While finishing up my HCI seminar paper for Dr. J, I stumbled upon a movie called, Red State. Depressed from the last national race in 2004 and finding no solace in liberal groaning on the Internet, Michael Shea packed up a team of movie types and headed out of California to find out what people in conservative “Red States” were thinking when they re-elected George Bush. From the movie website:
A team of documentary filmmakers set out from the Blue-est of Blue States, California, on a cross-country journey to record what actual people, not pundits, politicians or reporters, have to say about their country and themselves. Traveling through Red States they interviewed hundreds of Americans from all walks of life in an attempt to discover what makes a Red State person Red.
You can preview the movie online, but you need to try to set up your own local screening if you want to see the whole thing. Or, order the DVD for $16.
I have three big comments about this movie. The first has to do with the research that had me land on this site, and the other two are about the movie as a concept.
Is the color fixed?
I started voting in the midterm election of Reagan’s second administration. I am both horrified and proud to say I have never voted for the winning President (Dukakis, Perot, Skipped it, Nader, Barbara Lee), but that’s another post. The point is that I remember the colors being the other way around. In trying to see if campaign sites reflected a composite color that reflected this Red-Blue dichotomy, I got confirmation from several places that I wasn’t crazy. Republicans, in my mind, have always been blue and Democrats red. The reason it all got stuck in the current Republican Red mode is due to three factors, imo:
- The major television networks (and then papers like the NY Times all happened on the same color scheme at the same time. That is something that hadn’t happened since we transitioned from Black-and-white.
- The past two elections where people paid most attention to such things — 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections — were both extremely close and controversial, reflecting a pretty even distribution of voter ideology.
- The media picked up the terms “Red State” and “Blue State” and won’t let go.
Having a movie, which is often less temporal than network news coverage, use the term means we can’t really ignore it any more. Until there is a major shift in our concept of partisan politics or third-party reforms, I think Red State is just a sign that we’re never going back.
It’s a Poor Metaphor
First, there is the issue of the now-familiar Red-Blue U.S. map being based on electoral votes, which themselves are influenced by two-party politics. If the electorate was awarded by congressional representation (districts each get one electoral vote, states two), all states would look purple. Indiana’s Alumni Magazine had a timely article this month on the subject, pointing to a county-by-county map that reflecting voting majorities. A much different look than what the mainstream media likes to portray. Then there is the problem of there only being the two sides of the political spectrum. The metaphor is visible light, ranging from the lower energy red to the higher energy blues. That paints politics as linear rather than deep.
What is Blue anyway?
The only political label I’ll self-apply these days is progressive. I haven’t seen much in the Democratic Party, at least nationally, that reflects those values. Barbara Lee needed to muster all her courage to vote, by herself, against a blank check military reaction back in 2001. In the Democratic Party I idealized, there would have been many more such voices slowing the pace. I’m glad that party control was wrested from the Republicans, but is there really going to be that much difference in Washington now? Getting Nancy Pelosi in charge is the best byproduct of yesterday, for many reasons. But the themes of this election and the renewed calls for impeachment hearings remind me a lot of the party I hated in the 1990s: the Republicans. This has the appearance more of In-Power/Out-of-Power rather than ideology. That part is still depressing. Also sad: The one candidate I was most invested in (sign on lawn) didn’t get a local school board seat.
I’m a big fan of Louis Theroux, so I’m open to this kind of wide-eyed innocent interviewer schtick. I’m just not convinced, sight unseen, that Mike Shea or anyone else is going to be able to pull it off as well. I’m sure there was probably great catharsis in doing this film, but do we really need more reinforcement of this partisan war? A more interesting film might have been about What Would Bring You Back To Vote.