Review: Wag the Dog (Robert de Niro)

Why does a dog wag its tail? Because the dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail were smarter, the tail would wag the dog.

The American populace, being the larger body in the movie, is represented by the dog while the media and the government are considered as the tail. With the combined intelligence of all the American citizens, they should be the ones dictating what the “tail” should be doing considering that they are in a democratic society. But what happened in the movie is that the tail was the one who manipulated the dog. It was too easy for the government and the media to manipulate the facts that were presented to the people—from the staged war of the President against Albania, to the hero (Sgt. William “Old Shoe” Schumann), to the theme song for this hero. Despite all odds, the spin doctor, Conrad Bream (Robert De Niro), with the help of a movie producer, Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman), managed to get away with everything until the bogus hero was killed accidentally during their “trip back home.”

On another perspective, the dog can be the media, being a very powerful sector in a country, and still, the government is the tail. The government has been manipulating the media and the media was too dumb to believe whatever the government said.

The Government and the Media as presented in the movie

The government and the media are presented in the movie as real as they are in real life. The government was very manipulative. To cover up for the President’s scandalous deed, two weeks before the election, those in-charge of keeping the President’s name clean did even the most impossible thing—staging a war with a country living peacefully.

The media, on the other hand, was very passive of the issues that came up. They would report whatever it was that would sell. Not one was critical enough to question the statements of the President about the war.