Above: Rat Race’s ensemble cast.

Disclaimer: This review is a case study in overanalysis. It is extremely unlikely that any of the political conclusions drawn here existed in the minds of the writers when they created the screenplay for this madcap comedy caper. But one of the virtues of the Marxist method is its ability to provide new insights into things we would otherwise regard as ordinary or commonplace. Spoilers ahead.

“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.”

-          Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

On its surface, Jerry Zucker’s 2001 film Rat Race is light-hearted comedic fare with little in the way of profound political messaging. The plot involves six teams of people at a Las Vegas hotel and casino who are recruited by the resort’s billionaire owner Donald Sinclair (John Cleese) to participate in a race for the betting pleasure of himself and his wealthy peers. A duffel bag containing $2 million in cash has been stowed away in a train station locker 563 miles away in Silver City, New Mexico. Each team receives a key to the locker, and whichever team reaches the locker first wins the race and keeps the money.

In light of tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony, here is a review of an Academy Award winning film from an earlier competition. It should serve as a reminder that the 94% white, 77% male Academy, 86% of whom are over 50 years old, are in no way tethered to reality.

The Blind Side, racism, and money as the solution to everything.

Overflowing with stereotypes and racist assumptions, The Blind Side is a recent film with Academy Award recognition to spew forth derogatory ideals. It recycles the plot of Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (another academy award nominated film) wherein a sympathetic white lady ‘saves’ and adopts an impoverished black person into a position of economic dependence.

In the case of Imitation of Life, an aspiring white movie starlet saves a black mother and her daughter by employing the mother as a maid. In The Blind Side, Michael ‘Big Mike’ Oher (Quinton Aaron) is ‘saved’ by the unwavering generosity of an unreasonably wealthy suburban housewife named Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock).

Network is a 1976 feature film revolving around a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System.  It picked up four academy awards: best actor, best actress, best supporting actress, and best original screenplay. Its main character Howard Beale, a long time news anchor, is fired due to poor ratings.  In his last week, desperate and losing his mind, he announces he’s going to kill himself on air.  As he devolves into strangely prescient lunatic ranting, his ratings skyrocket and his stay on the air is extended.

While the film has certainly aged – most notably in the naive hegemony of television as a medium that smacks of a pre-internet era – it remains funny and astute satire.  Most surprising is the early islamophobic paranoia about “The Arabs.”  Give the “best of” reel a watch, it’s only about 18 minutes long, or go for the whole film.  Links after the jump.