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| US presidents on film: after the fall | US presidents on film: after the fall |
| (4 months later) | |
| In Independence Day (1996) it's the president who nails it: "The Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice, 'We will not go quietly into the night.' Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!" | In Independence Day (1996) it's the president who nails it: "The Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice, 'We will not go quietly into the night.' Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!" |
| American values – like freedom, and man's inalienable right to feature-length Will Smith – were now global values. That's what President Bill Pullman was telling us – just when the US blockbuster was firmly consolidating its worldwide hold. Independence Day represented politics and entertainment in perfect alignment; a great example of how the presidency itself has been one of Hollywood's most effective propaganda tools for spreading the red-white-and-blue gospel. | American values – like freedom, and man's inalienable right to feature-length Will Smith – were now global values. That's what President Bill Pullman was telling us – just when the US blockbuster was firmly consolidating its worldwide hold. Independence Day represented politics and entertainment in perfect alignment; a great example of how the presidency itself has been one of Hollywood's most effective propaganda tools for spreading the red-white-and-blue gospel. |
| The US presidency is surely the most portrayed political office in cinema history. IMDb shows up 260 films featuring the big cheese; compared to 124 for the pope, and 38 for the English monarch. And we're soon getting two more movie chiefs of state, both under attack in Washington: Aaron Eckhart's President Asher in Olympus Has Fallen, the tedious side-parted proxy leader of a gazillion action movies; and Jamie Foxx's President Sawyer, in the upcoming White House Down. By this point, the Oval Office – the exact centre of the US blockbuster universe, the eye of its storm – feels almost as familiar as our own front room. | The US presidency is surely the most portrayed political office in cinema history. IMDb shows up 260 films featuring the big cheese; compared to 124 for the pope, and 38 for the English monarch. And we're soon getting two more movie chiefs of state, both under attack in Washington: Aaron Eckhart's President Asher in Olympus Has Fallen, the tedious side-parted proxy leader of a gazillion action movies; and Jamie Foxx's President Sawyer, in the upcoming White House Down. By this point, the Oval Office – the exact centre of the US blockbuster universe, the eye of its storm – feels almost as familiar as our own front room. |
| This casual usage in so many films must reinforce the drumbeat of US supremacy and benevolence in the real world. Olympus Has Fallen is totally in step with that time-honoured blockbuster trend: portraying the American president as the seat of ultimate power and the ultimate moral good. Eckhart spends so much time sacrificing himself to Rick Yune's cherry-lipped North Korean terrorist, you wonder if he's trying to escape a second term. He's the respectable face, which allows Gerard Butler's 1980s throwback to enact America's unilateral revenge fantasies, complete with air-punching payoff quips about "the United People's Front of who-gives-a-fuck". (Too cute – but we know Butler is from another era since, during a crucial computer decryption scene, he has to ask where the hash key is.) | This casual usage in so many films must reinforce the drumbeat of US supremacy and benevolence in the real world. Olympus Has Fallen is totally in step with that time-honoured blockbuster trend: portraying the American president as the seat of ultimate power and the ultimate moral good. Eckhart spends so much time sacrificing himself to Rick Yune's cherry-lipped North Korean terrorist, you wonder if he's trying to escape a second term. He's the respectable face, which allows Gerard Butler's 1980s throwback to enact America's unilateral revenge fantasies, complete with air-punching payoff quips about "the United People's Front of who-gives-a-fuck". (Too cute – but we know Butler is from another era since, during a crucial computer decryption scene, he has to ask where the hash key is.) |
| It's a case of depicting the US president as the strongest, or the wisest. Those are difficult notions to sell – or buy into – post-9/11, Iraq and Guantánamo. I doubt a film such as 1997's Air Force One would be greenlit now, with Harrison Ford's father of the nation preposterously combining vulnerable Clintonian family guy and authentic American maverick who Uzis his way through a plane-full of Russian hijackers. He also vows, rather unfortunately with real-world hindsight: "Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right." | It's a case of depicting the US president as the strongest, or the wisest. Those are difficult notions to sell – or buy into – post-9/11, Iraq and Guantánamo. I doubt a film such as 1997's Air Force One would be greenlit now, with Harrison Ford's father of the nation preposterously combining vulnerable Clintonian family guy and authentic American maverick who Uzis his way through a plane-full of Russian hijackers. He also vows, rather unfortunately with real-world hindsight: "Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right." |
| Twenty-first-century presidential movies have an awkward balancing act on their hands – indulging the old-school paragon the US mainstream wants to see, and introducing greater notes of vulnerability and realpolitik that make such subject matter more resonant with all-important overseas audiences. Olympus Has Fallen looks to be too retrograde to appeal properly to the second group, if its US/overseas box-office split (currently 93%/7% – though it's still yet to open in several international territories) is any indication. But it's still culturally sensitive enough to avoid identifying any real-life faction as the villains: Yune's terrorist isn't affiliated to the North Korean government, but to a splinter group. Maybe the makers should have been more alert to the threat posed by dodgy Bulgarian CGI than the loss of Korean box office. | Twenty-first-century presidential movies have an awkward balancing act on their hands – indulging the old-school paragon the US mainstream wants to see, and introducing greater notes of vulnerability and realpolitik that make such subject matter more resonant with all-important overseas audiences. Olympus Has Fallen looks to be too retrograde to appeal properly to the second group, if its US/overseas box-office split (currently 93%/7% – though it's still yet to open in several international territories) is any indication. But it's still culturally sensitive enough to avoid identifying any real-life faction as the villains: Yune's terrorist isn't affiliated to the North Korean government, but to a splinter group. Maybe the makers should have been more alert to the threat posed by dodgy Bulgarian CGI than the loss of Korean box office. |
| It's a stretch to say that the optimal international version of Olympus Has Fallen would be one in which Yune's Blofeldesque scheme succeeds. American culture, the presidential halo, not to mention old-fashioned moral narrative closure, still have widespread appeal. But in the same way as 1980s and 1990s films that got behind the president generated their drama from the idea that the institution might have a dark side, any contemporary portrayal of the president playing the global field has to draw on the frisson that his omnipotence is fading. Or that it could be permanently broken. | It's a stretch to say that the optimal international version of Olympus Has Fallen would be one in which Yune's Blofeldesque scheme succeeds. American culture, the presidential halo, not to mention old-fashioned moral narrative closure, still have widespread appeal. But in the same way as 1980s and 1990s films that got behind the president generated their drama from the idea that the institution might have a dark side, any contemporary portrayal of the president playing the global field has to draw on the frisson that his omnipotence is fading. Or that it could be permanently broken. |
| So expect to see the current end-of-American-empire movie cliche – mournful use of the stars and stripes, or the Star-Spangled Banner (see also: The Master; The Dark Knight Rises) – in White House Down. This will, of course, be director Roland Emmerich's second despoiling of the White House. Judging by its trailer, the film sets the presidential office in the latter-day, beleaguered landscape even more firmly than Olympus Has Fallen. There's plenty of back-to-9/11 shakycam; a tagline suggesting that the strength of the US body politic has, somehow, crumbled from within ("America will be never be destroyed from the outside") and dialogue ("Tell me how much time I have") ominously relaying that the end is nigh. It's a beautifully cut 2mins 17sec – hushed, portentous, zeitgeist-caressing. You know the world has moved on when you're praising Roland Emmerich for being subtle. | So expect to see the current end-of-American-empire movie cliche – mournful use of the stars and stripes, or the Star-Spangled Banner (see also: The Master; The Dark Knight Rises) – in White House Down. This will, of course, be director Roland Emmerich's second despoiling of the White House. Judging by its trailer, the film sets the presidential office in the latter-day, beleaguered landscape even more firmly than Olympus Has Fallen. There's plenty of back-to-9/11 shakycam; a tagline suggesting that the strength of the US body politic has, somehow, crumbled from within ("America will be never be destroyed from the outside") and dialogue ("Tell me how much time I have") ominously relaying that the end is nigh. It's a beautifully cut 2mins 17sec – hushed, portentous, zeitgeist-caressing. You know the world has moved on when you're praising Roland Emmerich for being subtle. |
| • Next week's After Hollywood will focus on a Thai ghost-story phenomenon. What global cinematic stories would you like to see covered in the column? Let us know in the comments below. | • Next week's After Hollywood will focus on a Thai ghost-story phenomenon. What global cinematic stories would you like to see covered in the column? Let us know in the comments below. |
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