The Sky Is Falling

August 20, 2018
Biskind (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls) breathlessly excavates the last two decades of popular culture, hunting for clues about the rise of political extremism in America. According to the author, since 2000, “extremist shows” (Biskind’s blanket term for both movies and television) have exploded in popularity, moving from the left- and right-wing fringes to the mainstream with their unabashed “Us vs. Them” themes. Biskind chronicles the exploits of revenge heroes and individualists such as 24’s Jack Bauer, Batman, and Deadpool, who take justice into their own hands when institutions either fail or become corrupt. He then illustrates how movies such as The Blind Side (in which Sandra Bullock “plays a wealthy, obnoxious white evangelical”) and the Left Behind book series have paralleled the infiltration of the government by religious fundamentalists, as, he argues, is evidenced by Vice President Pence’s outspoken beliefs. He also threads in recurring commentary on James Cameron’s Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time, and writes that it “dramatically underlined the breakdown of postwar consensus.”. It’s an ambitious book, one that at times feels too caught up in explaining how shows qualify as “extreme” at the expense of making more robust analogies to today’s political climate.