WashPost: Film imagery of leaders as they relate to Obama and McCain

[Captain Hilts]

This is an interesting article that inadvertently demonstrates why we're DECADES away from a female president. The cultural imagery of a leader is male, tall - Hunter calls McCain "short" though he is the national average - and often but not always white.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070301507.html?referrer=emailarticlepg

W onderful moment in John Ford's "The Searchers," from way back in 1956: John Wayne, as the surly, violent Ethan Edwards, signals to his young compadre that it's time to move on in their pursuit of Scar, the Comanche chief who's murdered their family and kidnapped the youngest daughter, Debbie. "Let's go, blankethead," he scowls to the young Martin Pawley.

I love the Duke's pronunciation of the word "blankethead"; it radiates contempt for the young and the untested. Ethan is using the blast of scorn to tell the young man not only to get going to his horse but to get going in growing up, to acquire sand, grit, salt and all the other granular metaphors for old-guy toughness and savvy.

But in the same instant, I remember Will Smith in the original "Men in Black." The hotshot young cop has been recruited to an alien-hunting team secretly HQ'd in a New York bridge, and now he's working for Tommy Lee Jones and Rip Torn. Torn and Jones are babbling about something and not paying attention to Smith. There's a moment of frustration on the young face, and he interrupts with his own blast of scorn: "Hey, old guys !"

It's a voice full of impatience, annoyance, even contempt, suggesting they haven't the energy, the quickness or the attention span to take care of business. It's on him, now, the new guy, the kid: He's got to keep them from wandering off, losing track, drifting as the old are wont to do.

Both those moments come to mind when contemplating the politics of the day. That's because, while the next few months can be dissected from many angles, the template that the Obama-McCain race seems to demand is familiar to anyone who has paid the slightest attention to popular culture over the years: old star/young star.

[Demit]

1. Oh, gag me. Life as a movie. Dumbing down the real world into terms we can grasp, I suppose.

But this is especially egregious:

"When you look at McCain's battered face and his movie-star-stunning wife (blond, blue-eyed beauty)... As a young aviator, he was studly enough to date a stripper. And as an older guy, he was cool enough to marry a woman who was probably the most beautiful rich one or the richest beautiful one in the world. Nobody will write this anywhere except me here, but we guys, you know what: We admire another guy for making a great catch."


Too bad the author of this dreck forgot to mention how McCain ditched the first crippled wife so he could go after the heiress. Guess that part got left on the cutting room floor.

[Captain Hilts]

2. True. Hunter is a conservative...

and I don't think ditching Wife #1 is always as big an issue with men as it is women.

A huge percentage of POWs divorced after returning home. People grew, changed, and moved on. But McCain was a real shit about it.

But, we don't have nearly the 'heroic' images of women on film as we have for men.