The Purge: Elec­tion Year makes per­fect sense in this elec­tion year

In a recent inter­view, defeat­ed Jeb Bush strate­gist and sar­cas­ti­cal­ly san­guine hired-gun Mike Mur­phy, hap­py at the thought of a con­test­ed GOP con­ven­tion, expressed a long­ing for the old smoke-filled-room days of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy when elec­tions were won (as he recalls it) less by the bal­lot box than the prin­ci­pled appli­ca­tion of favours and the occa­sion­al threat: ​“You’d just pack a quart of liquor, a revolver, and go to the convention.”

What we’ve seen over the past year on the scorched-earth plains of Amer­i­can elec­tion­eer­ing, though, resem­bles not a return to the grand old days of two-fist­ed retail pol­i­tics but anoth­er entry in the sub­ver­sive­ly polit­i­cal Purge series – the hor­ror fran­chise set in a near-future Amer­i­ca where each year all laws are sus­pend­ed for a 12-hour-long spree of sup­pos­ed­ly cathar­tic vio­lence called ​“The Purge”.

The first film hit the­atres in 2013. It was a time when the tide of Tea Par­ty indi­vid­u­al­ist anti-col­lec­tivism had peaked but was still froth­ing up parts of the elec­torate who couldn’t rec­on­cile to a coun­try per­ceived as slip­ping from their con­trol. Out­ward­ly the film was a semi-futur­is­tic home-inva­sion thriller in which Ethan Hawke defends his home against Purg­ers; neigh­bour­hood dads com­pet­ing over prop­er for­ti­fi­ca­tions like they might do their front lawns today.

Yet writer/​director James DeMona­co con­jured dark­er shad­ows behind the plot’s obvi­ous vio­lence by high­light­ing the Purge’s reac­tionary roots. He toss­es a the­mat­ic flash grenade into the room by (as con­ser­v­a­tive talk radio habitués would like­ly call it) play­ing the race card. The Purg­ers aren’t just ran­dom thugs; they’re coun­try-club prep­pies look­ing to clean the streets of ​“filthy swine” like the home­less black man whom Hawke’s fam­i­ly is shel­ter­ing. And the Purge isn’t just an unleash­ing of the ani­mal id, some back­lash against a deca­dent and demil­i­tarised soci­ety that neo-con­ser­v­a­tives are for­ev­er grip­ing about. It’s a hunt where minori­ties, immi­grants and oth­er unde­sir­ables are flushed out and cut down in a Marx­ist gloss on ​‘The Most Dan­ger­ous Game’.

The point is dri­ven home in 2014’s The Purge: Anar­chy. Although a broad­er, less-sat­is­fy­ing film over­all, it ben­e­fits from DeMonaco’s play­ing off the rever­ber­a­tions of the 2012 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion (just as the first film was fuelled by resent­ments about ille­gal immi­gra­tion and Obama’s 2008 vic­to­ry). The sce­nario is essen­tial­ly a chase scene, with the stan­dard-issue Good Tough Guy (Frank Gril­lo) reluc­tant­ly help­ing a num­ber of vul­ner­a­ble civil­ians sur­vive the roam­ing psy­chopaths of Purge Night.

A wel­come addi­tion here is an out­right rev­o­lu­tion­ary ele­ment, embod­ied by the Black Pan­ther-suit­ed Carme­lo (Michael K Williams), who rages about it being the poor who die in the great­est num­bers on Purge Night: ​“We can’t afford to defend our­selves.” Set­ting an armed rev­o­lu­tion­ary cell of most­ly poor minori­ties against the well-heeled Purge homi­cide hob­by­ists can’t help but resem­ble a guer­ril­la the­atre take on that election’s Dar­win­ian dia­logue about ​“tak­ers” and ​“mak­ers,” the wor­thy and unwor­thy in Amer­i­can soci­ety, the open-car­ry debate, and the ways in which the low­er class is ever blamed for the vio­lence it suffers.

Although DeMona­co wrote the script for The Purge: Elec­tion Year back in 2014, well before the out­lines of the 2016 elec­tion became known, it is per­fect­ly primed to chew up all the cur­rent season’s ugli­ness and spit it back at us. The film is set for release on 1 July. That’s just weeks before the par­ties gath­er to wear fun­ny hats, applaud, bick­er over pro­ce­dure, select their nom­i­nees, and maybe – if cer­tain dark mur­mur­ings are to be believed – indulge in a lit­tle light riot­ing at the GOP con­ven­tion in Cleveland.

The trail­er points to an expand­ing of the Purge uni­verse into a 24-like sce­nario, in which Gril­lo returns to pro­tect a sen­a­tor (Eliz­a­beth Mitchell), the lone sur­vivor of a Purge that killed her fam­i­ly years before, who is now try­ing to ban a prac­tice that ​“tar­gets the poor and the inno­cent.” We see a shot of her (black) sup­port­ers before the trail­er cuts to a cabal of suit­ed (white) pow­er play­ers carp­ing that ​“some­thing” has to be done. It’s a can­ny exploita­tion of real-world ten­sions that are already boil­ing over.

At this point, the 2016 elec­tion race has been an unprece­dent­ed (in the mod­ern era, at least) devo­lu­tion in every­thing once con­sid­ered de rigueur in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics: the rolling out of endorse­ments, care­ful­ly plot­ted posi­tion papers, tapi­o­ca inter­views on Sun­day morn­ing tele­vi­sion and the deploy­ment of well-timed sur­ro­gate attacks and black-arts oppo­si­tion-research attacks car­ried out under the cov­er of night. Instead, the pub­lic has been wit­ness to a Roman cir­cus of calum­ny, threats, vul­gar­i­ties, loy­al­ty oaths and shame­ful violence.

The right-wing media has been quick to brand this a year of ​“anti-estab­lish­ment” fury – of ​“anger” about the sta­tus quo. These base­less claims have been repeat­ed and glo­ri­fied by mem­bers of the ever-shrink­ing GOP clown car, many of whom are delight­ed to crow about how ​“bro­ken” Amer­i­ca is, and how much it needs a purga­tive blast of right­eous nation­al­ist fury to set things right, send the immi­grants and non-Chris­tians back, and return the coun­try to the peo­ple that they sug­gest tru­ly deserve it.

Rebirth and retrench­ment are per­pet­u­al con­ser­v­a­tive themes, of course, but have been giv­en extra fire by the cur­rent spate of post-Tea Par­ty dem­a­goguery. Call it Purge Lite. Not for noth­ing did DeMona­co name the cre­ators of his exer­cise in evo­lu­tion­ary democ­ra­cy the New Found­ing Fathers. What rough beast slouch­es towards Cleve­land to be born, with liquor and revolver?