American Politics

In a series of comedies that started with 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and culminated in its 2013 sequel, Anchorman: The Legend Continues, director Adam McKay has established himself as America’s high poet of white guy imbecility. Those two films, plus three feature-length comedies in between, all starred Will Ferrell as some sort of insufferable idiot whose obliviousness to his own destructive tendencies bordered on magical. McKay could have extended the series indefinitely, replacing one cinematic dumbass with the next, but in 2015 he opted to direct The Big Short, a complex and didactic drama starring Ryan Gosling about the 2008 financial crisis. McKay may have switched genres, but he didn’t change his true subject matter: the film is as much about clueless white men and their destructive mistakes as were any of Ron Burgundy’s adventures. If a philosophical question emerged from The Big Short, it was whether it is possible – or worthwhile – to distinguish between stupidity and criminality. As Gosling’s character challenges a room of hedge funders: ‘Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I’ll have my wife’s brother arrested.’ Gosling’s finance dude settles the matter himself: ‘There’s some shady shit going down [in the housing market], but it’s fuelled by stupidity.’ - 在一系列以2004年的《主持人：勃艮第传奇》开始，并在2013年的续集《主持人：传奇》中达到高潮的喜剧中，导演亚当·麦凯（Adam McKay）确立了自己是美国白人低能诗人的地位。这两部电影，加上中间三部长篇喜剧，都是威尔·费雷尔主演的，他是一个难以忍受的白痴，对自己的破坏性倾向的遗忘近乎于魔法。麦凯本可以无限期地扩展这个系列，用下一个取代一个电影中的笨蛋，但在2015年，他选择了导演一部由瑞安·戈斯林主演的关于2008年金融危机的大型短剧，一部复杂的说教剧。麦凯可能改变了风格，但他并没有改变他真正的主题：这部电影讲述的是愚蠢的白人和他们的破坏性错误，就像罗恩·勃艮第的冒险一样。如果一个哲学问题从大短句中出现，那就是区分愚蠢和犯罪是否有可能——或者值得。当戈斯林的角色挑战一屋子对冲基金的投资者时：“告诉我愚蠢和非法的区别，我会逮捕我妻子的弟弟。”戈斯林的金融专家自己解决了这个问题：“（房地产市场）有一些可疑的事情要发生，但这是由愚蠢推动的。”