Six pow­er­ful media satires that actu­al­ly pre­dict­ed the future

There’s a gen­er­al mis­con­cep­tion that satire exists as a sub­di­vi­sion of com­e­dy. It’s true that the two often go hand-in-hand, yet satire is also a genre in and of itself. Spike Lee’s own under-appre­ci­at­ed satire, Bam­boo­zled, opens with a handy def­i­n­i­tion: ​“A lit­er­ary work in which human vice or fol­ly is ridiculed or attacked scorn­ful­ly… Irony, deri­sion or caus­tic wit used to attack or expose fol­ly, vice or stupidity.”

We see satire as hold­ing a dis­tort­ing mir­ror up to real­i­ty; the reflec­tion is some­what exag­ger­at­ed, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­i­cal, but always has some basis in truth. Here are six Hol­ly­wood films that were pro­duced with the inten­tion of ridi­cul­ing, attack­ing or expos­ing the work­ings of the media – all of which proved spook­i­ly accu­rate in their visions of a future society.

Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign is cur­rent­ly tak­ing Amer­i­ca by storm, but one film pre­dict­ed the rise of celebri­ty pol­i­tics as ear­ly as 1957. A Face in the Crowd fol­lows a phi­lan­der­er, drunk­ard and deeply trou­bling indi­vid­ual named Lar­ry ​“Lone­some” Rhodes, who seduces radio audi­ences with his extro­vert­ed per­son­al­i­ty and home­spun charm. Cor­rupt­ed by house­hold fame, he fos­ters polit­i­cal ambi­tions and aban­dons his pro­gres­sive beliefs for a grab at power.

Rhodes’ come­up­pance arrives at the peak of his own delu­sion, when his increas­ing­ly deranged ram­blings are unwit­ting­ly broad­cast. The film flopped com­mer­cial­ly, while Andy Grif­fiths, in spite of his mon­strous por­tray­al of Rhodes, went on to have a suc­cess­ful career in tele­vi­sion. Nonethe­less, it stands as a pre­scient exposé of mass media as a tool of manip­u­la­tion and a ter­ri­fy­ing warn­ing against the cult of personality.

The Tru­man Show satiris­es the voyeurism, para­noia and arti­fi­cial­i­ty of tele­vi­sion, and is com­mon­ly cred­it­ed with fore­shad­ow­ing the rise of real­i­ty TV. But it also inad­ver­tent­ly presages social media. Jim Carey’s every­man, Tru­man Bur­bank, who dis­cov­ers that his life in sub­ur­ban par­adise is being beamed into homes across Amer­i­ca, can be con­sid­ered a pre­cur­sor to every­thing from hid­den cam­era pranks to per­form­ers in ​“struc­tured real­i­ty” for­mats – replete with elab­o­rate sto­ry­lines, prod­uct place­ment and con­trolled environments.

The notion that every mile­stone in Truman’s life has become a cul­tur­al event also fore­casts the social feeds through which we are able to share per­son­al infor­ma­tion with mil­lions of strangers. There’s one key dif­fer­ence though: Tru­man isn’t seek­ing fame. In an age where pri­vate lives are rou­tine­ly played out in the pub­lic are­na, there’s plen­ty to learn from his humility.

Bil­ly Wilder is alleged to have declared: ​“If you’re try­ing to tell the truth to the audi­ence, you’d bet­ter be fun­ny or they’ll kill you.” Alas, few films of Wilder’s were so barbed as Ace in the Hole, and few per­formed quite as poor­ly. Kirk Dou­glas stars as a cyn­i­cal jour­nal­ist who dis­cov­ers a man trapped in a cave and milks the sit­u­a­tion for all the head­lines he can gen­er­ate, blur­ring the prob­lem­at­ic line between report­ing news and cre­at­ing it.

The film, dis­trib­uted in some ter­ri­to­ries as The Big Car­ni­val, coined the now clichéd notion of a ​“media cir­cus” in stag­ger­ing shots of tourists flock­ing to see the loca­tion of the cave-in, which has trans­formed into a bawdy fair­ground that boosts the local econ­o­my but does lit­tle to help the trapped man, or com­fort his fam­i­ly. For­mer news­pa­per reporter Wilder skew­ers our vapid obses­sion with human inter­est sto­ries – a time­less theme that per­vades all press sen­sa­tion­al­ism, from tabloid hack­ing to clickbait.

After threat­en­ing to kill him­self live on air, news­read­er Howard Beale attracts unprece­dent­ed pub­lic­i­ty, inspir­ing avari­cious net­work boss­es to intro­duce edi­to­r­i­al com­ment to news­casts, fol­low­ing the log­ic that opin­ions gar­ner high­er rat­ings than facts. Net­work is chock-full of mono­logues and Beale, the self-described ​“angry prophet, denounc­ing the hypocrisies of our time,” is the main per­pe­tra­tor. His rants remain as rev­e­la­to­ry now as in 1976.

The film’s depic­tion of news being sub­sumed by per­for­mance seems espe­cial­ly pre­scient today, not just in rela­tion to big per­son­al­i­ty news anchors but also to dig­i­tal media, where infor­ma­tion is buried under com­men­tary, inter­ac­tiv­i­ty and the­atre. Take the icon­ic scene where Beale urges view­ers to shout from their win­dows that they are ​“mad as hell, and not gonna take it any more.” A fit­ting anal­o­gy for the echo cham­ber of Twit­ter if ever there was one.

Bar­ry Levinson’s film intro­duced polit­i­cal spin to audi­ences who were rel­a­tive­ly naïve to the extent of col­lu­sion between politi­cians and the media. Robert De Niro plays a media guru who attempts to deflect atten­tion from a Pres­i­den­tial sex scan­dal, even employ­ing a movie pro­duc­er (Dustin Hoff­man) to con­struct a phoney war, with press con­coc­tions includ­ing a pho­to­genic young girl (Kirsten Dun­st) and a for­got­ten sol­dier (Woody Har­rel­son) serv­ing to stoke mass out­rage. This exag­ger­at­ed sit­u­a­tion shows spin doc­tors going to remark­able lengths not mere­ly to cov­er up an inci­dent, but to dis­tract the pub­lic with anoth­er one. In real­i­ty this is com­mon prac­tise, from bury­ing bad news to cher­ry-pick­ing pos­i­tive sta­tis­tics. Yet the film exag­ger­ates these prac­tis­es in order to show the extreme poten­tial for press com­pli­ance with offi­cial gov­ern­ment policy.

Repeat­ed ref­er­ence is made to the first Gulf War, with salient points that almost pre­fig­ure the role of media cov­er­age dur­ing the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq, while dia­logue not­ing the lack of pho­tographs from con­flict zones – and the ease with which they might be faked – seems to encap­su­late the online con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in embry­on­ic form. Giv­en that Wag the Dog was dis­trib­uted before the Mon­i­ca Lewin­sky scan­dal broke, it’s hard not to view this par­tic­u­lar proph­esy as self-ful­fill­ing, as if Bill Clin­ton saw the film and dared to dream.

Spike Lee has pre­vi­ous­ly pro­fessed admi­ra­tion for Ace in the Hole and Net­work. Both are clear influ­ences on Bam­boo­zled, in which Damon Wayans’ frus­trat­ed TV writer pitch­es a show intend­ing to satirise racial stereo­types but ends up per­pet­u­at­ing them. The film includes a pro­tract­ed mon­tage sequence of grainy footage that forces the view­er to con­sid­er evi­dence of insti­tu­tion­al racism in the enter­tain­ment indus­try. Evi­dent­ly Lee’s posi­tion has not changed, judg­ing by his deci­sion to boy­cott this year’s Acad­e­my Awards, along with Bam­boo­zled star Jada Pin­kett Smith.

On scene, in which police open fire on a group of black mil­i­tants – hit­ting all but the one white mem­ber – remains a shrewd com­ment on con­tem­po­rary race rela­tions in the US. Among the film’s most star­tling prog­nos­ti­ca­tions, though, is its depic­tion of ter­ror­ists broad­cast­ing exe­cu­tions on the inter­net, dubbed unre­al­is­tic by crit­ics at the time.