Wars of Personality
One of the most subtle satirical political jabs made in this film that is otherwise not particularly subtle is a knowing nod at how many wars in history have not been about any genuine conflict between nations, a conflict between personalities. It is, after all, men who wage war and just because a man is a leader of a country does not mean that he is immune to impulsivity or even a certain amount of insanity. In one gloriously funny monologue, Rufus T. Firefly shows how quickly an unfit leader can be moved from rationality to saber-rattling lunacy:
“I'd be unworthy of the high trust that's been placed in me if I didn't do everything in my power to keep our beloved Freedonia in peace with the world. I'd be only too happy to meet with Ambassador Trentino, and offer him on behalf of my country the right hand of good fellowship. And I feel sure he will accept this gesture in the spirit of which it is offered. But suppose he doesn't. A fine thing that'll be. I hold out my hand and he refuses to accept…Me, the head of a country, snubbed by a foreign ambassador. Who does he think he is, that he can come here, and make a sap of me in front of all my people?...Why, the cheap ball-pushing swine, he'll never get away with it I tell you, he'll never get away with it!”
When Men Unfit for Office Get There Anyway
At the time, the idea that a man as positively unfit for office as Rufus T. Firefly could ever actually be elevated to a position of authority and power was purely the stuff of absurdist comedy. Of course, times have changed and Firefly’s song about how he intends to rule is not quite as funny. The tendency toward corruption, the flouting of conventional notions of trust in the public service and just the mere fact that he gleefully does seem to care about putting the welfare of the people above his own was doubtlessly directed specifically toward Pres. Herbert Hoover and his careless mismanagement of the economy plummet causing the Great Depression. Firefly’s songs can very easily be applied to contemporary leaders perhaps even more appropriately:
“The last man nearly ruined this place
He didn’t know what to do with
If you think this country’s bad of now
Just wait ‘til I get through with it.”
Not Waiting for Absurdism
The Theater of the Absurd is conventionally considered to be a literary movement stimulated by the revelations of the horrors of World War II with the first examples being produced in the late forties before really coming into its own in the 1950’s with the premiere of such works as Ionesco’s The Chairs and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Just as there is no Godot in Waiting for Godot, there are no ducks in Duck Soup. One can argue, however, that Absurdist theater really began not on the stage, but on screen with the release of Duck Soup. (Perhaps not so coincidently, one of those works of the 1950’s helping to define the parameters of absurdism was the Warner Brothers cartoon Duck Amuck.) The movie speeds along at a frenetic pace which becomes increasingly more surreal, demonstrates a nearly non-stop mastery of the wordplay and language games associated with absurdist theater and ultimately proposes a very dark vision of existence in which fate is out of the control of anybody, communication moves inexorably toward an inevitable breakdown and history is revealed to be merely a continually running cycle of repetition where the only things that really change are the names, places and efficiency of killing machines.
