Blame Jake Gyllenhaal

Jordana Willner

As October crashes gracelessly down upon Republicans, and party leaders blame Democrats, gay staffers, and hostile journalists, even seasoned party operatives have missed the obvious culprit for the swell of anti-party sentiment and projected loss of congressional power. The problem is actor Jake Gyllenhaal.

With pouty ambivalence absent since the glory days of 1980s anti-hero Molly Ringwald, 25-year-old Gyllenhaal has delivered a comprehensive body of work more liberal than the typically slanted Hollywood output and evidently targeted as a systematic, one-man cinematic battering ram to bludgeon the ideals held dear by President Bush and his party of faith and traditional Republican values.

Consider Gyllenhaal's films. In the 2001 cult classic, title character Donnie Darko meets doom after his smug wealthy white parents aver their dedication to the Republican Party. Vacant and vague while their teenage son plunges the depths of mental illness, overmedication, and quantum physics, they helplessly fund his tuition and psychotherapy but can’t prevent his violent death in his own bed in their garish suburban McMansion.

That same year, Gyllenhaal’s teenage photo store clerk in Lovely and Amazing spotlights the unlivability of the minimum wage for anyone over age 17 and offers a stark reminder of the heightened culture of statutory rape of American boys when he falls willing but bewildered partner to seduction by a 30-something married mother.

Gyllenhaal’s enviable romantic tryst with America’s sweetheart Jennifer Aniston is the clever lure of 2002’s The Good Girl, but the back stories expose the slow brain death, middle-American sloth, and physical dangers lurking for the untold numbers of financially and politically manipulated communities whose livelihoods center around Wal-Mart and other corporate retail giants.

No plan to undermine the right could compete in today’s crowded political landscape without a cinematic slam against climate change naysayers. In 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, Gyllenhaal pleads an urgent case for the impending near-term doomsday consequences of global warming, as he and ultra hot screen father Dennis Quaid barely survive the instant onset of an ice age triggered by an earthly temperature trend gone haywire.

Jarhead, the 2005 telling of Anthony Swofford’s chilling indoctrination into Gulf War Marine Corps life, reveals dehumanized soldiers longing to kill and suffering the monotony of the legendary buildup to and short duration of Operation Desert Storm. Gyllenhaal’s destitute, ambivalent Swofford sees his fellow soldiers not as patriots who long to serve their country but as felons who choose service over jail-time, killers looking for sanctioned gun-time, young men with few options, and a small fanatical minority who seek “USMC” branding with a smoking cattle prod. “Anti-war” understates the damning commentary of Gyllenhaal’s film, whose final quiet irony is the 1992 celebration of America’s “permanent” departure from Iraq.

And of course, via 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, Gyllenhaal forever reframes into homosexual perspective the posse archetype, casting aspersions on men with fancy spurs. Shock value and world-class direction brought international prominence and a permanent place in societal and cinematic lore to his sympathetic, lovelorn gay cowboy.

To recap Gyllenhaal’s subversive messages: Global warming exists on an apocalyptic scale. Our manliest icons are gay lovers. Republican suburbanites kill their children. Retail is not a living wage. People die if they work at Wal-Mart. No one can protect our sons from sexual predators. The military is a dehumanizing hell for our sons. Our first Gulf War was an absurdly tragic waste of time; just what in the world are we doing there now for more than three years?

Gyllenhaal is not yet 26 years old. Surely the Republican machine, so adept at smoking out its enemies, will identify and quell this seditious source before he fires his propaganda machine anew.

If the right doesn’t act fast, the problem will only compound. Because Gyllenhaal has one more destructive new bomb to drop: sex appeal. The buff new bod he sent to the Gulf War in Jarhead was a sculpted work of art, reminding female viewers that the counter culture boy is growing into a desirably dissident man, and there’s an apolitical Demi Moore with Ashton Kutcher dreams in each of us.

The Republicans handle sex as well as Democrats handle taxes. But they must handle Gyllenhaal now. For if Gyllenhaal continues driving his messages home, the ever important female electorate will increasingly want that Gyllenhaal message, with their boy Jake in the driver’s seat.

Hollywood political dabbling is age-old and expected. To Republican relief, gentlemen lefties Paul Newman and Robert Redford are finally teetering their way into elderly obscurity, and to the Party’s confusion, trusted righty Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) has become more independent maverick than party faithful. Gyllenhaal’s oddity, and indeed his genius, is that with those vacant hound dog eyes and twitchy post-adolescent stance, he seems utterly oblivious to the political groundswell he has single-handedly launched. No grandstanding Jane Fonda clinging to the podium, this guy’s very distraction is his keynote speech.

Clever, sexy little bastard. It’s all part of his plan. The Republican political machine understands enemies and battles, but on subtlety, youth, angst, and sex they forever come up short. This time, all because of Gyllenhaal, so might their votes.