Trump Back to the Future Funnies
A round the fourth dimension of the 2008 presidential elections, a pop theory took agree that movies and Tv shows had paved the way for a blackness president: Dennis Haysbert in 24, Chris Rock in Head of Land, Morgan Freeman … well, merely Morgan Freeman. Barack Obama would never have swept to victory if the nation hadn't been conditioned by these groundbreaking portrayals, it was implied. But has pop culture been laying the footing for the next occupant of the White House? In this most unexpected of ballot years, the next president is likely to be different in some form: the first woman/Latino/billionaire/religious maniac – and whoever it turns out to be, you can bet the entertainment industry will take the credit.
Let's start with Hillary Clinton. There is a rather shaky history of fictional female presidents: Geena Davis in Commander in Main, Cherry Jones in 24, er, Joan Rivers in Les Patterson Saves the World. Aside from the insultingly vague feature of "being a woman", none of them are a particularly practiced fit for Clinton. With Commander in Chief, it actually worked the other way effectually: Clinton's anticipated run for the White Business firm inspired the ABC series. Unfortunately, Davis doesn't win the election in her own right. She is a tokenistic vice-president, who gets the top chore when the (male) president dies of a stroke – which suggests she more than paved the way for Sarah Palin. It is a similar story with Julia-Louis Dreyfus in Veep: she only assumes the presidency when her (male person) predecessor steps down. Not that Clinton would willingly encourage comparisons with Dreyfus'south character, who is neurotic, petty, barely competent and lovably fallible.
Cherry Jones's President Taylor from 24 is more the type of precursor Clinton would want: dignified, respected, wise and unsullied by decades of political mudslinging. Jones fifty-fifty expressed the hope that her character would prepare the US for a female president the same manner Haysbert had for a black one. Only then she went and spoiled it all by ruling that her President Taylor had "nothing to do with Hillary", describing her equally a combination of Eleanor Roosevelt, Golda Meir and John Wayne (which actually kind of does sound like Clinton).
In recent years, rather than paving Clinton's manner, Hollywood has seemed bent on digging her grave. Every teen-friendly dystopia worth its franchise seems to ruled by a merciless-simply-stylish female despot: Kate Winslet in Divergent, Jodie Foster in Elysium and, in particular, Julianne Moore's Alma Coin, president-in-waiting in The Hunger Games saga, who shows her true colours once she gets nearly the throne (information technology turns out she was more interested in revenge all forth).
Clinton's Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, has information technology relatively easy. He is conspicuously drawing on the old "political outsider who's gonna shake up the White House" narrative – a path so well paved in the movies it is now a six-lane superhighway. It is compulsory to mention Frank Capra's national chestnut Mr Smith Goes to Washington in this context, and Sanders has a better claim to Mr Smith status than virtually. He is not just a genuine outsider but also, similar James Stewart's Jefferson Smith, a veteran of the filibuster. The Oscar clip in the future Sanders biopic will undoubtedly exist his viii-and-a-one-half-hour turn at the stand in 2010, where he passionately laid into Obama'south taxation deal, China, jobs, wealth and whatsoever else he could retrieve of. (The movie version will cover this in a 2-minute montage, with lots of cutaways to clocks.) The only trouble with the analogy is that Sanders looks more like Stewart's grandpa.
Even worse news for Sanders is that a more upward-to-date mental prototype has emerged. Larry David's caricatures of the Vermont senator on Saturday Night Live accept been and then spot-on ("I don't have a Super Pac; I don't even have a haversack!"), they threaten to overwrite the real Sanders in the public consciousness, just every bit Tina Fey did with Palin. David's hybrid sketch Bern Your Enthusiasm, in particular, could leave voters confused every bit to whether it was the sitcom grouch or the real Sanders who refused to shake a supporter'south mitt because they had just coughed into it. Or whether or not the real Sanders would prepare a voter'southward dislocated shoulder if called upon. Well, would he? Fox News panels take debated more footling matters.
When it comes to the Republicans, things go a fiddling trickier, if just because the default setting for "U.s. president" has been a white, middle-aged, conservative-minded male person for most of the history of pop entertainment. At that place is also the fact that i candidate'south bombastic persona has tended to suck up all the media oxygen, on screen and off. Also-rans such every bit Jim Gilmore and John Kasich would probably pay good money to have Johnny Depp portray them in a satirical biopic for Funny or Dice. No affair how insulting the comedy, any publicity would exist good publicity at this stage. But no, it has to be Donald Trump. It has besides been also revealed that Trump inspired the character Biff Tannen in Dorsum to the Futurity, the cocky-aggrandising bully who acquires obscene wealth non entirely past his own merit, and builds a huge casino. Again, not a flattering portrayal, but one that has been embedded in the popular consciousness for decades, like a product placement. Information technology makes you wonder if Trump didn't go dorsum in time and write himself into the screenplay.
But there are more ominous Trump harbingers, too. Witness the antagonist of The Lego Movie, President Concern, AKA Lord Business. He has far-reaching corporate ability, lives in a giant skyscraper and sports ridiculous pilus. And he cannot abide the collective-minded, free-thinking resistance to his totalitarian government (led past Morgan Freeman). They are non explicitly labelled as "socialists", but that is basically they what are. In that location are no Lego Muslims in the picture; they have already been deported, brick past brick.
But one moving-picture show, above all others, issued a warning about non only Trump's clout but the direction of U.s.a. politics in full general: Mike Judge'due south 2006 satire Idiocracy. It is set up 500 years in the futurity, when the global IQ has plummeted and politics is basically an adjunct of wrestling. Physically, Idiocracy's president Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho couldn't be more than different to Trump: he is a large, muscular black human with long, flowing pilus (presumably his ain). Just when it comes to degraded political rhetoric, they are reading off the same Autocue. Camacho begins his Land of the Matrimony address with the words: "Shit. I know shit's bad right now …" He silences his critics past firing a machine gun into the air. He claims he is able not only to heal the economy but also to "cure acne and car sickness every bit well".
What recognition the other Republican candidates can claim is unlikely to help their poll ratings. Jeb Bush'due south trail to the White House has already been blazed by his father and big blood brother, and so he hardly needs a boost from popular culture – which is merely as well, because his grasp of it. When asked to name his favourite superhero terminal year, Bush replied: "I like watching the movies. I wish I owned Marvel, as someone that believes in capitalism." He and so dug himself deeper by describing a poster of Supergirl he'd seen in the gym every bit "pretty hot".
Information technology is off-white to assume, therefore, that Bush has never seen Arrested Evolution. If he has, the cult sitcom's troubled dynastic family might have rung a bong. Particularly the hapless George Oscar Bluth, AKA Gob, whose name is formed out of his initials (not unlike a certain John Ellis Bush-league), who is looked upon with scorn by his father, George, who is jealous of his more successful brother, whose family had dodgy dealings in Iraq and who is constantly striving to live up to the family unit name only uses information technology to go ahead wherever possible. Just Jeb Bush-league isn't a crap magician, and so Gob Bluth can't maybe exist based on him.
That just leaves Ted Cruz – a figure whose precedents are more likely to exist institute in the book of Revelation than the modern mediascape. Dig a footling deeper, though, and Hollywood did issue a pre-emptive vision of a Cruz presidency, in the grade of John Carpenter'southward 1996 sequel Escape from LA, set in the futuristic year of 2013. The president is a rightwing religious fanatic. He declares himself president for life. He moves the capital to the deep s. He outlaws alcohol, smoking, meat, bad language and premarital sex. And he deports those unfit to live in his new "Moral America" to Los Angeles, which is now a giant prison island – somewhere between Blade Runner and Guantánamo. That is not to suggest that Cruz would coerce Kurt Russell into rescuing his wayward girl by infecting him with a deadly virus, then try to impale her anyway. Merely the picture show's repressive theocracy looks like the sort of thing the ultra-conservative Cruz could get behind. Not so much "yeah we can" as "no you lot can't". Information technology is as well a scenario in which Hollywood's abode town is cut off from the rest of the country, denying all those inconvenient flick-type people whatever undue influence over the electoral process. On second thoughts, that is something all of this year's presidential candidates could get backside.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/14/pop-culture-make-us-president-donald-trump-biff-back-to-the-future
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