the heinous realities of armed conflicts, war has become a hyper-realized, idyllic space
free from all negativity. This baffling and destructive phenomenon explains why Brean
and Motss strive to portray war as a light-hearted pageant or a delightful spectacle.
Indeed, what Baudrillard terms the “whitewashing” of violence is perhaps the most
disturbing element in the entire film. Trapped inside of a symbolic universe in which all
suffering has been removed, why would the modern subject demand that war be
considered a desperate, last resort? Who needs diplomatic alternatives to avoid
political crises when hyper-real simulations have carefully extracted anguish from
warfare? The integral reality of virtual war and its utter denial of negativity have ensured
that governments no longer need to provide much of a justification at all to invade any
given country. The unbridled fervor of the American public in Wag the Dog should be
understood in this context. Why ask questions or demand answers when war is now
depicted in such a fashion? Instead of being appropriately labeled a crime against
humanity that should never be taken lightly, Wag the Dog illustrates that war now more
closely resembles Baudrillard’s ‘perfect crime’ against reality than a deplorable atrocity.
Brean convinces Motss that their conniving scheme will never be exposed by
underscoring that the hegemonic forces which exploit the seductive power of the hyperreal murdered the reality principle a long time ago. As Andrew Doyle notes, “Brean:
What’s the thing people remember about the Gulf War? A bomb falling down a
chimney. Let me tell you something: I was in the building where we filmed that with a
10-inch model made out of Legos / Motss: Is that true? / Brean: Who the hell’s to say?
Brean doesn’t refute these pivotal images, he merely asserts that the appearance of
them is more important than their actuality” (4). Given that images stand in for reality in
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