HBO aired a special tonight called "Strip Search." Was it another in their series of pseudo-porn documentaries a la "Real Sex," "G-String Divas," and "Hookers at the Point"? Oh no no no, much worse.
The show, which I would've expected to be mega-controversial except that I didn't even hear about it until the day it aired, was an hour-long mini-movie which attempted to attack the Patriot Act and other American anti-terror policy with all the subtlety of a "Weird Al" Yankovic polka medley.
"Strip Search," you see, followed the progress of two concurrent cases: the detention of a Muslim man in the United States, and that of an American woman in communist China. The twist of the script (by "Oz" creator Tom Fontana) is that both stories are the same. Don't you get it? We've become Communist China!
Except that, uh, no we haven't. If we weren't a democracy, if our government imprisoned all of their political opponents, if we had no market economy, if we ran over urban protestors with tanks, and, oh, if we didn't allow the airing of pay-cable movies that called the government a police state, then yes, maybe we would become China. But so far no, we're not even close.
I confess I was only able to sit through a few minutes of "Strip Search," Maggie Gyllenhaal's nude scenes notwithstanding. You know it's a problem for a Tony Kushner-style hard-left work of art when even the New York Times is calling it "painfully wrongheaded" and "as heavy-handed and simplistic as a Maoist textbook."
There are talented people behind this movie- director Sidney Lumet, Fontana, and stars Gyllenhaal and Glenn Close- who have done nuanced, multi-faceted work in their careers. But honestly, they should all be ashamed of themselves for agreeing to appear in such a travesty of a film. The network apparently agrees; amid all those irritating "H20" commercials, I never saw a single one for "Strip Search"- and as you can tell from my frequent "Sopranos" commentaries, I watch HBO a lot.
Posted by Stephen Silver at April 28, 2004 01:26 AMWow. Sounds like I didn't miss much - although I am curious.
I thought that "Hookers on the Point" was so interesting. And WEIRD. Me and a girlfriend of mine want to drive by Hunts Point and see the scene - but we figure that probably wouldn't be too smart.
Posted by: red at April 28, 2004 11:39 AM