2016: Obama’s America
The cold, hard truth: “2016” will have no more of an effect on the coming Presidential election than “Fahrenheit 9/11” did in 2004. Sorry, Republicans. Movies like this play to the choir, but typically don’t have much sway with those outside of the church. I should know; like “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” and “Undefeated” (last year’s Sarah Palin love-fest) before it, this movie just made me frustrated with its obvious bias.
The biggest issue I have with “2016,” and subsequently, the thesis of co-director/author Dinesh D’Souza’s writings on Barack Obama, is not that it simply reflects conservative talking points, although it certainly does that. (And no, I will NOT be getting into how it was REPUBLICAN policies that jacked up the deficit and wrecked the economy, not Obama. This is a movie review; not a political debate.) My biggest beef with D’Souza’s thesis on Obama is that his view of our current president is based solely on Obama’s 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, while completely ignoring what Obama wrote in his most recent autobiography, The Audacity of Hope. Right there, D’Souza goes against the tagline of his own movie, which reads, “You Love Him. You Hate Him. You Don’t Know Him.” By cherry-picking his sources, and following a narrative he wants to put forth, D’Souza shows that he doesn’t really want to know Obama, either. Instead, he wants us to know the Obama he wants to show us.
What makes “Fahrenheit 9/11” such a riveting moviegoing experience isn’t its politics, but the way that Michael Moore brings laser-light focus to the emotional toll of his subject. Yes, he was putting forth a thesis as well (and in full-disclosure, it’s not one that I’ve ever, completely agreed with, either), but he didn’t ignore the personal story of how Bush decisions, and policies, affected everyday Americans; in truth, he never has in any of his films. (He’s just been more successful in some films than others.) Of course, D’Souza and co-director John Sullivan don’t have the same focus, mainly because they’re looking at the future of what American COULD be under a second Obama term, rather than looking at the present day. In all honesty, it’s an intriguing idea, and worthy of real consideration, rather than just the subject of right-wing propaganda and fear-mongering. Listening simply to D’Souza and his interview subjects, you’d think Obama is leading America into the sort of third-world vortex that his father’s homeland of Kenya became after that country kicked out the British. Really, guys? We’ll be fine.
If D’Souza accomplished nothing else with his film for me, he made me want to pick up (and read) Dreams From My Father (which we hear excerpts from, both from Obama’s audiobook reading, as well as D’Souza reading from the book) for myself, as well as finish reading The Audacity of Hope. In that way, he did light a fire under my butt to understand Obama better, although I don’t think he’d agree with my own conclusions. However, while I think Obama is more complicated than the communist-inspired, revolutionary-chummy anti-colonialist D’Souza paints him as. That’s because people evolve over time. The person Obama was when he wrote Father is not the same person he was when he wrote Hope, and he isn’t the same person now. Does he have some of the same beliefs? Sure he does; I have a lot of the same values and beliefs that I did in 1995 also. But as my life has progressed, as opportunities arose, my thought process has adapted accordingly. If I am able to say anything about Obama, I think I can safely say that he’s done the same.
I’m not going to try and punch holes in D’Souza’s ideas on the President; I’ll leave that for more learned political minds. (Also, like I said, this is ultimately about the movie, not politics.) I will say that there’s one fascinating stretch of film in “2016,” and it’s when D’Souza goes to Kenya and talks to Obama’s half-brother, George. Even though I’d read about his appearance, and D’Souza’s interview, before seeing the film, watching him answer D’Souza’s one-track questions with intelligence, and real independence from what the film as a whole says, was refreshing. That alone makes it worth watching, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you sit on.
