Alex Garland, director of the upcoming movie Civil War, recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter, saying that the political left and right should reconcile their differences. His explanation is not only unrealistic, but an irresponsibly ignorant thing for someone in his position to say.
Alex Garland is somewhat of an auteur director, arguably best known for his two major hit movies Ex Machina and Annihilation. The former is a feminist sci-fi movie about a chauvinist engineer inventing true artificial intelligence in the form of female androids. Topics like female objectification and the Turing Test are explored in-depth.
In his recent interview with THR, he discussed the underlying politics of his movie Civil War. He explained that his movie is not about left-wing vs right-wing, but about political divisiveness in general. “We’ve lost trust in the media and politicians,” he said. “And some in the media are wonderful and some politicians are wonderful—on both sides of the divide. I have a political position and I have good friends on the other side of that political divide.”
This is yikes for a few reasons. First and foremost, Garland (who, it seems important to note, is English) is giving too much good faith to right-wingers who actively want marginalized people dead daily and the fact that even ostensibly moderate Republicans in office have to cater to extremists. As we’ve talked about before, the right is constantly blaming the left for things they do, such as the January 6 insurrection and the stripping back of democracy.
Garland continued in the interview, “Left and right are ideological arguments about how to run a state. That’s all they are. They are not right or wrong, or good and bad. It’s which do you think has greater efficacy? That’s it. You try one, and if that doesn’t work out, you vote it out, and you try again a different way. That’s a process. But we’ve made it into ‘good and bad.’”
He’s wrong. This is not a conflict between two sides with valid perspectives. It is very blatantly between people who want vulnerable people dead and people who want to stop that from happening. Republican government is anti-human, pushing forward the cruelest, most genocidal legislation they can, like the push towards eradicating trans people in America.
Garland is good at filmmaking, but bad at electoral politics. Perhaps he should stick to what he knows best.
(featured image: A24)
