Pulling the Strings

by Taylor Russo

The film Team America: World Police, is a political satire that makes fun of Hollywood action movies by using exaggeration (pg. 5), puppet characters and musical outbursts throughout the film. The creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are known for making jokes about controversial topics going on in the world by using raunchy, offensive humor and violence as a key ingredient to poke fun. The underlying message of the film is how America tries to involve itself in everyone else’s business and how we try to “police” the world, but also a little bit of bringing to people’s attention how Hollywood celebrities try to use their star power to sway people on certain political issues.

Team America polices the world for good, but usually results in doing more harm than good. For example, when Team America destroys the terrorists who are trying to attack Paris, they end up doing more damage to the city than the terrorists probably would have done. Team America leaves the city destroyed and in flames, however, they consider it a victory because they “saved” Paris. After Gary infiltrates the terrorists in Cairo, Team America kills them all but also leaves Cairo absolutely destroyed. It is brought to our attention that the majority of the world is not a fan of Team America when a news reporter says “Team America once again pissed off the entire world by blowing up half of Cairo”. Cairo attacks led the terrorists to blow up the Panama Canal in retaliation. The Panama Canal, once again not in the United States, causes Team America to go after the terrorists again. The teams job of policing the world that they probably have no business doing, is an on going cycle of destruction. This film is comedy in the sense of laughter, anarchy and disruption of harmony, but also in the sense of movement towards harmony, integration and a happy ending (pg. 8) (other than the insect crawling out of Kim Jong-Un’s mouth and flying away). The film uses the most popular entertainment found in Hollywood comedies, musicals (pg. 4), to keep the seriousness of the issues presented lighter and more humorous. For example, Kim Jong-Un breaks out into musical at the beginning of the film with a song about how “ronrey” he is. It is quite amusing.

Lastly, it could also be inferred that the liberal celebrities part of the Famous Actor's Guild, or F.A.G., who criticize the team, are going public with their thoughts to get the rest of the world to agree with them, is a poke at how celebrities in reality do try to publicize their opinions to get people on board with them and bring issues to the publics attention. The F.A.G. characters are portrayed as slightly arrogant, not too bright, know-it-alls. An example I thought showed that well was when F.A.G. and Team America broke out in a fight and one of the actresses said “Let’s go bitch. I’ve done action movies!” Indicating she actually had never been in a real fight before, just scripted ones.