Isle Of Dogs Vs. Roseanne – Writing For Political Change

Please note, this podcast was recorded prior to the recent scandals surrounding Roseanne Barr. We have chosen to leave the podcast on our site because we feel it may have information that is valuable to writers. But the analysis was based upon what the show appeared to be after the airing of the pilot. As recent events have shown, rather than taking advantage of her unique opportunity to use her artistic platform to begin a healing for a torn apart America, as I had hoped when recording this podcast, Roseanne has instead used her platform to further fracture us through hate, reminding us of a darker side of what art can do when used in the wrong way. On my podcast I have always tried to separate the art from the artist. But this episode certainly reflects a mistake on my part in failing to note the difference between the real Roseanne and the character she plays on her show. This week we are going to be talking about two scripts that seem to have nothing in common.  The first is Isle of Dogs by Wes Anderson. And the second is the pilot of the new Roseanne. Wait, what? Well keep listening, because as different as they are in every aspect of their execution, their style, their politics, their genre and their format, Isle of Dogs and Roseanne do have one incredibly important thing in common: They’re both a lesson in the power of movies and TV shows to grapple with real socio-political issues, and make real change in our society. And what’s so fabulous about both of these scripts is that they do so without sacrificing their political beliefs, without dumbing anything down for their audience, and without compromising their artistic integrity or their commercial or critical success. Isle of Dogs is a ridiculous movie about a ridiculous concept. And when I say Isle of Dogs is a ridiculous movie about a ridiculous concept, I’m not referring to the ridiculous concept of a Japan of the near future in which dogs are banished to a mysterious island by a cat loving corrupt leader… or the unlikely story of his adopted child’s flying a stolen airplane to the land of garbage save his beloved pet, Spots. When I say ridiculous story about a ridiculous concept, I am talking about the concept underneath: the real theme of this movie. Because this isn't a movie about dogs. This isn't a movie about the war between cats and dogs. This isn't a movie about a closeted cat lover who wants to banish dogs from his corrupt future Japan. And this is not just a movie the power of the visual image-- though Wes Anderson’s approach to Isolating Visual Moments of Action is at once a master class in how to write action in a screenplay, and a complete violation of every rule you thought you knew. And yes, I can’t help but wax poetic about how Wes Anderson somehow manages to fuse the rules of theatre and film, creating set pieces like a giant stage, and then populating them with oddly poetic images… or how he uses that poetry at once as an homage and a satire of a world that he loves, treating the ridiculous with piety, and the serious with ridiculousness... But that’s not what the movie is about either. Isle of Dogs is a movie about racism and politics. In other words, Isle of Dogs is a movie about America. And it is interesting because Wes Anderson has taken a lot of crap actually for this movie. Some critics feel that Isle of Dogs is guilty of cultural appropriation in its depiction of this future Japan; other critics have argued that having a white exchange student as a savior is degrading to the Japanese characters at the center of the movie, a recreation of the old white savior trope. And maybe these things are true. Maybe these things would be true if this was a movie about Japan. But, really this is an homage to Japanese film making by a filmmaker who loves Japan, and who loves Japanese filmmakers. And more importantly, this is a movie about America. This isn't a Japan that looks like Japan. These aren't dogs that act like dogs. This isn't a political landscape that looks like a real political landscape. This is a satire of the most ridiculous part of our human nature. This is a movie that looks at the ridiculousness of racism, that looks at the ridiculousness of deporting people based on what they are rather than who they are-- in this case, the fact that they are dogs-- which is just as ridiculous as banishing someone from the United States because they happen to have been born in Mexico, or some other country. This is a movie about totalitarian law and corruption. This is a movie about playing the media. This is a movie about the way that actual science gets dismissed in favor of politics. This is a movie about the fact that our leaders tend to be puppets that are manipulated by much darker forces behind them. This is a movie about the idea of equal debate in a world where total falsehoods and totally true statements are given equal weight. This is a movie about a black dog and a white dog who don’t realize that they are brothers because they seemed to have come from such different backgrounds. This is not a movie about a bunch of stupid dogs, and it’s not a movie about Japan—it is a movie about us. What is wonderful about Wes Anderson--and this is such an important thing if you are writing a political movie-- What’s so wonderful about him is that he managed to make a political movie without making us feel political. Without getting up on a soapbox. Without isolating the people on the other side but rather, holding up a ridiculous, magical mirror in which we could examine ourselves and maybe change what we believe. A lot of us are mad about politics right now. A lot of writers are mad about politics. And a lot of writers who don’t agree with my politics (and I am somewhere far, far, far, to the left), are equally angry about politics right now. If you watched the reboot of Roseanne what is incredibly powerful and what made that reboot so darn effective and successful is that, like Isle of Dogs, rather than getting up on a soapbox and preaching to the choir, it trusted its audience to form their own opinion. Which is interesting, because we’re talking about two writers on completely different sides of the political spectrum: One, Roseanne Barr, an unabashed Trump supporter, and the other, Wes Anderson, making an allegory about racism and xenophobia in a magical dog hating Japan. But both writers take the same approach, which is basically to say, “Hey, we trust our audiences to form their own opinions. Rather than getting up on a soapbox and moralizing, what we are going to do is we are going to give our audiences a chance to look at themselves.” Both Isle of Dogs and Roseanne make their political points by transcending politics-- and focusing instead on the heart of all screenwriting-- by focusing on characters, and relationships and the things that really matter to us. If Isle of Dogs is  a poetic masterpiece set against a ridiculous world, Roseanne is a couch, a studio audience, and a bunch of laugh lines, set against a very real world. In Roseanne what happens is we get to look at a family that we love and that loves each other, Roseanne has always been the symbol for white trash dysfunction, a family that is so messed up, but underneath it really loves each other. That’s why Roseanne was welcomed into so many houses and so many homes for such a long time with so much success. Because Roseanne gave us an opportunity to laugh at ourselves, but also to see ourselves clearly, not as the perfect people that we are supposed to be, but as the totally messed up but well intentioned people that we actually are. It allowed us to see our families that way. And our friends that way. And even the people we don’t agree with that way. Who would have thought that a reboot of Roseanne, might be the thing that actually begins the healing of America in the wake of the horrific political crisis we have been through. That a show like Roseanne would be able to take these two extreme points of view and somehow bring them back together. That a show like Roseanne would help us remember -- you know what?-- at the end of all this, at the end the day we still love each other. Roseanne is going, “Okay look, I believe this, and my sister believes this, and we are estranged over the rift between us so badly that we have forgotten the fact that we love each other. And somehow through humor, comedy and love we are going to agree to disagree, and remember that at the end of the day we are sisters, or we are brothers, or we are family.” That we are actually all the same, and that we are actually all going through the same stuff together. Even the people who support the party and the politicians that you don’t believe in... So, as a screenwriter this is why you are here. You are here to change the social fabric of your world. But that doesn’t mean getting up on a soapbox. In fact if you do get up on a soapbox, if you make one of these moralistic movies about the way things are supposed to be, here is the only thing that you can be guaranteed: the only people who will listen to you are the people who already believe what you are saying. You are going to be preaching to the choir and you aren't going to convince anybody. But, create a show like Roseanne and you give people a chance to actually look at themselves, to actually look at how ridiculous, and how beautiful, and how loving, and how messed up we all actually are. You give them a chance to actually come out the other side and remember who we can actually be. So, Roseanne takes one model, “Hey let’s look at this honestly, let’s look at the real intentions and the real misconceptions, and the real extremes on both sides, and let’s show America a model for how those two sides can actually come together, not in perfect harmony but in beautiful dysfunction.”