One only talks well about the dead, is a rule of behavior from antiquity. In the mini-series "The Loudest Voice", a dead person talks about himself right at the beginning, but it sounds like this: "I know what people will say about me: He was right-winger, paranoid and fat." It's about Roger Ailes, ultra-conservative whip and years-old executive director of Donald Trump's favorite Fox News.
In seven episodes "The Loudest Voice" paints this funeral speech with relish, with Ailes performer Russell Crowe in fatsuit and details from his professional and private life. The allegations of sexual harassment, which finally brought him down in 2016, are only one sentence in a symphony of depravity.
The production of the station Showtime is another example of the strong politicization of the US media landscape into entertainment formats. And it makes drastic sense of the deep ditch that has devoured by the society of the United States - not only the narrative attitude of the series makes it completely clear on which side the "Loudest Voice" -maker stand:
Because Showtime is part of CBS Corporation, one of the largest TV companies in the US. In turn, the company owns National Amusements' majority stake in the company, owned by billionaire Sumner Redstone, a self-confessed democrat and a Liberal rival to Rupert Murdoch until his retirement from active business in 2016.
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"The Loudest Voice": Sittengemälde from the horror cabinetFor Liberal Americans and serial makers, Murdoch and Roger Ailes stand for a morally corrupted, in the core rotting conservatism that led to Trump's presidency. Ailes served as adviser to the president after leaving Fox News. "The Loudest Voice" makes of his story a juicy Sittengemälde from the horror cabinet of fascist white men.
While the HBO series "Succession" is currently negotiating the influence of the Murdoch clan on the US media on the basis of a fictional family ties, "The Loudest Voice" goes directly into the Empire. Rupert Murdoch emerges in almost every episode, but rather as a patriarch interested in return, not as a political zealot. He finds that in Roger Ailes, and as he begins his craft at Fox News, both come together: political propaganda and profits.
"People do not want to be informed, they want to feel informed , " is one of the guiding principles with which Ailes handles the serial narrative and with which he initially softens journalistic standards until journalism finally becomes the means to an end, from reactionary to right-wing To disseminate thought. To bring back the real America, that's what Ailes calls it.
After September 11, 2001, Ailes is in his element, he thinks he is at war and throws his machine to drummeln medial for the so-called anti-terror campaign of the White House including Iraq war. However, not without blackmailing the Bush administration and demanding direct access to the president at all times.
The "Loudest Voice" creators, including Spotlight director Tom McCarthy, reveal many of the unpleasant to dangerous faces of Ailes' power-man: he's a paranoid and conspiracy theorist, blackmailing and bullying, treating his staff like cattle and seeing women as objects of disposition. He regularly forces an employee to have sex, as she no longer wants to be exploited, he lets her shadow and imprison her. The moderator Gretchen Carlson (Naomi Watts) defends itself only after years of humiliation.
In fact, Roger Ailes was one of the first and most prominent # MeToo protagonists, but in "The Loudest Voice," his behavior toward women is just one detail in a bigger picture. What is more important to the creators is the portrait of a conservative who upholds the motto "God, family, fatherland" in public, but who actually plays for his own benefit in every situation in life.
A comment on Trump's presidency could not be clearer. In a speech to workers in his hometown of Ohio, the makers of Ailes even put in the mouthpiece that Trump wore to the White House House: "Make America Great Again." Which is funny, because Trump bragged to have invented him, although he played in 1980 in the election campaign of Ronald Reagan played a role - the Ailes at that time as a media consultant.
It's all entertaining and, yes, frightening. However, the series is over-zealous in denouncing moral corruption of conservatism: dramaturgically, something must happen all the time. The episodes follow a breathless thriller structure, a countdown is ticking somewhere.
This condensation makes the media horror story in places extremely stirring. But she confines herself to retelling the frightening details and barely takes time for an in-depth, psychologically sound analysis. In its worst moments, "The Loudest Voice" looks like a return coach from the other side of the social divide.
"The Loudest Voice" is available on Sky Deutschland