DESIGNATED SURVIVOR

Reluctantly, last night I signed back on to Netflix.  It's so easy that I begin to understand that signing on and off happens all the time.  But then they begin to ask the same dumb questions as always, like what is the number of my cell phone and no place to say I don't HAVE a cell phone, just a landline.  They keep wanting to know whether my child is watching but I don't HAVE a child.

I signed back on because I wanted to see the prequel to "The Dark Crystal," but I didn't understand that it's ten episodes in a series.  The characters are the same -- Skeksis and pod people, but no sign of the wise old Turtles so far as I've watched.  The plot is like that of any crime series, adventures.  But I'll follow it to the end just to see the gimmicks.

The other films on offer are the same dreck as always, repetitions for an adolescent audience.  But then I stumbled across "Designated Survivor," which isn't "stunning" though it tries to echo "House of Cards."  Watching against the backdrop of real-time politics is amazing.  The idea is real: the practice of designating someone to stand clear whenever the entire governing body is in one place, an easy target for wiping out the lot.  It's sort of like identifying a designated driver when heading out for a party.  The difference from reality is that a bomb has destroyed the capital -- amazing CGI of the shell still standing, barely enough to be identified -- instead of Trump simply firing everyone.  There is no designated survivor of a madman president.  Maybe his children.

Kiefer Sutherland, considerably matured, has the Jimmy Stewart/Gary Cooper role: the earnest and honest All-American hero who will lead us through the events, pointing out the Constitution as he deals with the stereotypical people.  This modern version of the familiar trope has many females representing FBI, media, the bombshell blonde who is the designated survivor of Congress, the unbearably handsome hunk who is his chief of staff, the Muslim speech writer who is the only one who usually "gets it," and so on.  No gays.  No "Indians," the most undesignated survivors in the country.

The basic idea is an English one:  that a nation is best governed by a combination of the wealthy "nobility" and a separate but equal group of ordinary folks who govern with common sense and even compassion.  Kiefer's version is rather Ivy League, a liberal academic with the code name "Glasses", a category scorned by many these days.  We now realize scholars and activists have their own rotting corruption and are just as desperate to preserve the hegemony of old white men.  It's more usual to see this category as like the General Blowhard who is easy to spot as a villain.  

In fact, it's easy to guess that the screenwriters are going to make the villains internal to the country.  This film was written in 2016 and rumors of foul corruption were already in play.  There's no "cold war" element except in passing theories about villains.  No collaboration by the President with our worst enemies.

The "real" story is being written today in a hundred books, to say nothing of the Mueller report.  The daily news is as insane and salacious as the movie but a little strangely -- I've only seen a few episodes so far -- there's nothing about the President.  Nothing about Mafia.  In the reality version the President, insane and repellant as he is, dominates everything.  We thought Mueller was a stainless paladin, but it seems that a vicious teddy bear like Barr managed to cut him short.  In the film Russia or the Ukraine have not been mentioned.  There are no "Arabs" in robes.  The factors are necessarily simplified or we couldn't follow.  In fact, we can't really follow the reality.

As it happens, my Twitter feed includes a lot of Canadians and since my father's family farmed up there for a couple of decades, I'm aware of what happens even in the far north.  The indigenous people of the northwest were more invisible then and are now far more enraged than the rez people down here, who mostly just get through each day as best they can.  In fact, it appears that the political climate around the entire world is coming to a boil -- quite literally when you think of the planetary climate.

It's sort of a relief to watch a silly movie about things that threatens the order of our lives so deeply.  We can sort of ignore the problem of what we're going to eat -- partly because growing crops is more difficult and partly because the crops themselves are so altered and the soil so depleted that we aren't nourished -- and other problems as incredible as that.  Instead we can wonder where all the overweight people went, since there are none onscreen.  Many echoes of 9/11.

The Oval Office is at least not bright red.  There is a Remington knockoff or recast just like the one we see in the background all the time, but not the one that's always behind the president, which is a miniature version of the first successful bronze monuments cast in America.  It is intriguing that in the rubble of the Capital building is a damaged bit of a statue of an indigenous man.  You can tell he's an "Indian" because of feathers on his head.  I don't know what statue it's supposed to be, but I'll do a bit of research.  Because the movie-makers know most US people think Remington is a fabulous artist, the statuette has a spotlight on it in all shots of the Oval Office.  It's the American West, dominated by old white men on land they "own."

Life has a surreal quality these days.  I grip the good news stories but they are often trivial and slanted by the reporters anyway.  PBS seems off-point -- even Brooks and Shields come off as fuddy-duddies who just stammer out the same old bromides.  Frank Oz's fantasy seem more to the point.  There may not be ANY designated survivors.

PS:  I'm watching the movie and taking notes.  The wicked Michigan gov looks just like Gianforte.  "Kirkman" is the faux president's name.  It means "Church Man."  You know: moral.