The unthinkable has happened. Donald Trump is going to be
the Republican nominee for President. While the establishment wing of the
Republican Party has quickly cycled through the stages of grief, most Americans
are left with feelings of shock, bewilderment and fear. But the ingredients
necessary for the bloviating billionaire’s political ascension aren’t anything
new. Trump has simply risen through the cult of personality, combined with a
fractured and evolving media landscape, plus the ugliest aspects of populism by
pandering to the crudest aspects of racial resentment, which remains
deep-seated in the psyche of white males nationwide. Over the decades, cinema has dealt with the issues that have abetted the vulgar mogul’s path to
the nomination.
Based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, the character
of Charles Foster Kane from Orson Welles’ classic “Citizen Kane” is the closest
approximation to Donald Trump in the cinema. Both Trump and Kane are born into
their fortunes, yet each carry themselves with the hubris of a self-made man. Earlier
in his campaign, Trump famously stated that he got started with “a small loan of a million dollars.” In a similar fashion, Kane is self-assured in
proclaiming that he’s “always gagged on that silver spoon.” Perhaps the
scariest realization is that both actually believe it.
In the context of 2016’s election, any number of quotes
about Charles Foster Kane could be applied to his modern day counterpart.
“Spoke for millions of Americans,” the opening voiceover of the film proclaims
about Kane, “was hated by as many more.” Later, the authoritative narrator
says, “No public man whom Kane himself didn’t support or denounce. Often support, then
denounce.” Think of this statement when viewing past pictures of Trump and his
newfound political rival Hillary Clinton smiling together. Statements in “Kane”
from Jedediah Leland, Kane’s closest friend, echo some of the attacks levied
against Trump in the campaign—“I don’t suppose anybody ever had so many
opinions. But he never believed in anything except Charlie Kane. He never had a
conviction except Charlie Kane in his life.”
Both the fictitious Kane and the real life Trump have their
own political ambitions, and each tries to frame themselves as fighting for the
working man. In a stump speech, Leland calls Kane “the friend of the working
man.” The film then takes to the iconic imagery of Kane giving an impassioned
speech while standing before a massive poster of his own visage. Like Trump,
Kane’s speech is short on actual policy and is more a string of attacks and
insults on his political rival, Jim Gettys. Also reminiscent of Trump, Kane
touts his polling numbers while lambasting the perceived corruption of his
rivals. Kane’s political ambitions are destroyed by a sex scandal, something
that could’ve possibly unraveled Trump’s candidacy had Republican voters not
somehow abandoned their once-staunch stance towards infidelity and divorce in
this election. Upon losing the election, we see Kane’s general manager Mr.
Bernstein choose between two headlines for the morning paper: “Kane Elected” or
“Fraud at Polls!” The image made the rounds on Twitter when Trump claimed fraud
prevented him from winning the Iowa caucuses.
Speaking to the legendary documentarian Errol Morris for an abandoned project that found its way onto YouTube, Trump speaks
candidly about “Citizen Kane.” Perhaps his personal connection to the subject
matter allowed him to shed the layers of ego and bravado, as he speaks quite
thoughtfully about the film. According to Trump, Kane’s life was about
accumulation of wealth and property with nothing but heartbreak at the end.
“I think you learn in ‘Kane’ that maybe wealth isn’t everything,” he says. “In real life, I believe that wealth does in fact isolate you from other people,” he says shortly after.
These two sentences are antithetical to the egotistical screeds that make up a
Trump stump speech. When Morris asks Trump for what advice he would give Kane
the character, the billionaire characteristically reached back to his old well
of crudeness, saying, “Get yourself a different woman.”
Trump isn’t a traditional media mogul like Charles Foster
Kane, but Trump has always been quite media savvy. So much of his persona is
based around his ability to stare into the camera and confidently proclaim
himself bigger and better than anyone. The media has received ample blame for
their role in allowing Trump to dominate the nightly news broadcasts. However,
the blame is slightly misplaced, as the role of traditional media has been
undergoing a constant evolution over the past three decades with the advent of
the 24 hours news cycle and the internet. Once upon a time, news divisions were
a public service, never expected to turn a profit for their corporate
overlords.
That tumultuous shift was the subject of Sydney Lumet’s
classic drama “Network.” The cynicism that seeps through the pages of Paddy Chayefsky’s
screenplay was remarkably prescient in its understanding that news and reality
television would soon become one in the same, including the rise of the
opinion-oriented news program. Each facet of the downfall of traditional media
has been exploited by Trump. He’s been the figurehead of his own absurd reality
show, and his constant appearances on various Fox News shows have aided his
political ambitions.
In the throes of a mental breakdown, veteran news anchor Howard
Beale has his fragile mental state exploited and becomes the “latter-day
prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our time.” The character has become a
template for the outraged host of ideologically driven opinion programming. Beale
speaks in an apocalyptic fervor, something one could find on the air at Fox
News at practically any given time during the Obama presidency. A political
climate has been created where “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it
anymore!” has replaced typical left/right ideology, thus a void that could only
be filled by a political outsider that appeals to rage.
Ratings and clicks have taken center stage. The opening
voiceover of “Network” defines Howard Beale only by his ratings, and the powers
that be at the fictional UBS only care about ratings, so they keep placing
Beale in front of the cameras despite his fragile mental state. Similarly, the
pundits at Fox News deflect any criticisms of their lacking journalistic
integrity by pointing to their ratings, as if popularity absolves them of any
and all responsibility for demagoguery and distortion of facts.
Of course, it’s hard to rail against political and media
elites in a fine tailored suit while broadcasting out of New York City. Preaching
the tenets of modern conservatism to its intended audience doesn’t require the
northeastern intellectual smugness of William F. Buckley, Jr. Instead you need
to tap into a more folksy sensibility, like the one present in Larry “Lonesome”
Rhodes in Elia Kazan’s “A Face in the Crowd.” A hard-drinking misogynist,
“Lonesome” Rhodes quickly makes the transition from a radio host telling
southern-fried stories of home-cooked meals and eccentric relatives to a
television host using his influence for political purposes. Like Howard Beale
in “Network,” Rhodes doesn’t follow a script and his supposed authenticity
earns him a loyal audience.
At first, Rhodes uses his newfound influence for a personal
vendetta against the sheriff who had previously jailed him for his drunk and
disorderly behavior. As his influence grows, Rhodes sees himself as a political
kingmaker, a man willing to reshape the image of a senator to make him more palatable
for a presidential run. Having sold the senator as a downhome fella with whom
he goes hunting, Rhodes can have him on his folksy talk show where the senator
can freely lambast the social safety net. The image of two powerful men putting
on different faces for the public in order to implore the voters to vote
against their own interests is timeless Americana, and the kind of thing you
could see on any given night from Trump’s biggest cheerleaders.
Undoubtedly, the ugliest aspect of Trump’s campaign has been
his blatant racism. Again, this isn’t anything new in American politics, having
been effectively employed by conservative politicians since Nixon’s Southern strategy in 1968. However, Trump employs blunter language than the dog whistles
of old, appealing to a certain subsection of the white male population that
sees themselves marginalized by the growing diversity of the nation’s
demographics.
This ugliness has manifested itself in instances of
violence, many of which have taken place at rallies for Trump. It’s almost as
if Trump has focused his campaign to appeal to people like William “D-Fens” Foster,
Michael Douglas’ character in Joel Schumacher’s “Falling Down,” a man whose
personal failings morph into a violent spree against diversity and modernity.
“Falling Down” is a movie that wades in some difficult
waters of race and class, yet Schumacher isn’t the kind of filmmaker to bring
its nuance to the forefront. At once, the film tries to make Foster’s rampage
reprehensible yet understandable. Foster is a character that sees himself as
purely middle class, and anyone above or below him in the class structure is
subject to his violent whims—fast food workers, construction workers, or the
affluent playing a round of golf each have to stare down the barrel of his gun
for the mild inconveniences perpetrated against his mission of pure privilege.
Due to its being produced in close proximity to the L.A.
Riots that followed the Rodney King verdict, “Falling Down” avoids having its
lead character take a violent retribution against any black people. Instead, he
takes aim at a Korean shop owner, lambasting the man for his high prices and
accent while thrashing the store’s merchandise. Foster also has a violent
encounter with some stereotypical Mexican gangsters, practically the kind of
characters that embody Trump’s repulsive rhetoric about Mexicans as “killers
and rapists.”
If there’s one aspect of “Falling Down” that doesn’t jibe
with Trumpism, it shows when Foster is aghast to learn that his actions have
earned him the respect and admiration of a neo-Nazi that runs an army surplus
store. Meanwhile, Trump has earned the vocal support of neo-Nazis, and has retweeted their racist memes on more than one occasion. Regarding the inability
of Schumacher to find the satirical edge of “Falling Down,” it’s not very
difficult to find praise for the film on certain neo-Nazi message boards (though
they all seemingly take exception to Foster’s murder of his neo-Nazi rival).
Trump’s appeal is greatest to someone like William Foster, who feels that they’ve been pushed to the margins of society through multiculturalism—people want to dissolve the distinctly American concept of a melting pot nation.
Donald Trump isn’t anything new. Donald Trump isn’t anything
special. He’s born of affluence and driven by pure ego. Just because he portrays
himself as something different doesn’t mean you have to play his game. With characters like Charles Foster Kane or Howard Beale, cinema informs us of the self-interested demagogues who would
play on our darkest fears and ugliest beliefs for political gain. The movies have been warning us about characters like Trump for decades.
When are we finally going to listen?