The Naked Gun: A Look into How Political Satire Lost its Literality

The term “PC” culture is one I don’t particularly care for, speaking purely on terms of personal preference. I just don’t see how the fact that hateful things are not acceptable anymore is someone a sign of “oversensitivity” or “the end of free speech as we know it”. That being said, I do think the world has become a bit more sensitive, at least to certain topics, in the last few decades. And nowhere is that better illustrated than in our comedy films.

This week I saw the first Naked Gun movie for the first time, and of course I immediately loved it. The timing, the masterful subversion of genre tropes, the over-the-top but still somehow restrained gross-out humor, and a beautifully deadpan performance by the late Leslie Nielsen all make for one fun romp. However, buried in the film’s mountain of wacky antics are elements, both subtle and in your face, that would simply not fly in the modern era.

The most obvious example comes in the very first scene of the movie. We open on the Israeli city of Beirut with a meeting between dictators and terrorist leaders plotting some grandiose attack on the American people, claiming that they can prove that America and its people are weaker than they claim to be. Then, our bumbling hero reveals himself, beating up his foes in a goofy yet wildly entertaining fight scene. Before he departs, he delivers a high-and-mighty warning to his enemies, stating that he “doesn’t want to see them anywhere in America”. He turns to make a grand exit, only to bump his head on the door.

Where do I even start with this? Well, for starters, all of the villains at the meeting are real life people. And I don’t mean thinly veiled stand-ins, I mean the real deal. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev, and Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi all make an appearance. This serves to date the film in more ways than one.

I recently read The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, a fascinating dive into the history of the rise of modern terrorism. At one point, Wright points out that there was once of time, prior to 9/11, where terrorism was considered more of a nuisance rather than a legit global threat. It existed back then, of course, but its presence on US soil was minimal, and to the public and our government it just seemed a million miles away.  

That sort of naiveté and arms-length attitude is reflected greatly in this scene. As threatening as these real life villains may seem at first, they can still be reduced to jokes with no sense of hesitation or social consciousness. They’re threats of being able to challenge American supremacy are not even remotely taken seriously, and they are simply toppled by a American agent, whom, by the way, is a dense, stumbling buffoon for about 80% of the movie.

We see real life issues depicted in goofy comedies even today, of course, but the execution is nowhere near as brazen as the Naked Gun. Take Zoolander for example. While its structure has a very similar storyline and wacky tone, it doesn’t come close to pushing the same number of buttons as the Naked Gun. The film has an extremely silly critique of the fashion industry, namely the exploitation of workers in the developing world, but never at any point shows us something that comes directly from the real world.

The main villain is a world-famous fashion mogul, but he is a work of fiction and his characteristics could be applied to ANY prominent member of the fashion industry. The dim-witted hero of this film’s story must save the prime minister of Malaysia from being assassinated as part of a conspiracy to continue exploiting workers, but the prime minister does not appear to be based on ANY real life figure. The real world issue is there, but it’s kept at arm’s length, resembling reality but only just.

The whole Reagan Era “America Fuck Yeah” element of Naked Gun is also still around, but it has also been tempered with. The two most obvious examples of this are, naturally, Team America: World Police and its sort-of-spiritual-successor-but-not-really The Interview. Naked Gun has a gung ho, take-no-prisoners and yet somehow apolitical feel to it, whereas the later films lack a good deal of that self-satisfaction and confidence in ourselves, giving us just the slightest hint of self-reflection.

As I stated above, Naked Gun is certainly a product of 1980s Cold War Americana, but lacks any sort of social or political critique. America’s foreign policy, issues of police or government corruption, the overreaching power of Big Money: all of these topics could potentially be read from the film, but they are never given even a sliver of analysis, much less parodied. Its parody is strong and often hysterical, but is solely aimed at the genre clichés of both 1980s action flicks and classic noir thrillers. It’s never directed at any part of American society or culture.

By contrast Team America and The Interview have a much more pronounced social consciousness. In the former, American foreign policy is shown as well-meaning but also carelessly destructive, and our obsession with celebrities nearly allows for the tyrannical Kim Jong-Il to take over the world. In the latter, our media is shown to be glitzy on the surface but hollow underneath, and our foreign policy is shown to be short-sighted, knocking down despots like Kim Jong-Un but doing nothing effective to replace them. Comedy has always been used to tackle uncomfortable and harsh topics, but now we feel like we need to examine and laugh at ourselves as much as we do others. Gone are the days where all we needed was for Leslie Nielsen to punch an Islamic radical in the groin…ah, the naiveté of youth.

In addition, this sort of brazen smearing of dictators is apparently much less welcomed by said dictators today than it has been in the past. As you may remember, North Korea was none too thrilled with the depiction of its leader, and the threats were taken so seriously that the film was temporarily pulled from release, only to be released on time after all with no ill effects. Just to put into context of how childish this was, Charlie Chaplin made a film in 1940 spoofing Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, titled The Great Dictator. According to records, Hitler, an avid cinema lover, ordered the film for his own personal viewing and apparently loved it so much that he ordered it a second time. So now we have proof that Kim Jong-Un is indeed worse than Hitler since at least the Fuhrer had a sense of humor!

The Naked Gun has been called a timeless classic, but there’s no denying it comes from a world that viewed itself in a much different light than our own. But it’s not the world-view that is the most dated part of the film. Funny enough, that honor belongs to the supporting role filled by none other than OJ Simpson. He was given a decent-sized supporting, comedic role—a role that expected viewers to laugh at him and sympathize with him during humorously over-the-top physical moments of torment…it was a different time. 

Written By: Zak Kizer

REVIEW: Sully (2016)

Timing is an essential part of storytelling. If released at just the right moment, a film can trigger a passionate response, either from the world or just one person. For the 2016’s film, Sully, I am that one person.

Sully tells the true story of airline Captain Chesley Sullenberger, “Sully” for short. In January 2009, Sully’s plane with 155 people on board lost both engines and had to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River. Miraculously, everyone on board survived, and Sully was justly heralded as a hero, despite all claims and accusations to the contrary.

The biggest asset to the film is its down-to-earth feel. Clint Eastwood’s films have always had a deglamorized realism to them, and that’s used to great effect here as it matches the protagonist perfectly. Sully isn’t some noble figure looking for a righteous cause, he’s just an everyday man caught it in a tumultuous situation. That grounded feeling is reflected in all aspects of the film, even the antagonists who are investigating him. They aren’t snobby or mean-spirited, they are just doing their jobs, and are approaching it from a different perspective than Sully himself.

Perspective is another key element to the film. We don’t actually see the crash as it happened until about half an hour into the movie. Before that, we see only newscasts about the crash, and Sully’s horrifying imaginations about how it could’ve gone so much worse. That’s a fantastically unique way of framing the situation, as it sets up the stakes and magnitude of Sully’s actions before we even see them, allowing for us to be more invested. 

When the crash does happen, we mostly see it from the view of the passengers and those who witnessed it from the outside, without going inside the cockpit too much. That aspect is saved for the climax in the courtroom, where Sully has to prove that his actions were indeed heroic and not an unnecessary risk that just happened to have fortuitous results. Setting up the full story as fragments, and even as sort of a twist, really allows for enough time to see Sully as a person, and not just as a romanticized hero.

And that leads me to the strongest aspect of the film, Tom Hanks as Sully. His performance, coupled with the impressive way in which the story is told, are outstanding. We really penetrate the mindset of someone who’s been through an accident like this, and that’s something that, unfortunately, I can relate. I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent here, but it’s important I swear.

A few weeks ago, I was in a car accident. I was driving back to college, to finish moving in to my new apartment, so the car was loaded with luggage. It was a head-on collision with the rear of another car at roughly 60 miles an hour. The front of my car was smashed beyond repair, the surprisingly pink airbag went off right in front of my face, and the Buick insignia on the steering wheel left a recognizable cut on a forearm. I managed to stumble out of the car, and my vision went black for a few seconds. I had no reception, but another driver stopped to help and I was able to contact both the police and my family. The police took my statement, had my car hauled away, and took me to a gas station to wait for a ride from my parents.

They arrived soon enough, ditching work and suffering through an hour’s worth of standstill traffic to come and get me. Thankfully, I had suffered no damage other than some cuts and bruises, and we soon collected my luggage from my car. By the same stroke of luck, none of my belongings had been damaged either, aside from a few busted cans of Pepsi. Utterly afraid to drive on my own, my mother drove me the rest of the way to my apartment, and even went to the store for me before returning home. The next day, I shared pictures of my wrecked car online, and was met with the sympathies of most everyone I knew.

This is what makes this film really click with me. I’m no hero, I didn’t save anyone’s life, and I certainly haven’t flown a functioning plane, much less a damaged one (and after this I don’t think I’d want to). But I can see the same effects in Sully that were in me after my crash. That feeling of being in a situation, however brief, where its life and death, and then coming out virtually unscathed, is hard to articulate and even harder to convey. You almost feel like you shouldn’t have gotten through it, and then feel relieved that you did, but that relief is tampered by the fear of what could’ve been.

For me, that last part occurred when I thought back to a family gathering a few days before the crash. As I said goodbye to my cousin Danielle, she called me her “favorite cousin”. As I sat around recuperating, I couldn’t help but think to myself that that could’ve been the last thing we said to each other. To come that close but to come out all right is both a thankful and confusing sensation.

Hanks conveys this magnificently. At first, he’s almost shocked that he and the others made it, hesitating to leave the plane in fear of leaving behind survivors, in spite of the obvious fact that it’s empty. Then, he is elated by the discovery that every single passenger and crew member lived with only a few minor injuries, and Hanks really sells that this is one of the happiest moments of his life. The “flashbacks” we see of how the plane could’ve crashed might be a tad overdone, and I personally would’ve preferred that we only imagine what he thought that might’ve been like, but the dread on Hanks’ face when he conjures up these images more than makes up for it. 

In addition, I really admired how the film doesn’t try to impart some sappy, thoughtless message about how “things happen for a reason”, which I really, really can’t stand about 99% of the time! Every time I hear that phrase, I can’t help but think, “What reason?”

This film, thankfully, does not even remotely go there. Sully doesn’t search for any kind of life lesson in the accident; he doesn’t reevaluate his place in the world or anything. He is affected by the crash (who wouldn’t be?), but it’s simply him trying to come to terms with that trauma and move past it, which I find to be infinitely more relatable that some thoughtless attempt to find meaning in an event where there isn’t any to be found. In life, it’s often pointless to try and make sense of tragedies or potential tragedies, as most often they won’t make sense because they don’t, and this movie doesn’t shy away from that fact! Despite that, it still manages to have an uplifting feel, because as pointless as the tragedy may have been, Sully prevented it. Everyone on board survived the crash, and that’s the only thing that matters in situations like this.

In conclusion, I can relate to this film in a way I couldn’t have just a few months ago. It’s superbly directed and acted, and it encapsulates the trauma of surviving a potentially fatal accident unscathed perfectly. In other words, I can’t recommend this film highly enough! 

Review By: Zak Kizer