Team America: World Police
Filmmakers trying their hand at political satire are always wise to note the Firefly Doctrine, established in 1933 at the end of the Marx Brothers classic Duck Soup. As Rufus T. Firefly, president of Freedonia, Groucho has led his country to war against neighboring Sylvania. Trapped in a house and under siege by the enemy, he and his brothers triumph through the relatively simple maneuver of pinning down the advancing Sylvanian ambassador like a carnival target and pummeling him with apples. Margaret Dumont, playing the grand matron of Freedonia, declares victory and begins singing the national anthem–at which point the brothers turn around and begin hurling apples at her.
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Look at the reviews published by the Chicago Sun-Times last Friday. Roger Ebert, writing in the grown-up edition, gave the movie one star: “Like a cocky teenager who’s had a couple of drinks before the party, [Parker and Stone] don’t have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible….At a time when the world is in crisis and the country faces an important election, the response of Parker, Stone and company is to sneer at both sides–indeed, at anyone who takes the current world situation seriously.” Meanwhile Red Streak, the edition for young people who prefer not to know anything about anything, featured the movie on its cover and trumpeted a four-star review by Josh Larsen. “‘Team America: World Police’ offers a foreign policy that’s more cogent and practical than anything we’ve heard during the presidential debates,” wrote Larsen. “There’s a tinge of racism and more than a few dabs of homophobia–in other words, something to offend everyone–as well as that crude but sensible spin on international relations, one which I would never be able to repeat here.”
Given all the buzz, I was eager to like Team America–no one wants to be the old fart who doesn’t get the joke. Parker and Stone deliver plenty of transgressive schoolboy laughs as their delicate marionettes curse, vomit, and copulate; hell, just seeing the puppets walk is funny. On a second viewing I was delighted by how slyly the film mimics the wide-screen style of Jerry Bruckheimer’s megabudget right-wing action flicks like Con Air and The Rock, in which the heroes always swagger toward the camera in slow motion as something explodes into flames behind them. Parker’s song parodies are priceless, among them the glib show tune “Everybody Has AIDS” (a spoof of Rent), the preachy country ballad “Freedom Isn’t Free,” and the jingoistic rocker “America–Fuck, Yeah!” But as pundits and politicians never tire of pointing out, 9/11 has changed everything, and the genuine subversion of Bigger, Longer & Uncut has given way to a timid fatalism. I came to the movie feeling young and defiant, but I left it feeling old and defeated.
