August 8th, 2008 by Hoopleton
I’m not exactly sure what’s so special about the string of art galleries off Orleans Avenue in Chicago to make a candidate for President make such frequent visits, but for whatever reason, whether it be a passion for sculpted ceramic tea kettles or a deep appreciation for ink blot portraiture, Barack Obama made yet another appearance to the string of art houses near my train stop yesterday. Adding, yet again, extra minutes to my already tedious commute.
I have to say though it is amazing how the Junior Senator from my home state can draw a crowd. The energy was so palpable among the anticipating onlookers that I could almost hear chants of “yes we can” echoing off the concrete blocks long before the candidate even made his appearance – not that I actually waited that long, he may be the next leader of the free world, a modern day messiah, but let’s be serious, he’s no Scarlet Johansson.
Well, all right, political celebrity does not interest me but I certainly am a Barack fan, so in honor of our paths having crossed – again – I offer this short list of films (in no particular order) about political candidates and their introduction to the often sorted world of power by proxy. As Obama battles for political victory, I can only hope that these films serve to forewarn, inspire and perhaps merely entertain.
1. Election. Directed by Alexander Payne and based on the novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta, Election is a viciously funny portrayal of American politics and sexual frustration shown through the lens of that most honest of social institutions: high school. Tracy Flick, played with force and dedication by Reese Witherspoon, is an ambitious, contemptuous, almost Machiavellian candidate for senior class President at her Omaha, Nebraska school. Jim McAllister, portrayed by Matthew Broderick so honestly that his presence sometimes makes you squirm, is the teacher and student government sponsor who is determined to bring down the electoral prospects of Tracy Flick out of a deep embittered contempt for her ruthlessness, and a disturbing attraction toward her that he can’t seem to face. The political war that ensues, littered with the broken dreams and personal failings of those caught in the crossfire, serves not only as entertainment, but also as microcosm for the power structures that move our lives. At the end, as McAllister becomes a pariah, seemingly doomed to repeat his past mistakes, and as Tracy Flick continues her climb up the ladder, the lesson is clear: so much of politics and political campaigns is nothing more than personal pettiness and repressed frustrations disguised in the rhetoric of national need. Maybe the answer to the problems of partisanship and our increasingly hostile election cycle is to let the bastards fuck till they get it all out of their systems. Sure would make C-SPAN more interesting to watch.
2. The Manchurian Candidate. Denzel Washington only really seems to have two modes in movies: he’s either the guy killing people or the guy running from people trying to kill him. In the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, originally based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon and the 1962 film by the same name, Denzel Washington plays the role of running man, picking up in this version from Frank Sinatra, though running not from racially charged, red scare-era, Chinese Communists and their political lackeys (as in the original), but instead from left-centrist, corporate oligarchs and their political lackeys (today we don’t fear Chinese Communists, today we buy their lead-tainted toys at rock bottom prices). At the center of the conspiracy – in a Denzel Washington movie there’s ALWAYS a conspiracy – is a hugely successful up-and-coming politician and former military man with star appeal and Presidential aspirations who has secretly been brainwashed by dark forces in order to undermine our fragile democratic institutions. In 1962 the role of the tragic Raymond Shaw was played amiably by Laurence Harvey, in the 2004 version he’s played by the equally affable Liev Schriber. Forgetting the conspiracies, forgetting the obvious illusions to McCarthyism or the Military Industrial Complex, the real appeal of both films is the character of the brainwashed candidate’s mother, one Eleanor Shaw, portrayed with equal power and presence by Angela Lansbury and Maryl Streep, respectively. Despite whatever corporate or Communist forces are at play, Eleanor Shaw is the true puppet master. Unable to achieve her own dreams of power she sells her own son down the river and then serves as his handler. Whether you watch the 1962 or the 2004 version one thing remains clear in both: in the political arena not even family bonds can trump ambition. I imagine this is a lesson the elder George Bush has realized as he’s watched his son dismantle nearly everything he built during his time in office. God, remember when we used to hate that guy?
3. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Based on Lewis R. Foster’s The Gentleman from Montana, directed by Frank Capra and starring non-other than Jimmy Stewart, the 1939 classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, remains today one of the greatest fairy tales of American political film. Jefferson Smith, played with the kind of stuttering charm we all know and love by Stewart, is a naïve, idealistic Washington greenhorn that finds himself picked to serve out the remaining term of a deceased Senator because the political bosses think he may be easy to manipulate into following the party line. It doesn’t take long for Smith to get into trouble when he proposes a bill to buy public land for a boy’s camp that the machine has already staked out as part of a graft deal. When Smith refuses to give up his plans he’s accused of corruption and must filibuster the Senate to try and clear his name, but no matter how long he speaks, no matter how hard he tries to present evidence of his innocence, the entrenched opposition’s power is just too strong. At the climax of the film, the party’s hatchet men bring in bins full of letters and telegrams from Smith’s constituents, swayed by false and slanderous media coverage, calling for his resignation. Overcome with shock and exhaustion, Smith collapses on the Senate floor. The movie should have ended there. If it had, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington would have offered a stunning critique of modern American politics. A good man comes to the heart of democracy only to be undone by a corrupt faceless machine and a populace that swallows all the crap that it’s fed without any question or dissent. But, this is a Frank Capra movie and it was made in 1939, so in the actual ending the bad guys confess and Mr. Smith triumphs. One man can make a difference, well, at least in the land of make-believe.
4. Bob Roberts. Perhaps the ultimate anti-Mr. Smith movie, this 1992 mockumentary written, directed and starring Tim Robbins chronicles the rise of a conservative politician while serving as critique galore for the US political process. In a nutshell, Bob Roberts (Robbins), a man born out of a world of shady corporate-military dealings, runs for Senate in the great state of Pennsylvania during the twilight of the first Gulf War. Totting a fascist agenda thinly veiled in the rhetoric of patriotism, Roberts at first fails to make much ground against the incumbent Democrat played by Gore Vidal. But after a phony scandal and a staged Bobby Kennedy-like assassination attempt, the up and coming folk-singing brown shirter finds himself elected to office by a fearful, ignorant electorate. Despite Tim Robbins’ claims that the movie has no overt political leanings (Gore Vidal’s very mention in the credits derails that argument immediately), the film is very much an attack on Republican fear mongering and moral scapegoating. However, the film’s main targets for attack are the American people themselves. Where Robbins succeeds, beyond sheer entertainment value, is pointing out that even in the land of the free Hitler clones often are elected and it’s us, the uninformed, apathetic mob that puts them there. Thanks a lot!
5. Bulworth. Another star-turned writer and director political satire, this one conceived by and starring Warren Beatty, Bulworth is an abject lesson in what we sorely lack in politics, namely, truth. Beatty plays the role of an incumbent US Senator who is on his way to losing his reelection campaign. Crooked, jaded and depressed, he decides to commit suicide by assassination and thanks to the realization of impending death, not to mention an affair with Halle Berry (which never hurts), Beatty finds himself speaking the truth to his constituents. His often offensive but frank remarks make him a media sensation, reinvigorate his campaign and inject passion into the electorate. Despite a change of heart by his would-be assassin, the maverick Bulworth is murdered anyway, not by the hit man (or woman) he hired, but by the corporate interests he has now come to rally against. The final lines – “don’t be a ghost, you got to be a spirit” – sum up the overall message of the film: the system is broken, the legacy of the 1960s has been forgotten, it’s time for a revolution of conscience again. Bulworth is not only a great film because it’s funny, or politically stirring, it’s a great film because it points out the most obvious flaw in the election process. American politicians feed us, the voters, nothing but bullshit and they get away with it because the truth is something we seem to have learned to live without, even resent. Of course in the end the man who tells us that truth is killed, and as we know from the death of so many good men like MLK, X and Bobby, so heavy is usually the price.
6. The Candidate. The hands down winner and quite definitely the bar for all political candidate films is Michel Ritchie’s 1972, The Candidate, starring Robert Redford. In the simplest terms the film is about a man running for a Senate seat he knows he’s going to lose, but this serves only as the jumping off point for what remains quite possibly the best critique of American politics to date. Redford plays Bill McKay a young, idealistic activist who is drafted into a political campaign by party hatchet man Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) to run against an incumbent Republican with unbeatable state-wide support. This is a no-win contest, but McKay agrees to the race as long as he can speak his mind on the issues he sees as most pressing (the environment, public busing, equal rights), but the idealist has one major flaw, he cares about what people think of him. What we see in The Candidate is a retelling of Faust filtered through the prism of the electoral process. A man who starts off resenting the corruption of power is ultimately corrupted himself. Groomed and styled by image consultants and Lucas, his machine campaign manager, McKay sells off his principals one by one until barely a shell of who he was remains. Where once he talked passionately about causes he truly believed in, he is ultimately reduced to speaking in sound bites and slogans. The Candidate presents the election process as the deconstruction of the soul. People may enter with the hope for creating real change, but at the end of the day become merely pawns of the system. In one of the most famous lines of the film, a gutted, compromised McKay, having just won the campaign, asks Lucas, “What do we do now?” In those final moments Lucas never answers, but he doesn’t have to, the answer is already obvious in the question. Image has trumped substance. Meaning has been replaced by jargon. A man who once fought for real change, a maverick, has become just another politician. As the battle for the White House intensifies, Barack Obama may do well by watching The Candidate before every stump speech or political fundraiser. If he does, I hope he asks himself what he’s giving up.
