Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of (Terrible) Framing

Film critic and cultural historian Neil Gabler has an interesting column on the Presidential race in today’s Los Angeles Times. He concludes:

It is axiomatic that the more powerful the theme a star embodies, the more powerful his or her stardom. Obama’s theme is a potent one. Whether one buys into it or not, he promises to cross divides — political, ideological, racial, geographic — and to transcend the old politics of fear and hate that has commandeered recent elections. He believes that America can — and should — be the moral beacon for the world by returning to its core values. In analyzing his own appeal, Obama says he has become a symbol — which, again, is exactly what all stars are. He is providing a really good, uplifting movie.

Critics, not least of all John McCain, have complained that this is merely windy rhetoric — high-blown but ultimately empty. Eventually, they say, Obama will come back to Earth the way rock stars do when the concert ends. But this misses the point of what Obama has tapped into, as well as the point of movie stardom itself. Yes, politicians can declaim themes, and Obama is doing that. Yet Obama is not just declaiming his theme the way most politicians have. He has lived it, which is why it has been so effective.

Of course McCain is a hero in his own right, but his narrative is familiar — it’s a war movie after all — and his feat is that of having survived, which in a Hollywood film is not the same thing as having led the rescue. He hardly embodies the new-style heroism that [Norman] Mailer saw in John Kennedy, which allowed the late president to extend the bounds of politics not only into stardom but into imagination as stars do.



Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in