Sinclair’s Dystopia or Mank might be Drunk but he’s not Wrong

So the thing about Mank…

Much has been made over the film’s (directed by David Fincher, written by his father Jack Fincher and starring Gary Oldman) fraught depictions regarding the true ownership of Citizen Kane. But what seems to have been broomed off to the side is the absolutely deliberate - and in my opinion - masterstroke of linking Mank’s brilliant screed against the corruptive, de-humanizing and isolating influence of consolidated, absolute power, and his arm’s-length experience with Upton Sinclair’s doomed campaign to wrest control from the wealthy elites of 1930s California and distribute it amongst the impoverished masses. He witnesses stinking rich studio heads implore their “family” to stand together and take a 50% salary cut to “keep the family strong” (while never deigning to sacrifice their own bottom line). He watches his colleagues at MGM, compelled to fabricate fugazi news reels with “actors” paid to decry Sinclair’s scary Socialism, suffer tragic consequences when their consciences get the better of them. And indeed, Sinclair’s dream of a more equal society is linked by these media-moguls to the boogeyman of Communism. Sound familiar? (Extra reading: Thomas Frank’s The People, No). Here you have the richer-than-God Hearst-types, in cahoots with the purveyors of mass media, capable of swaying (even if subconsciously) the voting opinions of the aforementioned teeming masses, who also (as Amanda Seyfried’s Marion Davies accidently lets slip) get to pick the goddamn cabinets of the sitting President of the United States. Democracy, thy name is Commerce.

Here we have Fincher definitively stating that the manipulation of the broader populace through propaganda masquerading as news is not a novel notion to our internet age… the only difference is it’s simply now able to be signal-boosted to a deified degree.  

Mank is bookended by two very telling admissions by the film’s towering paragons of power: Louis B Mayer and Willie Randolph Hearst. Mayer reveals the “true” magic of the movies is not the escape of a fantastical emotional journey, but the slick sleight of hand where the product is bought and paid for, though the memory is the only thing the buyer gets to keep. So too are we being sold subjective accounts of the world, catered to our baser natures, with only the emotional scarring to show for it. You might not remember specifically why you dislike Public Figure X but you just somehow remember reading somewhere that they’re a terrible person. Toward the end of Mank, Willie Hearst (Charles Dance) recounts to a soused Mank the parable of the Organ Grinder’s Monkey. Within that short tale, the Finchers lay out their thesis for the motivation behind one of the greatest films in history: we all believe what we want, so long as it makes us the hero of our story.

And those in Power know exactly how to use this against us.