1/25/17 - Wag the Dog

Please write a few sentences about your experience in this class this semester.  What went well?  What would you change to make it better?




You will write 1-2 pages on any the following prompts:

1.  What does the title mean?  Who is the dog and who is the tail?

2.  "Change the story, change the lead" is Conrad Brean’s (Mr. Fix-It)  motto for how to handle the media in the midst of the sex scandal that threatens to undermine the president’s re-election campaign. What does the motto mean?


3.  What did Brean mean when he told the CIA agent that he needed a war "to preserve [his] way of life"?

4.  Explain the significance of the lines in the movie "Of course there's a war; I'm seeing it on TV" and "We remember the slogans, but we don't remember the war" in terms of the media's effectiveness.

5.  What does a movie producer do?  What was the movie producer's role in this movie?  What happens to him at the end of the movie and why?

6.  Is this movie realistic?  Could something like this happen in our world today?

7. Wag the Dog employs satire and irony to deliver its message.  What are some examples used in the movie?  How effective are they?

8.  Motss (The Producer) says of his "pageant", "It’s a complete fraud and it looks one hundred percent real.” Why did the American people accept the version of reality that Brean and Motss created?

9.  "The President is a product." To what extent does the film show this to be true about political leaders and people in public life?  How are political commercials used in this film?  Compare this movie to what's currently going on in politics.


10.  Did you like the movie? Why or why not?