For over 150 years, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (or its predecessors) has famously promised audiences “The Greatest Show on Earth.” The 2025 mockumentary Barnum World—which starts off with a clip of George H.W. Bush’s 1991 “New World Order” speech—suggests that the entities we call “Mr. Global” are putting on an even bigger show.

Filmmaker Andrew Treglia also directed the 2023 cult classic Jones Plantation and considers the two films a “diptych.” As he explained earlier this year, “‘Jones Plantation’ shows the infrastructure and creation of the ‘system’ that we’re all enslaved by, and ‘Barnum World’ … shows the tools they use to keep it going.”

Barnum World’s protagonist, being mock-interviewed by pretend documentary filmmakers, is Hollywood insider “Natty” (smarmily played by Lee Gaulman, who also shares screenplay credit), humorously flanked by twin bodyguards “Chip” and “Dale.” Natty brags to the interviewers about being “in the game” but claims he’s willing to divulge “what happens from the inside” and share some tricks of the “tell-a-vision” (and “show-business”) trade.

The “Barnum world” we live in, explains Natty, gets perpetuated with the clever (and constant) use of meaningless “Barnum statements,” which he describes as a form of “linguistic trickery” that plays on people’s emotions (without them realizing it) and “herds them in a certain direction.” Asked for examples, he cites phrases uttered by president after president such as “We have to bring our country together” and “Make America great again” (which did not originate with Donald Trump). Hilariously, we are then treated to a montage of clips that together add up to “Barnum overload”!

Treglia augments Barnum World’s punch with a great soundtrack (including the Rossini overture appropriated by The Lone Ranger, Offenbach’s “Can-Can,” and Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”), along with highly effective fair-use footage from news broadcasts, movies, television shows, online videos, and social media. Some of the revealing clips show Western leaders at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, “dancing nurses” and masking hysteria during Covid, Bill Gates ridiculously asserting that his use of private jets is sustainable, and an airport employee chillingly dissembling the surveillance uses of biometrics. Natty also provides his take on the propaganda uses of police shows, legal dramas, and hospital dramas, and says that movies about the military are designed to persuade parents to sacrifice their children and convince young adults to join up and “fight for freedom.”

A potent real-life clip provides former U.S. Representative Justin Amash’s conclusions about politics (Amash represented Michigan from 2011 to 2021):

“It’s very orchestrated. I would say that it’s mostly like some kind of entertainment programming for people. It’s not really a representative democracy or anything like that. It’s a show that is put on to give you the perception that there is a representative government, and that’s not what’s happening.”

Barnum World, recommended to us by Dr. Jon Padfield, is available for free viewing here.