Film Analysis: Mr. Smith Goes To Washington

Honors Exercise 3: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Asha McWilliams

Although we have analyzed politics through several books and music videos throughout the semester, for our final project, the honors students have decided to analyze the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Therefore, this paper will answer the following question: “What did our target of analysis teach us about politics?” In order to do so, this paper will be organized into five major sections. The first section will define the concepts that will be used in the analysis to follow. The second section will serve as a brief description of our target of analysis and why we chose to use it for this assignment. The third section will identify four characters from the film and identify

As previously stated, the first face of power is the direct use of power to achieve one’s goals. Smith implements this face of power by speaking out against the deficiency bill and filibustering his removal from the Senate. Therefore, these are examples of the first face of power because Smith is taking direct action to achieve his goals of revealing the truth of the corruption and remaining in the senate to maintain his honor. Smith initially fails in his use of the first face of power when speaking out against the deficiency bill. This is because he is not knowledgeable enough about the rules and procedures to understand how to maintain control of the Senate floor. However, with the help of Saunders, he is later able to succeed when using the first face of power to control the senate floor through a filibuster. This time, his direct action was effective because he understood the rules and procedures, enabling him to hold the floor long enough to get inside Paine’s head and lead him to admit that Smith was telling the truth. Thus, Smith eventually learned to successfully use the first face of power. As mentioned earlier, the third face of power is the indirect use of power to shape one’s perceptions. Smith uses this face of power when working with Saunders to convince her why she should help him with his desire to prove his innocence. Saunders initially wanted nothing to do with Smith and

Paine is a typical Senator that understands the inner workings of Washington. He is looked up to by many, and appears to be a role model to Smith at the start, but we soon learn that he is corrupt because he works under the political machine Taylor. At first though, we see that Paine is beginning to have a change of heart because one of his initial goals is to get out from under Taylor’s control. Yet, when he realizes this isn’t possible, he again tries to take the least harmful path possible by making it his goal to simply distract Smith from the corruption taking place. However, this also proves impossible, making him feel he has no choice but to appease Taylor by ensuring the deficiency bill passes at all costs. Now that we have outlined the first two components of Paine’s character, his characteristics and motivations, we must analyze the actions he takes to act on those underlying