Hitler, J.F.K, and Arnold: image shouldn’t control politics

Sure, I?d heard about the recall. I?d even heard that the guy from ?Jingle All The Way? was… Sure, I?d heard about the recall. I?d even heard that the guy from ?Jingle All The Way? was one of the candidates. Then I heard it wasn?t Sinbad running, but Arnold Schwarzenegger, world traveler and bon vivant, star of ?Hercules in New York.? So I snuggled under my Sinbad-themed bedspread and went back to sleep.

Weeks later, I woke up and John Goodman was the president on ?The West Wing.? Perhaps more importantly, Arnold Schwarzenegger had been elected governor of California. The Office of Homeland Security raised its Absurdity Alert Level to orange, urging citizens to don protective masks of ironic detachment before watching any news coverage.

So for those of you like me, with heads spinning from this blink-and-you?ll-miss-it campaign, I?ve pieced together a quick analysis. There will be no discussion of the issues, because they are boring and complicated, and Arnold says he?ll explain everything soon enough.

Let?s start with the masterful use of movie references. His catchphrases, running the gamut from ?The Terminator? to ?Terminator 3,? were subtly re-contextualized ? to refer to politics! The genius in this strategy is that ?Total Recall? now referred to his political adversaries, whom he would ?terminate.? The California voters uttered a collective, ?Oh, yeah! Like that movie!? And the media went, ?We love movie puns!?

Wisely, though, he distanced himself from ?Batman and Robin.? Admitting to that movie would have been a political mistake not even a sophisticated Austrian accent could undo.

Arnold?s detractors refused to acknowledge his sophistication, but he has a better grasp of modern politics than most people realize. The New York Times quoted a gushing Arnold, from his book proposal, ?The feeling like Kennedy had, you know, to speak to maybe 50,000 people at one time and having them cheer, or like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium. And have all those people scream at you and just being in total agreement with whatever you say.?

Sure, there?s a fair amount of political space between Hitler and Kennedy: one started World II and the other averted the third. History might remember one as a mass murderer and the embodiment of evil and the other as the floppy-haired King Arthur of idealism, but, hey, they both got people to cheer.

Arnold understands that modern politics aren?t about history. They?re about movies. In movies, it doesn?t matter if you play the hero, Kennedy, or the villain ? that?d be Hitler ? as long as the people cheer. Actions don?t matter as much as adulation; star power trumps substance. The goal of the Schwarzenegger campaign was to keep them clapping.

A quick example of how this works: during the campaign, a lot of people, women mostly, complained about being groped by the governor-to-be. A serious accusation; how do you defuse it? By making sure women holding ?Remarkable Women for Arnold? posters showed up at every rally. And they were clapping! The message: There are women here and Arnold?s not groping them ? isn?t that remarkable? Now don?t you feel silly for asking about those sexual harassment accusations? Just go with the flow, babe.

If you don?t go with the flow, you get into messy questions of character and leadership. You?d have to ask if character is more than being charismatic for the camera ? ask Hitler documentarian Leni Riefenstahl about his onscreen presence. You might realize there?s a difference between fantasy and reality, and even if there weren?t, would you really want the T-800 running your state? A machine whose sole problem-solving skill is to put a bullet between the eyes of whatever gets in its way?

You?d have to ask whether a celluloid leader is any leader at all.

Then again, he can lift a lot, and most political battles are settled in the gym, where the guardians of the Republic gather to bulk up and snap towels at each other. Gray Davis and his tiny Tyrannosaurus arms never fit in there. He wouldn?t stand a chance against a liquid metal T1000.

Oh, there I go confusing politics with movies again. I suppose it?s because they both trade in dreams. America itself is a dream, but a difficult one because it has no Hollywood ending ? the dream is ongoing, moved forward by the true leaders and visionaries. And citizens.

The movies offer a much easier dream, where the action hero is always right and every solution comes out of the barrel of a gun. They are escapist, a two-hour reprieve when the real dream gets too difficult or complex. Screen heroes are two-dimensional by nature; their power lives only in scripted fantasies, not in the real world. On the screen is where they belong.

Jesse Hicks apologizes for flogging a dead horse, but not for loving ?Red Heat.? Debate its merits with jhicks@pittnews.com