Screen Magazine: Vol. 28, Issue 14

Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 28, Issue 14 - Index

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When John Kennedy debated Richard
Nixon on live television during the 1960
presidential campaign, America’s electoral
process entered a new arena. Viewers
witnessed Vice President Nixon’s record of
achievement quiver in the face of Senator
Kennedy’s boyish good looks and New
England charm. For the first time in history,
substantial numbers of voters felt drawn to
candidates for reasons other than character,
experience or policy.
As a result, substantial numbers of candidates
learned to win votes without revealing much
character, experience or policy. Special effects,
music and editing transformed commercials
into pseudo-realistic, miniature documentaries
of enormous persuasion. During the next
election, a spot for President Johnson cut from
the image of a young girl holding a daisy to a
nuclear detonation filling the screen with a
mushroom cloud.
Before long, these specters floated into office
and remained with the leaders they helped
elect. In their wake, the doors of democracy
opened to advertising agencies, public relations
firms, image consultants, market researchers
and special interest groups. Every four years,
the nation elected not just a new leader but a
broadcast chimera pushed by a righteous cartel
of profit-driven power mongers.
Their combined efforts replaced the people
known as “Leaders of the Free World” with
strategic marketing icons. President Nixon
flashed hippies a peace sign as if to say, “I can
flash a peace sign.” President Clinton played
yuppies a saxophone solo that sounded like
smooth office jazz. President George W. Bush
baffled us with a masculine bulge that nearly
burst out of his flight suit.
These days, Hillary Clinton’s contest to pick a
campaign song and the jiggling, user-generated
“Obama Girl” video play like episodes of
“Who Wants to be President?” or “Electoral
Idol.” Though it seems unfortunate to watch
our national identity roll on like a blooper
reel, it actually creates serious advantages. By
viewing it again and again, we can eventually
separate the lies from the truth.
In that light, satirists can hang the words,
“I am not a crook,” on cartoons of President
Nixon’s peace sign. Comedians can joke
about President Clinton making a whole
different type of music while in office. And
images of President Bush’s conspicuous
manhood are regularly upstaged by the
even more conspicuous banner behind him
that proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished.”
So when we see the day that a candidate
wins office on the success of a homemade
sex tape, be sure to enjoy the show.
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