Have you ever wondered what Eagleland would be like if those Dirty Communists were in charge? Find out in this short propaganda film from 1962, directed by George Waggner and produced by Jack Webb (who also serves as narrator).
Watch it here
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Tropes Used:
- All Just a Dream: As indicated by the title.
- Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Jerry, mildly, at the start. He refuses to allow his daughter to marry the local jock, but his nightmare changes his mind (though it's not clear what marriage has got to do with communism).
- Commie Land: Oddly, some of the worst aspects of this trope are actually averted. For example, communist rule doesn't stop Jerry and his neighbors from being comfortably middle-class.
- On the other hand the judge makes it clear he's executing Jerry for being, "an ugly remnant of the diseased Bourgeois class".
- Cultural Posturing: An in-universe example is hilariously a double example on a meta level. When Jerry sees an exhibit claiming the telephone was invented by the Russians, he yells, "That was made by Alexander Graham Bell! AND HE WAS AN AMERICAN!" Alexander Graham Bell was Scottish, thus a British citizen, while he later became a Canadian and then American too. So it would be equally plausible to call him British or a Canadian.
- Disproportionate Retribution
- Jerry's punishment for being an Apathetic Citizen to the Communist threat (e.g. missing PTA or Reserve meetings) is being plunged into a Red Nightmare!
- After vandalising and questioning the exhibits in the museum, Jerry is arrested for "subversion, deviationism and treason", for which he is shot.
- Eagleland: Very much the first flavor, of course.
- Kangaroo Court: Jerry Donavan is given a trial where the court must be reminded to present its evidence. After being found guilty, the court adds to the indignity by denying him a firing squad.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: When Jerry is put on trial, we're meant to view him as totally innocent of anything other than being a dissident. No one on either side of the case brings up the fact that he committed a legitimate crime by vandalizing a museum. Of course, that hardly deserves a death sentence, but it's still awfully self-righteous of him to stand there and act like he has no idea why he was arrested. Obviously, vandalizing a museum is okay when it's a commie museum!
- Too Dumb to Live: Jerry is repeatedly told not to speak out against the Party, but continues to do so. And he acts shocked each and every time it gets him in trouble.
