This method of image building has been around since modern economy. Nintendo™ is for the kids. Sega™ was for the older siblings. Nowadays it isn’t important whether a product does what it needs to do but rather that it applies to the image-based standard a consumer wants it to be.
But ‘Cultural economy’ doesn’t end with products on the shelf of a local supermarket. I argue (and many with me) that I also see this image building pop up whenever a country presents itself. Each Olympics, Eurovision, World Football Tournament countries present themselves as the way they wish to be perceived (which, in football is annoying since hooligans tend to get in the way).
The two biggest international movie-producing countries in the world, The United States and The United Kingdom, have done this for ages in their movies. They sold themselves as either ‘the land of the free who knows how to take care of itself’, or ‘the great nation that brought forth the world’.
One could very well argue that the main reason why refugees flock to these countries is because they ‘look so good’ on the silver screen.
But, and here is the catch I wish to focus upon in this article, this does automatically imply that people abroad will put this ‘image’ to scrutinous investigation.
Take the United States per example. Throughout the cold war the USA has bombarded the rest of the western world with movie after movie featuring their country as the ‘last line of defence against’ Sovjets, Aliens, Giant Ants, and so-on and so-on.
The best example is, of course, Independence Day (1996), made by a German.
But by posing itself as ‘the best country ever!’ it automatically causes the critical minds of the rest of the world to wonder if that is truly the case.
Now, the United States of America isn’t the best country in the world; not by a long shot. But it is the image the media-industry keeps on selling to the world.
So, of course, small time moviemakers wish to highlight the cracks in this image. One of those movies is Cheaters (2000).
Cheaters is a great movie because it shows what eons of movie-industry-cultural-economy had told the rest of the world before: In the United States, if you are good at sports you get a free ride to college. If you are bookwise then you have a problem. Or, if you look at it another way, if you are rich, life is easy, if you are poor, life will only get harder.
The examples are numerous in the movies that came before Cheaters; In A Wonderful life (1946) the main character got his college break by being great at football. The same goes for Forrest Gump (1994). The whole plot of Mr. Destiny (1995) hinges on the fact that the main character didn’t make it in sports. The USA loves sports and loves winners. And not just any winners, but Mohammed Ali ‘one guy takes all’ winners.
But anybody with half a mind knows that a sole reliance on continues winners is a bad idea. Everybody fails once in a while. So why not showcase the underdog and, whilst you are at it, highlight what is wrong with, in the case of Cheaters, the United States educational system.
Cheaters
A low-end public-school tries its hand at the prestigious academic decathlon cup. A contest which has been consistently won by the same school for ten years running. Then, by chance, they happen upon the questions for the final round of the competition. Will they cheat? Of course they will! It’s the only way they can, finally, escape mediocrity in an society fixated on elitism.
how the movie is going to play out: some kids cheat, the truth comes out, they deny it, they come clean.
But there is far more to this story than just that. Because Cheaters is all about equality. The (cultural economy) image the United States sells to the world and its own residents of ‘all men are created equal’ is proven wrong in this movie. The kids at this particular high-school don’t get an equal chance to win the main prize than that other school who keeps on winning the same cup year after year (and even houses the competition committee). So they cheat to, for once, feel like winners.
It’s not ‘levelling the playing field’ but rather creating a precedent for others to aspire to (even though this social-aspect is furthest from the minds of the characters, they just want to win ‘for once’).
It is this sense of cultural and/or economical inequality that runs like a red thread throughout this movie. This is the motivation for their cheating. But, as any good movie should, this pure, understandable motivation becomes muddled by layers as the teens keep on denying their cheating and defying (quite brutally) those who want to know the truth of the matter.
When a story is simple the writing should be great. After all, there is no need for extensive elaborate exposition. The audience knows what’s going on and they want to see what happens next. Insert some great lines. Cheaters is mild when it comes to great lines. There are some gems, but, overall, the movie shows what the audience needs to see to get the gist.
Sure, there’s Jeff Daniel’s Dr. Gerard Plecki who is furious are the (United States) system as it killed his immigrant father for believing in the ‘American dream’. But these scenes hardly bring any firework to the table. The audience understands the character better, absolutely, but it doesn’t make the main story better.
Instead it is the willingness of the students to cheat that speaks volumes. The audience never learns why all of them cheat (we get some insights here and there, but never much) and this is refreshing. The audience gets to fill in the blanks based on almost a hundred years of United States cultural economy.
The acting supports this notion. Each and every teen in this movie knows their own backstory. We –the audience- don’t get to see it but they know and act accordingly. Some of the teenagers who were nice before become vile, whilst others become more understandable. As the audience already reasoned how the whole movie was going to play out from the get-go it layers the performances.
In the end Cheaters is a full-out attack on the American educational system and its strange preoccupancy of focussing on ’winners’ over actually teaching kids. Since this movie came out in the year 2000 nothing really changed. But, who knows, maybe with a cheat here-and-there things will come around.
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