Strange have these days been of late. Every day we are being faced with new ways of looking at reality. Whether it’s alternative facts or fake news sites, the proliferation of contrarian views is so inundating that there is no conclusive barometer to measure the truth.
But this piece isn’t here to help you decipher what’s real and what’s not because that would only end in an angry exchange in the comments section.
Mind you, that may happen anyway but I am not going to fan those flames today.
In Oscar Wilde’s essay, The Decay of Lying, he famously writes ‘Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life’.
Most people still consider cinematic film to be an art form, although the degree varies based on the caliber of said film.
Without belaboring this point, a B Movie could be considered art, even if it was cheesy, extremely violent, and hyper sexualized.
I present to you the 2010 film Machete, directed by Robert Rodriguez, which features Danny Trejo as the titular character, who is of Mexican descent and caught up in a political immigration scandal involving a wall.
Stop right there, you’re saying. But hear me out, here’s where it gets good.
Robert Deniro plays the role of Senator John McLaughlin who is running for reelection on the promise he will deport all the illegal immigrants and build a wall to keep them out.
Sound familiar?
The rest of this piece contains spoilers on the movie Machete so if you want to stop reading, now is the time.
There are two central points to this plot. The first being public sentiment to build the wall is lukewarm at best and there needs to be something to create an impetus to spur funding to build the wall.
Enter Danny Trejo’s character, Machete, who is duped by McLaughlin’s campaign to assassinate Senator McLaughlin so that public sentiment will tilt toward the wall initiative.
The second and most critical point is that the wall is not being built to keep out illegal immigrants.
Its main purpose is to control the flow of illegal immigrants.
In essence, whoever builds the wall can control the flow of immigrants and allow them in to work where needed to save costs for their employer.
In the end, none of this happens because Machete realizes he is being double crossed and gets revenge on everyone, etc.
However, this movie isn’t over because an alternate ending is playing out right before our eyes.
We have a President who is using the exact same rhetoric and reasoning to build a wall and his companies also benefit greatly from illegal immigrant labor.
So President Trump has borrowed the plot from a B Movie, that was originally only supposed to be a gag reel trailer featured in the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse/Planet Terror movies, and turned it into a de facto immigration policy for the United States of America.
If that isn’t life imitating art then I don’t know what is. So the next time you hear about the wall don’t get mad at Donald Trump, blame Robert Rodriguez, he clearly had the idea first.
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