Wag the Dog

"Wag the Dog" is a comedy/drama that can be better specified as a political satire film made to take the known concept that "politicians lie" and take it to its most extreme, creating a fake war. We're left with a film that feels "Funny yet not funny," making us grapple with the reality that everything in the film is completely possible. 

The most unrealistic part was the Tostino chip bag turned into a cat. While it's possible it would have taken much longer and required more manpower than the film would have led you to believe but with the emergence of AI, this no longer is the case. As AI develops and evolves, maybe it can be done that fast.

                                                                             

Other than that the film was composed of just people being people, coming together for a shared goal which, under better circumstances, is the perfect recipe to inspire hope yet this film seems to accomplish the exact opposite. 

While we can all agree that everything in the film can happen, the next logical step is to ask ourselves does it happen. And the answer isn't very comfortable.

                                                                     The argument usually takes the route 

of the Internet revolution. 

Information is much easier to relay. It's faster and more informed than ever. The internet also allows anyone who has access to it to do their own research and fact-checking. On this front, people could argue that the topics covered in this film could never happen because we have improved technology to help us find the truth. 

On the other hand, politicians and their teams have the same potential, if not more. They also have the same access to the internet as we do and the same communication relays if not more that we don't know of. So in that sense, they could easily pull the wool over our eyes and make us believe something false by planting the information along the very avenues we utilize to fact-check against them. 

The emergence of technology has increased our ability to seek and determine the truth ourselves but the reality is people are just as susceptible as they were then, believing what they see and not thinking to go out of their way to conduct their own research.    

The truth is our "leaders" could really go this far in trying to win votes or holding onto power but in regards as to if they do. 

How would we know? 

Just like in this film no one was the wiser, Conrad made sure of that even at Stanley's expense. We know politicians lie and what do we do? Try our best to police them with the discrepancies we find here and there but who's to say it's not a bigger plot generated by their competition. It all sounds a bit hopeless when brought into that light but it's where we're at as a society and it'll take first-hand, in-depth, lengthy experience to convince me otherwise.