Vote Po the panda: the movies that inspire politicians

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/20/movies-that-inspire-politicians

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The prospect of a Donald Trump presidency is a scary one, but at least now we have Mike Pence to soften the blow. Sure, Trump’s running mate might be a terrifying hard-right creationist fanatic who’s been dubbed “the most anti-abortion VP candidate ever”, but on the plus side he’s also an amateur film critic who in 1999 declared Disney’s Mulan to be “Walt Disney’s attempt to add childhood expectation to the cultural debate over the role of women in the military”. So that’s something.

Welcome, then, Mike Pence, to the pantheon of political cineastes. Here are your new peers.

1) Donald Trump

Early last decade, film-maker Errol Morris interviewed Trump about Citizen Kane, and Trump revealed that he connected with “the wealth, the sorrow, the unhappiness”, before adding: “The table getting larger and larger, with he and his wife getting further apart as he got wealthier? Perhaps I can understand that.” It seems like a different Trump altogether – he’s thinner, paler, more prone to introversion – but his close reading of the movie does at least set up the prospect of a fortnightly Don and Mike’s Sad Old Man Film Club podcast if they lose the election.

2) Bill Clinton

During a 1999 discussion with Roger Ebert, Bill Clinton veered off into a long tangent about Fight Club. Disagreeing with the film’s central argument that material possessions are an inherent barrier to personal identity, he pointed out: “It’s important not to disparage prosperity, for it gives people opportunity and leisure and security … It’s not all there is to life, but it creates the possibility of fashioning a life that has integrity and meaning.” He also took issue with the film’s nihilism: “There are things outside yourself to throw yourself into. You don’t have to get beat up by somebody, you know.”

3) Kim Jong-il

North Korea’s late Dear Leader was a notorious cinephile who first attempted to revolutionise his country’s film-making industry by writing a 344-page treatise entitled On the Art of the Cinema and then, when that failed, kidnapping a South Korean director and keeping him prisoner for eight years. Kim was also a fan of western cinema, singling out James Bond and the films of Elizabeth Taylor as his favourites. In 2010, he even made Bend It Like Beckham the first western film ever to be broadcast on North Korean state TV – either because it depicts a mobilised working class, or because Keira Knightley is lovely.

4) Ron Johnson

The Wisconsin senator hates The Lego Movie. He really, really hates The Lego Movie. Last year he was filmed telling an audience that he’d heard grievances from voters about the film. One of them, he said, was upset when he took his six-year-old children to see the film, only to discover that the villain was “Evil Mr Businessperson”. “It’s insidious how they start that propaganda early,” he said. And they told us that everything was awesome. For shame.

5) Patrick Leahy

Remember in The Dark Knight, when the Joker invades Bruce Wayne’s apartment and the old, balding white-haired man says: “We’re not intimidated by thugs”? That’s Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, and he likes Batman more than you. He wrote the forewords to two separate Batman graphic novels in the 1990s, and has been rewarded with cameo appearances in five different Batman films. Admittedly only one of these films was any good, but that just shows what a fan he is.

6) Adolf Hitler

In 1938, Roy Disney sold Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the German propaganda ministry, largely on the basis that Hitler considered it one of the greatest films of all time. It helps, of course, that Snow White was based on a German folk tale, but the technical mastery of the film is reportedly what Hitler most admired. In fact, in 2008, a Norwegian war museum claimed to have discovered watercolour sketches of Bashful and Doc that were painted by Hitler himself in 1940.

7) Ed Miliband

One of Miliband’s key election tactics last year appeared to be an enthusiastically repeated declaration of love for the CBeebies show Octonauts. This is a vast improvement on the ex-Labour leader’s previous attempts to discuss his love of film. “Justine and I went to the cinema on Saturday,” he said during an interview in 2011. “I inflicted a baseball film on her – Moneyball with Brad Pitt. She loved it. As we left a man said to me: ‘Are you Ed Miliband?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. He went: ‘Oh, then I’ve just lost a £50 bet with my wife.’” Stand down, Peter Bradshaw.

8) Boris Johnson

In 2009, Johnson – now spearheading Britain’s foreign policy – wrote in the following in his Spectator diary: “My strong instinct is swerve. As the man says in Dodgeball – the world’s greatest ever film – dodge, dip, duck, dive and dodge”. The world’s greatest ever film. Has a British politician ever lauded a more gratuitously lowbrow film?

9) Nick Clegg

Actually, yes. In 2013, right in the dog days of his tenure as browbeaten, Lib Dem party-destroying deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg told LBC that Kung Fu Panda was “one of the greatest movies made in recent years”, adding: “I don’t want to belittle this. I know you’re chortling like it’s just for children, but actually it is incredibly funny for adults as well. The characters are bemusing, endearing. I challenge you, once you watch Kung Fu Panda, whether you are an eight-year-old child or an adult, whether you can resist getting up off your sofa and starting to do some kung fu chops in your living room.” That must be the worst of it, surely.

10) David Cameron

Nope! In 2014, David Cameron revealed that one of his favourite films is “the last 10 minutes of Shrek 2”. This, you remember, is the segment where a gingerbread man dies, a fairy explodes, everyone sings Living La Vida Loca by Ricky Martin all the way through from beginning to end, a prince gets off with a transgender bartender voiced by Larry King and a puppy dies. You can’t deny that the man’s got taste.