Eddington and the Fracturing of American Life 

The quasi-comedic recent film Eddington (directed by Ari Aster) condenses nearly two years of American chaos into two harrowing weeks in a fictional rural town in New Mexico. Set in 2020, it dramatizes the cultural flashpoints of that era—COVID, masking, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and QAnon—capturing them with such verisimilitude that it might trigger PTSD for anyone who lived through that disorienting time. 

At the heart of the film is the conflict between the town sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), and the mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Sheriff Cross represents the COVID skeptic’s perspective. He opposes mask mandates and, when protests erupt after the George Floyd incident, he becomes the voice of law and order. This is ironic as Joe is an indecisive, self-doubting character who spends much of the film exasperated and unsure of how to respond to various crises, both public and personal.  

Mayor Garcia, by contrast, is confident, politically savvy, and quick to align with every progressive cause, particularly masking mandates. It soon becomes clear that his loyalties lie not with the town, but with the state governor and possibly with ambitions that reach far beyond Eddington. His support for building a massive data center outside town exposes him as a pawn of larger, more impersonal forces. In fact, Eddington is full of characters whose progressive moral posturing conceals murky motives. 

The film offers a savage, often darkly comic critique of America’s cultural and political moment. It skewers extremism on both the left and the right with equal force. But rather than dwell on its partisan jabs, I want to draw out what might be called a nonpartisan—or perhaps bipartisan—lesson from the film. 

First, a word of caution. While Eddington is well written and impressively acted—qualities that quickly draw you into the lives of its characters—it also takes a suddenly violent turn about three-quarters of the way through. The final act, reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, explodes into violence that some may find gratuitous. If you’re sensitive to onscreen violence, be warned: the ending may overwhelm. That said, Eddington is a provocative, well-crafted film that offers more than shock value. I recommend it cautiously, but recommend it nonetheless. 

The Demon in the Screen 

With that qualification, I want to turn to one of the film’s most perceptive yet subtle messages. The film’s dialogue effectively reproduces many of the COVID and BLM debates without seeming tired or rehearsed. Yet there is a seldom-mentioned presence in nearly every scene in Eddington: screens. The people of Eddington are highly connected, and it is the screen that radicalizes them. 

Phones and laptops bombard the townspeople with a nonstop stream of lies, fear, and outrage. The most vivid example is Louise (Emma Stone), Joe’s wife. A survivor of childhood sexual abuse and raised by a conspiracy-theorist mother, Louise is particularly vulnerable. Isolated during the pandemic, she falls under the spell of an Alex Jones–like figure, Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler), whose videos spin dark tales of pedophile rings and government corruption. Louise’s descent into paranoia is as disturbing as it is believable. 

But she’s not alone. Nearly every character is shown to be warped in some way by the media they consume. How else do white teenagers in rural New Mexico become so passionately invested in the BLM and “defund the police” movements? 

Two of the film’s most biting comic moments capture this perfectly. In one, Sarah—a white, teenage radical—angrily scolds a black deputy sheriff for not joining the protests, blissfully unaware of her self-righteousness. In another, Brian, desperate to impress Sarah, uses Wikipedia to become a quick, superficial expert on Angela Davis. His radicalism exemplifies the zeal of the converted. The dinner-table scene where Brian lectures his bewildered parents on their white privilege is a genuine laugh-out-loud moment, culminating in one of the most hilariously well placed uses of vulgarity in recent film. 

Texting, social media, and the compulsive sharing of articles, photos, and videos only ratchet up the town’s tension until it finally boils over. Much of what the younger characters do amounts to performative posturing—theater for the smartphone camera. 

Even Joe isn’t immune. Enraged by Ted’s sanctimonious support for mask mandates, he records a furious rant in his car, capping it off with a spontaneous announcement: he’s running for mayor. He posts the video online in a fit of rage, then realizes he cannot take it back. 

Later, at a sparsely attended campaign event, frustrated by his floundering candidacy and emboldened by the smartphone recording his speech, Joe impulsively accuses Ted of abusing Louise as a teenager. He urges his deputy who’s filming to upload it before he changes his mind. The video goes viral and effectively dooms his campaign. 

But the most dangerous moment comes after a pivotal plot twist (no spoilers). Joe gives a fiery press conference, touting his “law and order” credentials and daring anti-police activists to come to Eddington, warning that the town is heavily armed. That speech, a national sensation on social media, is strongly implied to be the spark that ignites the film’s bloody climax. 

The screen, particularly on smartphones, serves as a kind of demon in the film. The devil is a seducer. His power is making the ugly seem attractive. In Eddington, the screen is ubiquitous, its temptation always within arm’s reach. It whispers in ears, beckoning characters to doomscroll or impulsively record every fleeting, ill-considered thought. The residents of Eddington are too weak to resist. They broadcast the kinds of dreadful thoughts most of us wisely keep private. Cameras are everywhere, and the constant possibility of being filmed turns much of life into performance. 

The Age of the Trivial 

I think we all know that we tend to act differently when we are being filmed. A recent episode of EconTalk considers the loss of privacy in a world where cameras abound. Russ Roberts and his guest, the philosopher Lowry Pressly, discuss the saying “dance like no one is watching.” The phrase endures because we all recognize its premise: being observed changes our behavior. The film also reminds us how easily we become obsessed with the trivial. Consider two recent examples. 

First, think about the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad embroglio. Various left-wing commentators accused this ad of being a dog-whistle for white supremacism, while the right championed it as being “anti-Woke.” The left’s charge is absurd. Yet the reaction on both sides was wildly disproportionate. Within a few weeks (perhaps by the time you read this), the story will have vanished, replaced by the next manufactured outrage. 

Second, and related to Eddington’s interest in pedophilia, we have the Epstein case. I confess to not knowing what to think of this matter. Readers might want to listen to this discussion on conspiracy theories with Bari Weiss and Ross Douthat in which the Epstein affair figures prominently. The central allegation is this: Jeffrey Epstein amassed immense wealth by trafficking underage girls to powerful men, then blackmailing those men to secure their silence. Epstein himself was, without question, a sexual deviant. He moved in elite circles. His wealth remains suspiciously unexplained. At least some prominent men—Prince Andrew, for example—were clearly involved. It is not clear how many important men were. Epstein did seem to have a wide range of celebrity, political, and financial acquaintances. But did Epstein have a wide network of such men for whom he facilitated a penchant for underage girls? Did he blackmail those men to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars? That isn’t clear.  

I do not wish this to become a venue for adjudicating the Epstein case. Far from it. My point here is that both the Sweeny and Epstein affairs are precisely the kinds of online content that the residents of fictional Eddington eat up.  

Both the Sweeney and Epstein matters grab our attention due to the undercurrent of sex. Part of the reason the Epstein story has endured is that it’s got all the tawdry characteristics that attract our attention: sex, power, money, crime. Hollywood could scarcely come up with such a perfect confluence of titillation. So let us admit that at least part of the reason the Epstein affair draws consistent interest is its lurid details. Even if the worst implications of the Epstein matter are too bad to be true, many wish them to be true precisely because the narrative is irresistible.  

Barring the worst implications of the Epstein story, it is a sensational but ultimately unimportant story. This is clearly the case with Sydney Sweeney. Meanwhile the nation is $37 trillion in debt. There is war in the Middle East and in Ukraine. There is mass starvation in Sudan. Our marriage rate is the lowest on record. The AI revolution has implications that we have barely begun to discern. All of these matters dwarf in significance both Sydney Sweeney’s jeans and yes, even the Epstein mystery. Yet we are having congressional hearings on Epstein, not the national debt.   

Overcoming Distraction 

When I encounter people who are agitated by stories like these, I want to tell them: put down your phone and read a book. Think about something more important, something enduring. I’ve read enough dystopian literature to know how Big Brother and his like use such bread and circuses to distract from their oppressive rule.  

Then I remember how much time I spend obsessing over my perpetually disappointing Minnesota Vikings. Like those fixated on the Sweeney and Epstein sagas, I too devote far too much time to things of little consequence. To some extent, that’s understandable. A little frivolity never hurt anyone, though too much certainly can. But at least when I’m following football, I’m under no illusion that I’m engaging in something of national importance. 

Eddington shows what happens when the boundary between the significant and the trivial blurs. The real crisis in the town isn’t mere political disagreement; that is inevitable. The crisis is that no one trusts anyone anymore. Joe says as much early in the film. It’s a measure of his impotence that he can’t heal that wound, and, in fact, makes it worse. There’s a crucial difference between frivolous political theater and frivolous sports talk: sports talk rarely ruins relationships. I’ve never seen a friendship collapse over a disagreement about a wide receiver depth chart. But we are all aware of how disagreements over COVID or Donald Trump have wounded friendships or fractured families. 

Eddington is a rare film in today’s cinematic landscape: it’s an original idea. And it lingers. If you can bear its violent final act, you’ll probably find yourself thinking about it for days afterward. One of the film’s deeper provocations is a question we should all ask ourselves: How much time do we spend online? How much of our political outrage is merely performance—anger stoked by algorithms and designed more to entertain than to inform? How often do we confuse the trivial with the profound, devoting our attention to surface-level controversies while neglecting the slow, difficult pursuit of real knowledge? 

We all need a little distraction. But Eddington challenges us to ask: distraction from what? 

Image licensed via Adobe Stock.