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“Meet John Doe”, Alive And Well

Before the horrific shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the primary political conversation surrounding The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t about violence in movies or gun control. It was about whether director Christopher Nolan meant fictional anarchist villain Bane to be a stand-in for anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street. Nolan had no such intention, telling Rolling Stone, “If you’re saying, ‘Have you made a film that’s supposed to be criticizing the Occupy Wall Street movement?’ — well, obviously, that’s not true.” This holds true for his trilogy as a whole. Said Nolan, “the films genuinely aren’t intended to be political.”

Like Nolan, legendary filmmaker Frank Capra’s career boomed during a similar period of economic and political tumult, the Great Depression. His first big hit was 1934′s It Happened One Night and was followed by Mr. Deeds Goes to Town in 1936. Later, and after a few stinkers, Capra debuted a similarly titled Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in 1939. Unlike Nolan’s cinematic forays that bear only an assumed connection to our times, Capra’s flicks embraced the socioeconomic tumult, mindfully weaving everyday woes and triumphs into the plot, much like in his 1941 film Meet John Doe.

Released before America’s entry into World War II essentially ended the depression, Meet John Doe revolves around reporter Ann Mitchell who, on the verge of being fired after mogul DB Norton buys her newspaper, pens an op-ed letter “from” an unemployed man “protesting the state of civilization” and vowing to jump off City Hall’s roof at midnight on Christmas Eve. The letter is signed “John Doe.” Mitchell’s ruse proves to be a hit. And so, Mitchell (played by Barbara Stanwyck) colludes with her editor, Connell, to boost circulation by hiring a bum to be John Doe’s public face.

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Enter Gary Cooper as John Willoughby, a down-and-out baseball player hoping to earn enough cash to fix his pitching arm. A series of op-eds “by” John Doe soon follows. Everything is protested: political corruption, hospital closures and “all the brutality and slaughter in the world.” The impact is instantaneous and enormous: people want to give Doe/Willoughby a job, politicians fear electoral upheaval and average Joes start forming John Doe Clubs devoted to bringing neighbors together. If someone is in need, everyone pitches in.

But therein lies the opportunity for private reward. The mogul publisher Norton realizes he can throw his fortune into the fray to build a vast army of John Does who will champion his hidden agendas — and he does. A grassroots movement becomes an astroturf front and, eventually, a third party hoping to overtake Democrats and Republicans in a presidential race. Doe, the mogul hopes, will be the candidate and his own errand boy.

Fast forward a few decades and you’ll see that tensions between corporate interests and people’s power are evident in the Occupy Movement, and that the convoluted relationships among media outlets, political leaders and business titans continue to confound. But beyond these parallels, Meet John Doe is most similar to 21st Century America in its portrayal of the rise and eventual assimilation of the John Doe Movement into a larger, bottom line-obsessed corporate culture.

Obvious political differences aside —collective responsibility versus rampant individualism—the fictional John Doe Movement and the real-life Tea Party followed a similar path. Both started as media stunts—remember CNBC’s Rick Santelli calling for Tea Party-like protests while standing on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange?—-and both “speak” to and for the average Joe Six Pack. Most importantly, both caught the eye of corporate big wigs. In the Tea Party movement’s case, among said big wigs are Charles and David Koch, mega-business men who pump personal money into public movements, effectively turning a loose coalition of grassroots organizations into a coast-to-coast shell corporation, where private concerns are masked in public protest.

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In the film, Stanwyck’s Mitchell and Cooper’s Doe/Willoughby are the concentrated personification of the private interest versus public advocacy debate and represent two sides of the same selfish, socially disengaged coin. Mitchell starts the movie with dollar signs in her eyes. Asked by editor Connell “What do you want? A journalistic career?” The reporter replies, “Money.” At one point in the movie she even chastises her mother for her charitable work. Meanwhile, Cooper’s jaded, self-absorbed Doe is originally dismissive of the John Doe movement; he’s only concerned with getting back on the mound. Yet both come to see the importance of cooperative action.

Mitchell finally sees the error of her ways when Doe/Willoughby rejects the mogul’s White House offer and is run out of town. It is actually Doe/Willoughby’s political consciousness that blossoms a little earlier. Moved by the masses, he declares on national radio, “Yes, sir, my friends, the meek can only inherit the earth when the John Does start loving their neighbors. You’d better start right now. Don’t wait till the game is called on account of darkness! Wake up, John Doe! You’re the hope of the world!”

It’s true. As Doe/Willoughby says in that same speech, “A free people can beat the world at anything, from war to tiddlywinks, if we all pull in the same direction!” Now, if only the nation, currently suffering from the ideologically splintered Occupy Wall Street Movement and The Tea Party, could actually agree on a common cause–and keep their grassroots actions from being usurped by self-interested astroturf.


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