Back in February of 2014, Salon’s Edwin Lyngar published “I Lost My Dad to Fox News,” a personal essay detailing the transformation of his father, a man who in his youth had been “conventionally and thoughtfully” conservative, into someone “terrified by the idea of slightly more affordable healthcare and a very moderate Democrat in the White House.” Despite the somewhat hyperbolic tone of the article (Lyngar actually compares the experience to losing a parent to Alzheimer’s or cancer), it was a piece that resonated with a lot of folks who has witnessed an elderly parent or loved one become more angry, more frightened, and more closed off to the world based on the constant stream of outrage and paranoia streaming out of right-wing television and talk radio. It likely resonated with director Jen Senko, as well, because a few months prior to the article’s publication, she had already launched a Kickstarter to fund her own exploration of this phenomenon. The fruit of that project, The Brainwashing of My Dad, casts its eyes beyond the immediate impact on Senko’s own family life to the origins of the right-wing media and how it gained their stranglehold on the elderly disenfranchised of the working and middle classes. Within certain limits, the film succeeds in just that.
Brainwashing begins by introducing us to the gradual metamorphosis of Frank Senko, a once-moderate democrat who, over the years, becomes twisted into the shape of a bitter Tea Party extremist. In the process, she traces the evolution of the conservative movement from its lowest point following the failure of the Barry Goldwater campaign in the ‘60s to its present form, and takes a deeper look into the techniques that major conservative media outlets like Fox use to manipulate their audience. Senko constructs her history through interviews with prominent left-wing authors, thinkers, and historians, including liberal stalwarts like philosopher Noam Chomsky and cognitive linguist George Lakoff, as well as a host of Republican defectors like ex-Birch Society member Claire Conner, journalist and former “right wing hit-man” David Brock, and one-time Fox News Commentator Jeff Cohen, among many others. Senko aligns the beginning of the new right’s ascendancy with Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes’ groundbreaking work as executive television producer for Richard Nixon’s administration in the ‘60s. From there, she and her panel of experts chart the subtle penetration of right wing think tanks into academia and the media, calling out such major milestones as the Lewis Powell Memo, Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” the Reagan doctrine of “supply-side economics,” the demise of the Fairness Doctrine in ’87, the Telecommunications Act, and culminating in the emergence of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
From there, Senko attempts to pull back the curtain on Fox’s stable of tricks, consulting brainwashing expert Kathleen Taylor and others. They posit the notion that the anger generated by watching conservative news outlets can actually become addictive, and identify a variety of tactics that Fox uses to keep its viewers coming back for another hit. Many of these will be familiar to anyone outside the right-wing echo chamber, such as the network’s elastic approach to the truth, their carefully shaped talking points, the bullying demeanor of their pundits, and their bemusing use of flashy graphics.
As a crash course in the development of right-wing thought over the past half-century, Brainwashing is a great starting point. Because Senko’s information is culled heavily from other thinkers, a lot of this may be redundant to individuals familiar with her primary sources, but she does an impressive job synthesizing a broad palate of data into a coherent narrative and timeline. However, on reflection, her analysis feels incomplete. Just like Fox News itself, a documentary is under no obligation to be “fair and balanced,” but other than a very brief discussion with political consultant Frank Luntz, there’s a noticeable absence of actual conservative voices in the documentary, save for a handful of people like Senko’s father. Attempting to probe the minds and opinions of some of actual right-wing decision-makers could have provided added depth to the otherwise pat testimony of her interviewees.
Overall, the documentary is pervaded by a complacent acceptance of left-wing values and an unspoken faith that objective reporting is possible, which clouds Senko’s findings. The notion of the “liberal media” is dismissed out-of-hand as myth, and while the liberal bias of the media is vastly exaggerated by right-wing pundits, myths tend to form because they have some basis in reality. Or did we all forget that veteran reporter Dan Rather resigned in disgrace because he jumped too eagerly on a story he believed would discredit Republican president George W. Bush? Bias exists in every form of reportage, and consumers of information on both the right and the left tend to cherry-pick their news based on how well the bias of the source lines up with their own.
In portraying conservatives as a horde of rubes brainwashed into “voting against their own interests,” Senko elides over the legitimate moral, intellectual, and philosophical values that drive people rightward. No attention is given to the fact that the polarization of the country is being fueled by both sides of the aisle; let’s remember that DOMA, NAFTA, and the repeal of Glass-Steagal—acts that most mainstream liberals today agree are abhorrent—were signed into law by Democratic president Bill Clinton, with bipartisan support. And related to that, Senko acts as if the right has cornered the market in political outrage. But while Fox news may have a lock on the septuagenarian set, the rise of clickbait journalism has created a cottage industry of outrage for the younger, social-media and net-savvy consumer through outlets like Salon, Gawker, and Mic. Treating this phenomenon as something exclusive to aging white conservatives is not only highly disingenuous, it’s also a missed opportunity to delve deeper beneath the surface of our diseased public discourse.
Senko’s most unique contribution to the conversation tends to be the testimonies from people like herself, whose relationships with their fathers, uncles, brothers, and friends (though a few of the participants mention female relatives and acquaintances, the overwhelming majority of those afflicted appear to be male) were irreparably damaged by addiction to conservative media. The testimony of Steve, a self-proclaimed former dittohead, offers some hope that these people can be reached and reasoned with. The story of Senko’s own father offers a similar glimpse, although with some troubling implications that the film doesn’t bother to explore. During an extended period of hospitalization, Frank’s wife manages to unsubscribe him from some of his more extreme political listserves and puts him on the mailing list of organizations like TruthOut. She also reprograms the television remote so that he can’t change the channel to Fox News. Gradually, with this exposure to more liberal viewpoints, Frank begins to resemble the man his wife and daughter remember, eventually disavowing his hardline right wing stances and even expressing admiration for President Obama. The totality of this transformation, not just of demeanor but in Frank’s basic belief system, is shocking, and calls into question the extent to which we humans can justifiably believe we are more than aggregates of sensory data, particularly as we age. Coming at the end of the film, however, there’s no time to reflect on what this means for our ability to process data and construct narratives.
From a craft perspective, the documentary feels a little workmanlike but effective, with colorful animations by the legendary Bill Plympton and Maryam Hajouni to help break up the parade of talking heads. There is valuable insight to be gained from watching the film, but for the most part, it serves to remind you of things you already knew, namely that Fox News and other conservative media outlets exist to keep their viewers scared and angry, and that long-term exposure to their product not only leaves consumers misinformed, but puts their mental health at risk. As far as messages go, these are worth repeating, but as a film, The Brainwashing of My Dad could have been so much more.