last weekend i saw the documentary fuck. it was okay, not nearly as good as i had heard. alan keyes was in it, expressing the outrage like we all expect him to in these things. keyes was also in borat. so now i'm wondering just how outraged the guy really is.
i guess i could give him a pass for borat. borat's whole schtick was misleading people about the type of movie they were making. but "fuck"? how did he not know what he was getting into with that? i mean, if you're a politician with hopes of being elected to national office (he's run for president twice and senate once), why would you agree to appear in a movie called "fuck"? sure, the film has some intellectual pretensions--it tries to explore the word "fuck" as a social phenomenon. but it's still about the word "fuck"; a word that, as the documentary itself points out, is generally considered to be one of the more profane terms in the english language.
there were people in the film who thought that the word should not be tarred with such a bad reputation. but keyes wasn't one of them. his scenes made it clear that he was squarely on the anti-fuck side of the debate. but doesn't his very presence in the file contradict his point? if he really thinks that it is right for the word to be so reviled, then why wouldn't he avoid any association with it? i mean, he's a politician. if "fuck" does reflect badly on him, wouldn't he think that his like-minded base would hold his appearance in the film against him. was he thinking about his political career at all?
keyes doesn't really have a viable political career. i think most of us know that. obama crushed him in the senate race and his presidential campaigns never got beyond the single digits. but i always assumed that keyes himself didn't have a clue. why else would he keep running? but "fuck" got me thinking that maybe keyes is a little more self-aware than i gave him credit for. maybe he doesn't think he is a serious candidate either.
