All War and No Agency: Tropic Thunder

Abstract

No doubt Tropic Thunder is a spoof film, spoofing on progressive liberal ideals, though less on the ideals themselves perhaps than on how films take up the call to depict such ideals in (popular) culture and cinema. Whether the film is crassly opportunistic in making light of, or mobilizing resentment against, such depictions, or whether it seeks to indict crass opportunism in relation to popular-cultural depictions of, say, obesity (The Fatties), race and the superficiality of hip-hop culture (Alpa Chino), climate crises (the Scorcher franchise), gay marriage (Satan’s Alley), or intellectual disability (Simple Jack), is open to interpretation. Tropic Thunder may be simply a spoof film after all, less an indictment of nihilism than an example, however comedic, of it.