Disillusionment Actually

Last weekend, lacking cinematic inspiration, I went to see Love Actually. It was crap, actually. The plot was so thin it almost certainly had an eating disorder. The acting was unremarkable; the jokes were patchily amusing, but consistently predictable. It was, in short, exactly the kind of movie you go to over a holiday weekend and then instantly begin to forget.

There was, however, one moment which has remained etched in my memory and will do so long after the gooey romantic storylines and well-worn punchlines have faded into oblivion. But, before we get there, here’s a quick explanation of who the hell I am. I was born in New York to American parents, who moved to England when I was eight months old. I was educated in England, but returned to America during school holidays to visit my grandparents, and then came to Harvard three and a half years ago. In short, I sound English, but, in reality, I am something of an Anglo-American hybrid.

Anyway, back to the Loews Theater on 72nd Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan on a rainy November afternoon. About halfway through Love Actually, Hugh Grant, playing the irrepressibly charming if undeniably naïve British Prime Minister, welcomes the American president to 10 Downing Street. The president, played by Billy Bob Thornton with a mixture of Bushie intransigence and Clintonian lecherousness, first refuses to give an inch in political negotiations and then makes a (somewhat successful) move on the attractive personal assistant on whom Grant has set his heart.

Hell hath no fury like a prime minister scorned, and Grant uses the following day’s press conference to take a swipe at his American counterpart. After the president, sporting the ubiquitous American flag pin, blithely asserts that the so-called “special relationship” between the two countries “remains special,” Grant strikes back. “I love that word relationship. It covers all manner of sins, doesn’t it?” says Grant. “I fear it has become a bad relationship... A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend, and since bullies respond only to strength, I am prepared to be much stronger from now on—and the president should be prepared for that.” The off-the-cuff speech is joyously received by Grant’s political advisors, the British population as a whole and the middle schoolers sitting to my right, briefly roused from giggling into their jumbo size boxes of Milk Duds.

Earlier last month, of course, the all-too real President George W. Bush headed to London on what was, in fact, the first ever official full state visit to England and was received extremely warmly by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Over 100,000 protestors, however, were not so welcoming, and jammed into central London to demonstrate against what, between mouthfuls of granola, they labelled his militaristic, high-handed policies in response to Sept. 11. In particular, the crowd railed against the arbitrary decision to shift focus away from pursuing al Qaeda to invading Iraq. Nonetheless, Bush left after several days with the firm rhetorical support of Blair.

The prime minister pledged his total solidarity with the Americans in front of the cameras despite the fact that Bush had yielded no ground on the release for trial of the British “unlawful combatants” who have been held at Guantanamo Bay since they were captured in Afghanistan. Many in the Labour government supposedly view their release as a point of principle—a vast number of Britons certainly do. It was widely expected that some kind of solution would be reached as a reward for Britain’s loyal support during the war in Iraq.

In contrast to the one-sided diplomacy on display during Bush’s trip to London, Love Actually’s fictional press conference expresses an idealized vision of Anglo-American relations. Well, idealized as far as the Brits are concerned, anyway. America, in spite of being the world’s foremost superpower, should listen to the frank advice offered by its transatlantic allies. As one writer put it last year in The Spectator, a conservative British political magazine, Britain should play Greece to America’s Rome. While no longer in charge of an empire of their own, the Brits should continue to exert an influence on their former subjects, both civilizing the uncouth Americans and passing on a few words of imperial wisdom.

That vision—whether or not you find it appealing—simply bears no relation to the world around us. The special relationship between the two countries seems, as far as the current administration in Washington is concerned, to exist only so that the British can support American foreign policies, thereby lending them the fig leaf of international legitimacy. Blair, for one, appears to be sincere in his conviction that pre-emptive action is the only way to stamp out the threat of international terrorism. Nevertheless, the belief that Britain is acting as nothing more than America’s lackey in a blinkered and immoral international misadventure is extremely common across the Atlantic.

Before I came to Harvard, many of my English friends—somewhat in jest, but somewhat seriously—liked to stereotype Americans as ignorant bozos, guzzling giant Diet Cokes while cruising to malls in their Hummers. Now there’s a new image of Americans—and it’s far less light-hearted than before—as arrogant boors, fondling huge automatic weapons while racing to Baghdad in their Humvees. And, however unfair that portrayal, the fact that it is widely believed—and in the country which is, after all, America’s most loyal ally—is a tremendous problem, whether or not the Bush administration cares to confront it.

When University President Lawrence H. Summers was installed in Tercentenary Theater in October 2001, a choir of Harvard undergraduates sang “America the Beautiful.“ And, as nauseatingly corny as it sounds—and as nauseatingly corny as it was—I cried. (At the time I took great care that my friends standing near me couldn’t see me doing anything so embarrassing, but I guess I’ve rather blown that now.) I didn’t cry for the people who had died in the attacks, and I didn’t cry out of fear for the future. I was just overwhelmed by my sense of pride that the country where I had been born and was the home of my entire extended family was, ultimately, on the side of all the values I held dear.

Last weekend, on the other hand, my heart soared to see Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister deal some body blows to the obnoxiously ignorant and gratingly self-righteous American president, and immediately I began to wish that Tony Blair would do something similar in real life. As the movie said, Britain might be small but it shouldn’t cower before America’s myopic bullying. And as soon as Hugh Grant is elected prime minister, it just might.

Anthony S.A. Freinberg ’04 is a history concentrator living in Lowell House. He actually cried at Larry Summers’ installation? No way? Seriously, what a loser.