a sign of weakness, describing it as “herd-animal morality” and famously comparing citizens in a democracy to sheep, which is where Can’t Hardly Wait comes in.

#4 Catch Me If You Can: FBI Briefing

This is definitely my wonkiest pick. I probably wouldn’t have even made the connection had I not actively been reading about public policy when I first saw the film. Unfortunately, I could not find a clip for this scene, but the gist of it is Special Agent Carl Hanratty is briefing his FBI colleagues on the intricacies of Frank Abagnale Jr.’s check-cashing scam, and they honestly couldn’t give a shit. The scene ends with an agent smugly saying, “You want my wife to help you? She’s the one who balances the checkbook at home.”

Besides showing Agent Hanratty being surrounded by a bunch of sexist dirtbags, this scene captures an underappreciated component of public policy: organizational culture. Political scientist James Q. Wilson defines organizational culture as “a persistent, patterned way of thinking about the central tasks of and human relationships within an organization. Culture is to organization what personality is to an individual.” In other words, organizations have their own vibe, and tasks that don’t fit the vibe will be neglected or otherwise poorly done. Wilson argues that organizational culture is good for fostering a sense of purpose and professionalism but bad when an agency faces unfamiliar tasks.

A famous example of this is terrible security at American embassies (at least through the 1980s, the time of publishing). Diplomats have an organizational culture that values cultivating cordial relationships, maintaining open lines of communication, and getting a feel for local culture. Security protocols get in the way of these core activities and are therefore routinely neglected. As a result, the American embassies were heavily infiltrated by the KGB: bugged buildings, KGB agents hired in support roles, even embassy guards seduced by KGB agents!

Ironically, another chief example of Wilson’s is also the FBI . He cites their early unwillingness to pursue organized crime as a textbook clash of organizational culture with a new mission. J. Edgar Hoover fostered a culture of seriousness and professionalism. Their suits were always pressed, their shoes were always shined, and agents weren’t even allowed to even drink coffee while on duty so as to give the impression they were always hard at work. The shady business of undercover operations did not jive with Hoover’s clean-cut vision of the FBI, so it took many years to get the agency on board the fight against the mafia. Federal Agents laughing at Carl Hanratty for going after bounced checks instead of bank robbers captures this exact same phenomenon, except this time it’s the culture of patriarchy that’s in the way.

#3 Miracle on 34th St.: Judge Henry’s Predicament

Now the last thing anybody wants to think about during the holidays is politics. Everyone knows that once politics gets brought up at the family dinner, things turn ugly. But Miracle on 34th Street is one of the most politically insightful movies of all time. Take a look at the scene where a political boss leans on Judge Henry to not rule against Santa. Although the movie itself is incredibly heartwarming, the political reality it portrays is disturbing. Judge Henry is being pressured by an irrational public to make a decision inconsistent with his own understanding of the law. He knows that Santa isn’t real, but if he rules that way he’ll be ruined. Substitute in any number of anti-science political positions and you can begin to understand the ugly side of this equation.

For this reason, The Supreme Court is intentionally shielded from public opinion. Unlike poor Judge Henry, Supreme Court justices are appointed to a lifetime position and can only be removed by impeachment; a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate.

And yet the data shows that public opinion is a great predictor of Supreme Court rulings. But maybe that’s preferable. We are a Democracy after all; shouldn’t public opinion at least weigh heavily on the minds of the nine justices that hold so much power? Maybe they’d rule in favor of Santa, too.

#2 It’s a Wonderful Life: The Bank Run

Director Frank Capra already had the political smash-hit Mr. Smith Goes to Washington under his belt when he began working on It’s a Wonderful Life, so he fully intended its political themes. It was a box-office flop, but luckily for us, it fell into the public domain. Thrifty broadcasters decided to incorporate it into their holiday movie rotation and it quickly became a Christmas classic, and its political origin is largely forgotten.

It’s a Wonderful Life is fundamentally a movie about the decency of small-town working-class life. George Bailey’s defense of the working class is a moderate, yet stirring vision of what the American Dream can be. The bank run scene is one of the most iconic in all of film. It strikes at the core fear of all working-class people: that they will lose their tenuous grip on the humble but comfortable life they’ve worked so hard to sustain. The only thing that saves Bailey Savings and Loan is the incredible generosity of newlywed Mrs. Bailey, who gives away their honeymoon fund to keep the depositors from fleeing into the grasp of local mogul Mr. Potter (voted the #6 movie villain of all time by the American Film Institute).

The insecurity of the working-class is what drove Otto Von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany, to found the first state-sponsored health insurance system in 1883. In this quote, he describes the same fears so beautifully captured in It’s a Wonderful Life:

“The real grievance of the worker is the insecurity of his existence; he is not sure that he will always have work, he is not sure that he will always be healthy, and he foresees that he will one day be old and unfit to work. If he falls into poverty, even if only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, left to his own devices, and society does not currently recognize any real obligation towards him beyond the usual help for the poor, even if he has been working all the time ever so faithfully and diligently. The usual help for the poor, however, leaves a lot to be desired, especially in large cities, where it is very much worse than in the country.”

While Capra was political, he certainly doesn’t take the film’s pro-working-class logic to its political extreme. If George Bailey had rallied the townspeople to rise up against Mr. Potter and guillotined him in the town square it might be closer to my own personal brand of politics, but it would also be distinctly less Christmassy.

#1 Jaws: Closing the Beach

When people ask me, ‘What’s your favorite political movie?’ and I say Jaws, they look at me like I have three heads. But the recent wave of Mayor Vaughn memes around Trump and COVID-19 might make my answer seem less ludicrous these days. Admittedly, the second half of Jaws is a pure action movie, but the first half of Jaws is almost entirely political. The fundamental plot structure has been a staple of Hollywood story telling for decades: elites who stand to lose money refuse to acknowledge the grim reality they face. Chief Martin Brody knows that there’s a killer shark in the waters, but Mayor Larry Vaughn and the business owners of the town refuse to hear the bad news, and it costs two additional people their lives.

Elements of the ‘speaking truth to power’ storyline can be traced back at least as far as 441 BC to Sophocles’ Antigone, but the specific shooting-the-messenger formula that Jaws and most other modern political thrillers share can be traced back to 1882 in Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People. It’s the story of a scientist who discovers the water in the town’s lucrative natural springs baths to be toxic. When he tries to go public, his reputation is ruined by the mayor.

Stories like these are not just works of fiction. From the dangers of leaded gasoline, to the dangers of CTE for NFL players, to the illegal NSA PRISM program Edward Snowden exposed, the real world is littered with stories of people who desperately tried to inform the public of the coming dangers but who were silenced by both the powers that be and by our own all-too-human tendency to hear only what we want to hear.

…

Well. I hope I haven’t ruined your next attempt at Hollywood escapism by pointing out the political subtext lurking beneath your favorite films, but I just can’t help myself. You’ll just have to watch a film made by someone without a political bone in their body. Maybe Adam Sandler……oh.