From: CTHEORY Editor [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 7:59 PM
To: ctheory
Subject: Event-Scene 96: The Virtual President


 _____________________________________________________________________
 CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 24, NO 1-2

 Event-Scene 96 21-03-01  Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
 _____________________________________________________________________

 The Virtual President

 =====================================================================
 ~Ralph Melcher~


 Ronald Reagan played to the desire of Americans to regard their
 leaders in the way that young children see their parents; as
 benevolent, reassuring gods. Bill Clinton, on the other hand,
 betrayed our trust by showing us he was a little too fallible, a
 little too much like us. In the current Bush administration the
 benevolent father figure of the Reagan Years has been replaced by an
 almost inarticulate corporate clone, one who projects an image of the
 charming son. People seem to like him, but polls indicate that they
 don't entirely trust him, and may even feel some relief in the
 knowledge that he's not really the person in charge. Ronald Reagan
 remained highly popular long after people thought he had lost touch
 with the daily reigns of government. The Junior Bush has never really
 given the impression that he's the one in charge, or that he's even
 particularly smart. The best thing people have to say about him is
 that his meetings happen on time. Many people think he's a really
 nice guy to invite to a barbecue, but it's a good thing for all of us
 that Dick Cheney's the guy in the driver's seat.

 The father figure that we yearn for in a president is now located at
 ~The West Wing~ located in Hollywood, CA. For the first time in
 history we have a Virtual President of the United States in direct
 competition with the real one. He is President Jed Bartlett, played
 by actor Martin Sheen, and he's a Democrat. This is no small thing.
 ~The West Wing~ is currently the most respected drama series on prime
 time television. It has a time slot right after ~Survivor~. It has
 some of the best script writers in the business, and they aren't
 reluctant to make their political sentiments known. While the
 so-called Commander-in-Chief parades as road man for the ~Chairman
 Cheney show~, President Bartlett conducts serious discussions on
 questions of social policy. While Dubya and his spinners (in charge
 of explaining away the President's verbal gaffs and contradictions)
 bewilder normally astute reporters with double talk, ~The West Wing~
 takes coherent positions, while presenting both sides of the issues.
 While Dubya seals himself in a well spun cocoon (for which he doesn't
 have the excuse of Alzheimer's disease), ~The West Wing~ tries to make
 the whole political process more accessible. While Dubya earns the
 undying gratitude of corporate fatheads, ~The West Wing~ takes home
 Emmys and gathers increasingly high ratings.

 A friend of mine recently expressed the fear that Americans would get
 so enthralled by the virtual democracy that they wouldn't notice that
 the real one had vanished. This is certainly a valid concern.
 Television is after all the most effective tool for social control
 ever designed, and it functions chiefly by diverting our attention
 from issues of real import.

 However, Hollywood is a constituency like any other. It has always
 been a breeding ground for liberalism and a refuge for social
 reformers. No accident that this was one of the first places congress
 went hunting for communists during the McCarthy era. Ultimately
 Hollywood understands that in order to succeed it must give at least
 a cursory nod to people's authentic concerns and feelings, although
 too often those feelings are trivialized. With the rise of all sorts
 of independent media since the Reagan Years a sea change has occurred
 in the relationship of the media business with real politics. In
 order to keep market share one must maintain an edge, and as tools
 become more available and widely distributed the edge can be stolen
 by people from all levels of the digital world.

 In the Reagan Years people were enthralled with the small town
 fantasy of ~The Waltons~, representing a world that, if it had ever
 truly existed, had even then largely been left behind. The Republican
 world, in spite of this fact, continues to look forward to eternal
 prosperity in a planned community, firmly gated to protect its moral
 purity. This pretty much sums up the dream of ~The Waltons~ (which is
 still in reruns on Christian television). The end of the Reagan era
 coincided with the rise of a counter-image in popular culture. The
 drama of the perfect family was replaced by the dysfunctional family
 sitcom. Honored films like _American Beauty_ and _Happiness_, and
 popular artists like Eminem actively challenge the homogenized image
 of middle-class contentment. Reality television is quickly replacing
 the news, and the news has come more and more to resemble fantasy. On
 the radio and the internet, established industries are battling the
 forces of popular innovation on a number of fronts, including
 recorded music and the rights to low band frequencies. Hollywood is
 no longer the only game in town, and it is intelligent enough to know
 it.

 The previous presidential administration actively and successfully
 courted Hollywood, quite openly inviting it into the real White
 House. Now that the Democratic administration has been deposed,
 Hollywood still understands where its friends are, and it knows its
 power to influence public opinion. The advisory staff of ~The West
 Wing~ is largely made up of former Clinton staffers and these are
 people passionately devoted to the world of politics. Rather than
 replacing reality, ~The West Wing~ has become a parallel reality
 representing the voice of the opposition on a platform more widely
 viewed and more effectively presented than anything on C-SPAN. Taking
 the long view, is this any less real than the presidency itself, as
 it is continually presented to us through layers of spin and
 obfuscation?

 Society has become so preoccupied with the production of the
 spectacle that our political future will be no doubt determined by
 the battle between different versions of reality as presented on
 television. "The battle for the minds of North America will be fought
 in the video arena, the Videodrome," pronounces one of my favorite
 movie characters, Brian O'Blivion, in the film _Videodrome_ by David
 Cronenberg. In a contest between Hollywood and the ultimately
 regressive powers of the right, my bet is solidly behind Hollywood.

 In the study of history, one sees that the center of world
 civilization has continually shifted to the West; from India to the
 Middle East, to Egypt, to Greece, to Rome, to Spain, to England, to
 North America. If the trend holds, the next shift is toward the
 Pacific Rim. Media empires and the big Hollywood studios have until
 the recent past been controlled by business interests based largely
 on Wall Street. The purchase of major studios by the Japanese, and
 the rise of new media wealth from a computer revolution based in the
 West, has led to a shift in the control equation. The media images we
 see are no longer as strictly controlled by fat men with cigars and
 suits on the East Coast. There are new images coming out of the West,
 from over the Pacific, from the developing world, from Los Angeles
 ghettoes, from Asia and the places where civilization was born. We
 will soon be given an indication of how far the alignment has
 shifted. The Academy Awards are a barometer that measures the shifts
 in America's sense of itself. Will the honors in 2000 go to a
 largely recycled film about the fall of the Roman Empire or to a
 brilliantly conceived masterpiece filmed by a Chinese American
 director in Mandarin?

 The Puritans, Europeans and their descendents built the power of an
 American empire out of global commerce and the resources of the land.
 Now it's the immigrants from the east and the south and the west who
 will transform this empire into something that reflects once again
 the universal human values that inspire the world. All truly great
 presidents have spoken eloquently in terms of inclusion rather than
 isolation, of embracing the world rather than protecting us from it.
 In the end this will be the true measure of the presidency, both real
 and virtual.

 Stay tuned.

 ____________________________________________________________________

 Ralph E. Melcher writes essays on media, politics and psychology in
 Santa Fe, New Mexico. http://www.well.com/user/melcher
 ____________________________________________________________________

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