Saturday, July 30, 2011

Where Are the Cowboys? Monsters Are Taking Over Our World.

“Cowboys & Aliens”, the new Saturday afternoon, popcorn movie—“Independence Day” meets the “Wild Wild West."  There must be a metaphor there, even a strategy, for resolving the debt crisis. 

I am not going to suggest the Tea Party Republicans are like the aliens.  Kidnapping poor, unsuspecting citizens and using them for their own devices.  Exploring human vulnerabilities, as they take a bite out of poor men, intent on defeating life as we know it.  No that would be too easy an analogy.

I will suggest it could take a common threat of annihilation to bring together the dysfunctional US Congress so they solve some of the problems we face.  Not just the debt crisis but climate change, energy alternatives, and perhaps for right now in the eyes of many Americans: JOBS.

The “R’s” can choose whether they want to be inspired by the steely blue eyes of a Gary-Cooper-silent Daniel Craig: the gunslinger, retired thief who has forgotten his past after being taken by the aliens.  Or Harrison Ford: the big cattle owner, former civil war commander who hates Indians as a group but has adopted and raised a young Indian orphan boy.  Hell, they can be the Indians for all I care.  The noble natives who have cures for everything, including amnesia, and who come together with the whites to fight the aliens, rescue their kidnapped kin and save the planet from destruction.

There is precedent to hope a movie will bring the far-outlier tea partiers to the table.  The R’s invited their brethren, the Tea Party R’s, to watch the Ben Affleck Movie, “The Town” apparently thinking the tough movie talk of one criminal  appealing to his pals might inspire them to “do the right thing” for the greater good, in this case, the R’s.  Doesn’t appear to have worked but maybe it was the wrong movie.

In “Cowboys &Aliens” I see the entire western and a lot of the sci-fi genre expectations coming together to save the day.  The only thing I can’t quite figure out is what the lovely Olivia Wilde, also known as #13 in the TV show “House,” is doing in the movie or my metaphor.  OK Spoiler Alert: she is an alien too, but a good one.  Is she like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2”?  Maybe that is a role model the R’s will consider.  After all, Arnold is one of their one. 

In any case, if Congress can’t get its act together and do something for the common good then maybe we should let the aliens have our planet.  Or else go to the polls at the next election and vote the dysfunctional ones out.

No comments:

Post a Comment