the light-hearted, ecstatic pageant that Brean and Motss concoct together, negativity
has no place. Only computer-generated images of a ‘clean war’ are filtered to a
euphoric global audience.
In Wag the Dog, it is apparent how utterly divorced these patriotic simulacra are
from reality. In his Manichean plot that pits good against evil, Motss’s war hero is the
very embodiment of courage, sacrifice, and dignity. In reality, Sergeant William
Shumann (Woody Harrelson) is a deranged criminal that was convicted of raping a nun.
Given that “Old Shoe,” as he is affectionately known by the public, attempts to rape the
wife of a farmer near the end of the film, the viewer has little reason to question his guilt.
After the husband shoots and kills the potential rapist, Motss is forced to improvise.
Instead of coming apart at the seams, the fictitious Albanian War merely takes another
cinematic twist. In an indication of just how easy it is to maintain hyper-real fictions
through the transmission of images via the media, Schumann receives a grandiose
military funeral fit for a national hero. The mainstream media will follow Motss’s script to
the letter yet again thereby ensuring public trust.
Despite a few momentary setbacks including interference from the Central
Intelligence Agency which confronts Brean and Motss with the reality that there is no
war, the general public will continue to consume signs of terrorism throughout the film
unwaveringly. Providing no facile optimism that the chimerical illusion of virtual warfare
will eventually be shattered, we learn at the end of the film that the president wants to
return to Albania to “finish the job.” Similar to Baudrillard, Levinson appears to suggest
that the integral reality of war has arrived whether we like it or not. In a symbolic, selfreferential network of signs that “have become unhinged from the signified,” reality no
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