Retro-Trumping: THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA (2020)
It’s 1940, war rages in Europe and Asia. But in the comparatively serene United States of America it looks as if Franklin Delano Roosevelt is almost certain to win an unprecedented third term as President. Officially Mr. Roosevelt wants to remain neutral in the conflict. But it is an open secret that his sympathies (and clandestine support) are with the Allies.
But there are rumblings in the darker corners of the American electorate. The celebrity aviator and all American folk hero, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, has thrown his hat into the ring. His divisive, isolationist, xenophobic, nativist, populist, nationalist, dog-whistling rhetoric has many Americans very excited while others, like the Jewish-American Roth family of Newark, New Jersey, very nervous.
But he can’t possibly win, right? It’s all just hot air. He’s only got the crazies and loudmouths going. He doesn’t have the votes. C’mon, Lindbergh will never be President. It can’t happen here.
Until it does.
If any of this feels like deja vu, that’s because it is most certainly meant to be. HBO’s new miniseries The Plot Against America is an adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel of the same name. At the time, the novel was criticized by some for being a blatant Bush-Fascist analogy, which the author flatly denied. In one of those unexpected twists of history, however, the novel has found a second life on-screen as a blatant Trump-Fascist analogy regardless of what the author intended.
And make no mistake, reader, it is obvious that every episode of this six-part miniseries is meant to function as a PSA about why you should not vote for Donald Trump this November. Without getting into spoilers, it is clear to me that aspects of the novel were streamlined and changed to make the material ever-so-slightly more topical for our current election year. I find the whole thing a little frustrating, if not insulting.
It isn’t that I mind HBO taking a stand against Trump. Not at all. What I do mind is sitting through what is effectively a six hour movie disguised as a complex political drama that actually only has one thing to say.
Commenting on the film adaptation of his graphic novel V for Vendetta, Alan Moore said that it had “been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country.” In the case of Plot we have a Trump-era parable made by people too timid to set their political satire in their own time. Throughout the miniseries I kept asking myself, who is this for?
It isn’t going to convert any Trump supporters. The “Trump is Hitler” line didn’t work in 2016. In fact, Trump managed to increase his share of the non-white vote over Romney’s and in an election that was decided by a razor thin margin, that dividend mattered.
The “Trump is Lindbergh who was a Hitler sympathizer” line we are clearly intended to read from Plot is just a watered down version of the same failed critique.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of good to be found in the show. It is competently made and has all the production value you’d expect from HBO. It has some great acting, some beautiful scenes, and even an interesting spy thriller subplot that goes from speculative fiction and veers just into sci-fi. Yet, I still want to give the creators a rap on the knuckles for using this much time, talent, and energy on a one dimensional retro-trip.
If you wanted to make a show taking on Trumpism then make one set in the present and include some characters and identities that reflect the troubles of our times. How about a story about a Trump supporting Latino at odds with his family in the near future? Throw in a Black Mirror style social media subplot and you might have something good, profound even.
My point is, we can’t keep regressing our political discourse back into the 20th century in a desperate attempt to simplify our confusing present.
The closest the show gets to any kind of nuance is in a stand out performance from John Turturro, who plays Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf. The Rabbi is a proud Southerner, a religious traditionalist, and Lindbergh’s most prominent and vocal Jewish supporter. He is a cross between a Dixiecrat good ol’ boy and a Jewish Uncle Tom. The uniquely American contradictions of this character are almost interesting enough for me to forgive the hamfistedness of the rest of the show.
Almost.
I give The Plot Against America the rating of NR: for No Recommendation
Bottom Line:
The Plot Against America is a well made piece of alternate history, but one that might be so intentionally topical that it breaks its own spell.
Afterthought:
There has been a lot of disparaging of FDR from the political right and left in the decades since he was President. What Philip Roth’s original story demonstrated for us, and what HBO’s adaptation at least reminds us of, is that, despite his flaws, we could have done a lot worse than FDR and the world could have been a lot closer to Man In The High Castle if we had.
Originally published at https://www.schizotopia.net on May 22, 2020.
