Many critics have rightly pointed out that GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is essentially Team America: World Police, only serious — a shameless plug for US militarism and terrorist scaremongering which would be an ominous bit of propaganda were it not so cack-handed. This makes it a bit of an oddity in these early, heady days of Obama’s administration — something perhaps not in tune with the zeitgeist. Is GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra the last of the Bush-Era films?
The Bush era of filmmaking, much like the Vietnam era, was a combination of thinly veiled anti-war films and far more sinister and covert apologies for the system. But the past 8 years have been perhaps less about directors’ personal voices and more about Hollywood attempting to reap financial rewards from the whole Red-state Blue-state tension. The most overt entries into this Culture War were the numerous documentaries such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me and the excellent No Way Out and their adversaries in Michael Moore Hates America and the insipid Disney funded America’s Heart and Soul. Then there were the explicitly topical films such as United 93, World Trade Center, W. and De Palma’s much maligned Redacted, which tried to sum up historical events pretty much immediately after they had happened. What is perhaps more interesting however are the fictions, the allegories and the subtle conceits which attempted to comment on the world around them, or smuggle in important information in an entertaining package. The following films in big or small ways are a product of the era in which they were made.
Click below for the Quietus’ list of Bush Era films
