Top non-fiction watches and reads for American politics

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By Alice O’Donnell

Arts and Entertainment Editor

America, America, America. It seems like the last few months it’s impossible not to hear of the country. From the election, to (most likely/definitely fake) rumours of voting fraud, to Covid - 19 vaccinations, America has permanently been in the news as of late. In a sense of lockdown boredom, I decided if you can’t beat them, join them, and decided to explore media steeped and set in America. I was especially interested in watching non-fiction or dramatized real life stories of the cultural history of American politics. Below is a book, documentary and film which I found to not only to be extremely interesting, but also highly enlightening on the history of American politics, as well as its turbulent relationship with race.

Novel – ‘Antisocial’, by Andrew Marantz

This is honestly one of the best books I’ve read for quite a while. Andrew Marantz is a young, thirty - something journalist who has written for The New Yorker since 2011. This journalistic experience is palpable when reading the book, but Marantz also has a very lyrical and witty style of writing. The book chronicles Andrew as he embeds himself into a group of people who call themselves “the Deplorables” (after Hillary Clinton’s disastrous choice of words in a 2016 interview). More trolls than journalists, they work mainly on Twitter and other social media sites, trolling legitimate politicians, spreading conspiracy and QAnon theories, and supporting the likes of Donald Trump as president. The book looks at the dangers of social media in the spread of extreme views, and can be summarised with this line from the book as Marantz describes the men and women who self-proclaim themselves as ‘the Deplorables’ –“They took for granted that the old institutions ought to be burned to the ground, and they used the tools at their disposal – new media, especially social media – to light as many matches as possible. As for what kind of society might emerge from the ashes, they had no coherent vision and showed little interest in developing one.” Even though most of us

“They took for granted that the old institutions ought to be burned to the ground, and they used the tools at their disposal – new media, especially social media – to light as many matches as possible.”

are not American, I would still recommend young Irish people read this book. It shines a light on the role social media plays in the advancement and growth of extreme political ideologies and parties, and forces the reader to examine the forms of media they themselves consume.

Documentary – ‘The 13th’

‘The 13th is a documentary film directed, produced and written by Ava DuVernay. The documentary gets its name from the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The documentary explores in depth the history of race relations, with a particular focus on the American issue of mass incarceration of people of colour. The documentary is truly fascinating, and DuVernay manages to employ a number of techniques to get her message across while keeping the viewer interested through a mix of interviews, scenes from films, facts and even lyrics, such as the line from Usher’s Chains; “You act like the change / Tryna out me in chains / Don’t act like you saving us / It’s still the same.” It was an immediate hit on Netflix when it was released in 2016, and has been nominated for dozens of awards, including an Academy Award, and eight award categories in the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards (winning three of those nominations). The film is really eye - opening, and explores the cold manufacturing of mass incarcerated, and the lasting racial injustices present in America.

Film – ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’

Directed by Aaron Sorkin, this film depicts the Chicago Seven, a group of men who were charged with conspiracy and inciting violence during an anti - Vietnam War protest in Chicago. The film follows the seven men, as well as one Black Panther member, and focuses mainly on the court proceedings, with flashbacks serving to illustrate what happened at the protest as it’s being told in court. There were times I found myself pausing the film and googling how accurate it was. ‘Surely that wasn’t allowed in a courtroom’, I thought numerous times, only to find not only did it happen that way, but in some instances the film lightened the situation. Although the film only looks at this very specific instance, it gives great insight into American society at the time – the blatant racism, the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War, the class divide, the hippy movement and the massive distrust between political parties. Sorkin, who also wrote the screenplay, balances this all out to make a fascinating historical film. There’s also a fair dash of humour in there, mixed with all the gravity of the situation, creating a very enjoyable but also thought-provoking film.