Thanks to absolutist firebrands such as Rand and Ron Paul, laissez-faire economic sentiment has been gaining momentum in the GOP for some time. But with the nomination of deficit hawk wunderkind — and notable Ayn Rand devotee — Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate, movement libertarianism has officially been added to the Republican presidential platform.
Regardless of whether Romney is elected and Ryan’s controversial budget proposals are made law, the rebranding has already created two decisive effects: first, it has excited the fiscal-conservative base enough to warrant representation at the penultimate level; and second, it has convinced swaths of more marginal voters, who vaguely recall skimming through Atlas Shrugged as undergrads, that they were ardent “objectivists” all along.
In honor of the libertarian strain of Republicanism getting its RNC coronation this week, here are the top nine films that evoke a reverie for free markets and, in some cases, the dystopian nightmare that's sure to follow if we ignore Rand's literary prophecy.
1. Top Gun (1986): Many conservatives credit Ronald Reagan with bringing down the Berlin Wall and ending the Cold War. Cineastes know it was Maverick and Goose. The recently deceased Tony Scott’s pop art masterpiece did for capitalism what Eisenstein’s innovation of montage did for Bolshevism. (Just substitute the jittery stomping of horses with more photogenic F-16 fighter jets.) Today's audiences smirk at the towel-clad locker-room romping and blue-jeaned volleyball homoeroticism, but the convergence of "Danger Zone" aerial balletics and the mega-wattage of a then 23-year-old Tom Cruise is still enough to raise long-dormant goose-bumps for American exceptionalism.
2. Casablanca (1942) : Humphrey Bogart’s Rick runs the best casino-bar in town, traffics in guns for African rebels, and appeases the Nazi occupation just to keep it all in the black. He is the archetype of the cutthroat entrepreneur: “I stick my neck out for nobody,” he unhesitatingly declares. Randians will rejoice as Rick wheels and deals in dubious moral territory with the stoic confidence of a man who believes doing what makes sense for Rick is the only true imperative. Just make sure to tune out before the last act when Bogey’s iconic hero contrives a plot for the good of humanity capped with the ultimate act of altruism: saying goodbye to Ingrid Bergman.
3. The Dark Knight Rises (2012): Yes, Christian Bale as Batman selflessly gives nearly everything to save his fellow Gothamites in the concluding chapter of Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus trilogy - including an attempt to develop a MacGuffin fusion technology. Free socialized energy for the whole world! Yet, the politics of Nolan's franchise are more inscrutable than Bane’s face mask-muffled line readings. A short list of the thematic evocations, in no particular order, include: 9/11, the subprime crash, Occupy Wall Street, kangaroo-court tyranny, class warfare and vigilante justice. Alas, none of these threads cohere into a mission-statement that transcends the film’s deafening soundtrack, or its grimly self-serious hero mythology. Because the leftist aspirations of Bruce Wayne are so dwarfed by the narrative’s hodge-podge of political themes, avowed libertarians should simply enjoy this film’s spectacular set-pieces while delighting in the bleak vision of a militarized proletariat revolution. Hint: it mostly involves sending the “productive class” on a short-walk over a thinly frozen East River.
4. Brazil (1985) – Classical Hollywood directors will hold your hand as they methodically walk you through their inviting and delicately lit story worlds. Terry Gillam is not a classical Hollywood director. His off-the-wall acid trip of a story, mise-en-scene, irrational characters and garish set designs plunge the viewer into a deep sense of alienating unease and genuine dread for the protagonists stuck inside this most baroque of totalitarian dystopias.
5. Sunset Boulevard (1950) Free-marketers surely know nothing in life is actually free. And nothing costs this film's protagonist, average Joe Gillis, more than trying to skirt cold economic reality as a kept man in the cushy environs of the eponymous LA thoroughfare. In fact, Joe has been so chastened by this lesson, he has to narrate the prologue to Billy Wilder’s classic noir from beyond the grave. For some, this film is merely a high achievement in genre convention. But libertarians may take unique interest in the perverse justice of the cosmetic, yet real, market forces that push an aging actress to madness and ensnare a struggling writer as her enabler in the deadly-subjective fantasy of a grand Hollywood comeback.
6. Terminator (1984): The government hands vertical authority for nuclear armageddon to autonomous supercomputers. A post-apocalyptic hell-scape populated mostly by invincible skeletal-robot-killing-machines quickly follows. Sounds like something Congress would do.
7. Wall Street (1987): Rand preferred to call it "objective self interest," but Gordon Gecko’s infamous "Greed is good" catch phrase is the more pithy summation of libertarian economic philosophy. The brashly liberal and often conspiratorial minded Oliver Stone meant for Gecko’s declaration to ring with doomed hubris. But the fact that this morality tale lands the charismatic Wall Street lizard in jail for his insider trading has not informed the cult-like reception by audiences. And Stone isn’t blameless. The production’s gloss and glamorization of '80s power-suit culture is the movie’s most lasting vision. For all the explicit sermonizing, the posh optics and slick storytelling undercut Stone's anti-greed polemic. As a result, libertarians can enjoy this film on two levels: rooting for a villain in a vicarious thrill-ride through the heyday of modern New York bourgeois culture; or the schadenfreude of watching another liberal Hollywood screed cave-in on itself.
8. 1984 (1984): This worthy adaptation of Orwell’s category-killing dystopian masterwork almost seems too obvious to merit mention. Except that Orwell was invoked by liberals during the Bush administration — much as Rand is now touted by conservatives — as the ultimate rhetorical broadsword. Charges of “Orwellian!” blighted the reputation of programs like The Patriot Act and were levied so frequently that they became synonymous in liberal circles with the Bush administration writ large. RNC libertarians who suspect the “Obamacare” mandate is a draconian slippery slope to memory-hole torture programs might want to reacquaint themselves with this recent classic and craft a timely rejoinder.
9. Atlas Shrugged (2011): Ayn Rand believed objective reality could be expressed though art. Though critics were unanimous that this much-maligned adaptation doesn’t really qualify, watch a few minutes of this runaway disaster to reaffirm your conviction that there are no sacred cows when it comes to the business of being entertained.
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