Irresistible

And Who Makes Money Off Mass Incarceration

While I was down, Jon Stewart left “The Daily Show”, one of the liberal infotainment staples of the Obama era. I wish I got to see more of his successor Trevor Noah, but it was notable that I was never at a spot where inmates watched “The Daily Show” regularly. I was surprised that Comedy Central was rarely on-tap – these guys preferred the exceedingly low-brow TruTV instead. So forgive me for thinking “Irresistible”, the first comedy Jon Stewart directed, was supposed to be an event. Having seen it, I can figure why it was not.

The setup is very MSNBC-core – Steve Carell is Gary Zimmer,  a political consultant who, like anyone watching a movie directed by Jon Stewart, is up in arms about the 2016 election results. Tucking tail, he retreats within himself until catching a viral clip of a well-spoken countryfolk named Jack Hastings, who Zimmer observes as if he’s watching bigfoot. Here’s a rural white farmer who can actually articulate the common man’s argument with big government. In Jack, Zimmer finds hope – he’s lost a war, but this is a primo battle he can’t ignore.

He ventures to the heart of Wisconsin to wine and dine Hastings, believing he can handpick Jack as a mayoral candidate that can eventually turn a red state blue. And Hastings, played by Oscar winner Chris Cooper, is straight out of central casting – a former Marine with a blue collar lifestyle but a plainspoken voice-of-the-people presentation and a belief in providing economically for all citizens with no bias. It’s a simplistic role that seems beneath Cooper in a few specific ways, though it ends up so for totally different reasons. It also just so happens that Jack has a very photogenic daughter (Mackenzie Davis), and this being a Hollywood movie, the age difference doesn’t ever come into play regarding a possible attraction.

Republicans see what Zimmer is planning, so they send finances and reinforcements to the GOP incumbent, a plan shepherded by consultant Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne). Byrne, a comedic mainstay at this point, gets to chew scenery in a villainous role, though her rivalry with Zimmer is R-rated but still fairly canned. These two have a history, but it plays out in slapstick and bedroom buffoonery that never approaches bawdy, yet never flirts with clever either. It is said that contemporary filmmakers need to stop mining for material within contemporary films, they need to stop taking so much from other movies of their era. Unfortunately, Stewart needs to find better material beyond combing through hours of cable news punditry seeking a fresh antagonistic angle between political adversaries.

What Stewart is attempting is a satire in good faith, attempting to mock liberals for their etiquette and manners, particularly in regards to rural citizens and ideals. But as Greg Gutfeld will show and tell you every weeknight, there really isn’t a lot of humor in the mockery of liberal social mores. Like a lot of casual viewers, I don’t love that every R-rated studio comedy that arrives in the 21st century has to embrace a hyper-vulgar approach to sex and profanity. But I was surprised in how utterly toothless “Irresistible” really is. These characters exist in a world where their worst fear is to look like a hypocrite for embodying the same traits they see in their political antagonists. Sacre bleu!

There is one sequence that excited and frustrated me, because it hinted at the live-action cartoon this could have been to mock the current political climate. To support Hastings, Zimmer enlists billionaire inventor Elton Chambers (national treasure Bill Irwin) to contribute to the campaign. Chambers, an amalgamation of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, has encased his body in a massive, clumsy exoskeleton, and Irwin comes clomping in with what I do believe is the same sound effect from “Robocop 2”, jerking violently in a small room as he attempts to crack some form of a joke. It’s a rude, ableist aside from a much more daring movie, and it’s the funniest part of it. But Stewart is here to deliver a point, from where he built backwards. The plot wraps up in a punchline about dark money and Washington’s vampiric influence on small town politics. An honorable message, but one that doesn’t require the resources of an hour-and-a-half movie, and one that is completely disassociated from any of the impish social commentary that fueled “The Daily Show” at its best.

Speaking of dark money, many politicians have spoken about the need for ending the private prison industry. But the same sort of grift and corruption that fuels those institutions can be found in publicly-funded prisons as well. If you’re trying to distinguish the humane and inhumane American prisons, you’re missing the point. A number of companies have monopolized services offered to prisons, and they have earned a nice chunk of profit by taking advantage of a customer base that cannot say no.

I highly recommend this article from The Nation that touches on the food and telecommunications contracts that power prisons. In my experience, Keefe’s was a company that often sold basic food items on our commissaries, often at a write-up of 125-150%. Which is not so extreme in the long-run but I understand costs were even more exorbitant in other institutions. Securus is also mentioned, a company that pockets the money spent by innocent people on the outside simply to speak to their loved ones, via phone or email. Physical mail was the only form of communication Securus didn’t touch. But is a coincidence that in the last few years, institutions have been phasing out physical mail, usually under the fairy tale of paper mail being coated in fentanyl? Because that’s the ludicrously false story Washington politicians have claimed based on unsubstantiated Federal Bureau Of Prisons tall tales about mail officers seeing their hands go numb from paper mail fentanyl exposure (which does not happen upon contact with fentanyl). 

When you go to prison, you’re assigned a prisoner number ID, and you are effectively that number for the rest of your sentence. But it turns out this ID runs secondary to your first number – how much money the FBOP can juice out of you.

Next week, we enter the narrow world of Adaptations Of Books I Read While I Was In Prison! Would love to find a more convenient name for that!