Carry On... #populist demagogues

Last week's film (It's Always Fair Weather) was a fun, feel-good MGM Musical that laughed at the rapidly growing power of television (and television advertising in particular) in 1950s American society.

Our next film also examines the power of television, but without the "feel-good" part.

A Face in the Crowd was released in 1957, but the story it tells is one that feels uncomfortably close to the bone in our present day. 

It's no coincidence that the film received a widespread re-evaluation in 2016, just as a certain vulgar media personality was gaining devoted populist support in the political arena.

Written by Budd Schulberg and directed by Elia Kazan (the pair who had brought you On the Waterfront three years earlier) A Face in the Crowd follows the career of Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, an obnoxious, hillbilly media personality with "man-of-the-people" appeal and a devoted, almost cult-like following (played with frightening power by Andy Griffith in his screen debut).

Rapidly becoming a folk hero to the invisible hoards of impoverished and under-educated listeners (later viewers) Rhodes' success quickly goes to his head as he realises how much power he controls.

Patricia Neal is astonishing as the small-town radio producer who discovers Rhodes and recognises his potential, only to regret the monster she has unleashed. And Walter Matthau (in one of his early film roles) provides sardonic commentary from the sidelines.

Quite apart from Andy Griffith's astonishing (and disturbingly prescient) performance, the film has a great deal to say about the impact of mass media on society in general. Like the "Klenzrite Hour" in It's Always Fair Weather, Lonesome Rhodes' popularity with the unwashed masses is promptly weaponized by the advertising industry, creating a toxic feedback loop of aggressive sales tactics and ever-increasing media penetration.

And once Rhodes realises how much influence he wields (he actually uses the term influencer at one point, sixty years before anyone had uttered the word "TikTok") he discovers that he can make the leap from mass entertainer to political apparatchik. 

As I say, many people were reminded of this film when Trump became a force on the National political landscape.

A Face in the Crowd may not be as well-known as On the Waterfront, but it manages to be a lot more savage in its view of modern society, and the direction things were going. And as we were to learn over the subsequent decades, they were right to be concerned.

We will be screening A Face in the Crowd at 7.30 on Thursday, the 21st of September at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.