Dissonant American Values As Expressed in the Film "Truth Be Told"

Recently, as part of my project to make an online Atlas of Albuquerque Filming Locations, I watched "Truth Be Told," a 2011 Craig Anderson/Walmart/Proctor and Gamble production filmed in New Mexico that emphasized American Family Values. Since I was watching for filming locations, I didn't follow the plot particularly carefully. Nevertheless, I soon became aware of a dissonance in the film between proclaimed Family Values, and the actual values made evident on the screen. Movies are a visual medium, after all. Here are some of those dissonant points:

1.) White Anglos rule. The male lead coaches football and other sports. The female lead is some sort of mediagenic family counselor. The kids are white, clean, with perfect teeth, and winning ways. Everyone is gorgeous. The only blacks in the film are her presumably-troubled clients. They talk about Family Values - showing one another baby pictures, for example - but we never see the baby pictures. Come on, movies are a visual medium. Let's see the baby pictures!

2.) Apparently the female lead is applying for a job with a (probably Christian) media mogul. The mogul invites the female lead, and the male lead too, to his lavish New Mexico ranch (a real place, in Pojoaque, NM) to apply for a job in his empire. The mogul is supposed to be a difficult man, but in his perfect white shirt he resembles a preacher more than a mogul - not really that intimidating. The unmarried male and female leads portray themselves as married, for the sake of convenience, and strive to keep the mogul from finding out their unmarried status.

3.) The mogul is frequently portrayed as chopping wood, even though the ranch is so large - the size of a small college campus - that natural gas is surely the fuel they use. Nevertheless, the mogul, in his pressed white shirt, seems preoccupied with chopping wood: a noble American virtue, to be sure. It just seems he's overmatched and out of place here.

4.) Product placement is important. I see the Dawn Dishwashing Liquid.

5.) The mogul invites everyone to go horseback riding, another honored American virtue. When the female lead is late to the gathering, the impatient (but not unfriendly) mogul fires a pistol into the air - guns being another honored American consumer virtue - despite the fact that horses carrying riders can easily be spooked by loud noises.

6.) When the female lead shows up in tennis shoes rather than the approved boots, the mogul decides she should ride in an ATV rather than a horse. ATVs are now another American consumer virtue, and an excuse for showing lots of footage of ATVs rolling around ontrail, and sometimes just offtrail. Lots and lots of footage. Beaucoup footage.

7.) Indian ruins are portrayed as spooky remains from a long-lost civilization, even though the direct descendants of said spooky civilization live just a short distance away.

8.) The Bonanza Creek Old West Town, seen in dozens and dozens of westerns, and familiar to generations of movie watchers, is portrayed as the mogul's construction.

9.) They have a rock band and singer and jukebox set up in one of the Old West buildings. Who knew? The place didn't look like it even had electricity. Rock music is also now a familiar American virtue, particularly when co-opted for modern Christian purposes.

10.) The couple's married lie is discovered. The mogul tells them all to bounce. He barely seems irritated that all his plans have come undone, however.

11.) The couple apparently wed. The mogul changes his mind, for some inscrutable reason - we don't see the wedding, so the reasoning for his change of mind is unclear. The mediagenic family counselor now gets her show on the network - because that's where American Family Values now live - on-the-air. Doesn't everyone feed into a media empire these days? (I guess we do - this blog is carried by Google, for example.) Everyone lives happily ever after. And the media mogul can now go back to chopping wood.


Like I say, I didn't follow the movie very carefully, so I'm probably mangling the plot pretty badly. Nevertheless, the Supreme American Value of product consumption above all else is advanced.