Page 1-Movie Analysis

Chris Gurney
The movie known as The Campaign which starred Will Ferrell is well
known for being a blend of comedy and politics, specifically politics that have
truth to them. This movie shows excellent truths behinds campaigns run by
politicians, like for instance corporate backings for the runners. In the movie
Marty decides to run for Cams role in the movie. However his decision was not
made on his own but rather two wealthy men who wanted to sell land to the
Chinese to make large amounts in profit from sweat shops on Chinese land in
America. This is a fictional representation of the Koch brothers who are
essentially trying to buy out the U.S. Government so that they themselves can
make more money as well as shape the country into their Ideology. The Koch
brothers however are not alone in their efforts to control politics and fund
Politicians, nor where Politicians being funded on their own. Lobbyists were also
being funded by special interest groups and businesses in order to counter
certain issues like health care. Dubbed the influence industry, these lobbying
efforts have long been criticized as having too much impact on federal policy and
spending priorities. It is logical to think that the influence industry spends these
large sums of money because it hopes to affect key legislation and other
policies. In other words corporations are paying people off to support their
Ideologies and advance that corporations power. If it sounds not fair, and looks
not fair, then there is a large chance that it is not fair. Yet despite the unfairness

Page 2- Movie Analysis

of it, some people still decide to support the allowance of corporate and special
group backing of lobbyists and politicians. The textbook further emphasizes my
point with one quick sentence. The majority decision said that prohibitions of
such advertising violated freedom of political speech by corporations and unions,
while the minority decision said the ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of
elected institutions across the nation. While this is by no means wrong and very
constitutional, there are some arguments that ascertain to the fact that its
unconstitutional to allow it. After all they are buying the politicians words which is
taking away their own freedom of speech as well as the integrity of these
politicians. If you also look at The Power Elite theory created by Mills, who
emphasizes that the people who run our country are CEOs, Celebrities, people
of notable families and those with military power like Generals. These people
according to his theory control the military, economy and government. While this
idea was looked upon with disgust by many, Mills simply was saying the truth,
and there is no denying that is the truth. Domhoff also thought similarly to Mills
and was inspired by him. He went further to state that the elites wielded power
ranging from think-tanks to academic departments. This means there ways of
controlling us are essentially endless. Near the end of his presidency Eisenhower
revealed the threat of a Military Industrial complex. Proving the point that some of
the elites are of military status that hold power, the complex is a base that
continually claims money from the government, for Military Reasons.

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The video also clearly depicts our form of politics in its most basic form,
Democracy. Essentially in the movie two people are running against each other
for a position of power in the government and are using any means to get that
position. However unlike in the movie, its not just two people but multiple running
for the same spot. In these types of democracies, people elect officials to
represent them in legislative votes on matters affecting the population. As this
definition implies, perhaps the most important feature of representative
democracies is voting in elections. Just like this quote says and the movie
emphasizes the votes of the people are important to winning an election as that
is what a democracy is all about. The movie also shows the campaigning side of
politics, however there representation of it is over the top and is mostly done for
humor sake. However the fact that campaign ads in the movie are run by the two
billionaire guys is probably not that far off from reality. In fact those sponsored by
the Koch brothers most likely had their campaigns funded and advised by the
brothers as well. Again none of that is illegal, but by doing this there defining the
politicians and we are electing people that we have no proper image of cause
more than likely there scripts and ads are all faked by their corporate backers.
The movie we watched in class was not all just political information though. It
also had some economic points to it and gave us reasons to dislike capitalism as
well. The first evidence of this is with the maid. She has to listen to whatever the
rich people say because they are the rich people. There is much more economic
inequality in capitalism than in socialism. Although capitalism produces economic

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growth, not all segments of capitalism share this growth equally, and there is a
much greater difference between the rich and poor than under socialism. The
rich still keep on getting rich and the poor remain poor. Another example of
economy are the main antagonists, again, who intend to use First Marty and then
Cam to sell land to China so that they can run Sweatshops on the Chinese
owned land in America. That way they make money without taxes and they can
pay their workers very little amounts of money. Yet they often stifle competition,
break the law, and, according to their critics, exploit people and natural resources
in developing nations. This is also a major problem as U.S. corporations own
sweatshops in other countries for that exact reason. This also takes away from
the jobs in America that could be given out.
AS for my personal view on this, It did open up some new information I never
even heard of before and does change my perspective on a lot of things I hear on TV. It
also gives me another major reason to hate big corporations that want to keep taking
from the poor and giving to the rich. Still I think that if the corporate backing of politicians
were to stop then our country would be far better off than it is right now. I mean even
Donald Trump is so confidant in his money and power that he is running for president.
The thing is I might vote for him because he is not backed by any major corporation,
because he does not even need the money. Then again he also has his own agenda so
I guess not really, but still the most honest campaign runner I see right now.

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Text Book:
Barkan, S. (2012). Sociology: understanding and changing the social world. The Saylor
Foundation. OER Open Source Textbook