The Politics of Fandom; or, The Boots are All Reverbed Out

Those who know me will know that I have very little to be disappointed about with regards to the recent elections. Having said that, I found myself often disappointed in process of the campaign. The whole way it all went down. You know. The usual liberal complaints. Money seemed to dominate the nature of the discourse. The media promoted horse races and conventional thinking rather than raising new issues. No one advocated for peace. Or civil liberties. Or gun control. Or proposed any new ideas to address the crisis in K though 12 education. Or the environment. Or poverty.

Instead we got a whole lotta fear and loathing. Fear and loathing. Fear and loathing. Blah blah blah.

But now is the winter of our discontent as we go through the Reconstruction phase of our Cold Civil War. So nothing—no nothing—disturbed me further than the incoherent diatribe offered by one of my heroes at the Republican National Convention. I mean, I knew Clint Eastwood was a Republican…but I didn’t know he was one of those Republicans. Maybe I was in denial, but after he starred in a Chrysler commercial during that last Super Bowl, I just assumed that he was the sort of centrist GOPer who took one look at the Tea Party and said, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll be quietly voting for Obama this time. Call me back when y’all finish your deprogramming.” But alas…in a performance which awkwardly evoked all of my dead grandparents at once he engaged in a garbled angry tussle with an empty bar stool. Oh well. [continued after the jump]

           Why am I so disappointed? Good question. I guess I find it hard to like people when I learn that they believe the unbelievable. 

I don’t really mean that I don’t like them…I just find myself in what I call the melancholy of ambivalence. How does one love people whose ideas are reprehensible? You know, I recently tried to date someone who actually believes—get this—that Michelle Obama tried to get Sesame Street to change the Cookie Monster into the Veggie Monster. Hey, I gave it the old college try. At the very least I could do to her what George W. Bush did to the country, right? Justifiable? No? Hm....
          Then there’s a friend of mine who’s out of work. He’s a scientist, a biologist…with a PhD…from my alma mater…who doesn’t believe in global climate change. I’d really like to root for him. I really would....
          Of course I reserve my greatest ambivalence for my Fox “News” watching parents…you know, the ones who couldn’t afford my college education. Luckily, I won some scholarships…but I borrowed the rest from the Feds. The 'Rents are off the hook, but I’m on it for a small fortune. I might pay it off before I retire. Nowadays the 'Rents are looking forward to Social Security and Medicaid. Of course I’ll be among those paying for their retirement. Humph. No, no, really. I’m fine with all of that. Why? Because I’m a liberal. But I do get angry when I think about the fact that they vote for people who want to take that away from my generation when I’m paying for theirs. I guess that was the whole motivation for that CSN song “Teach Your Children”: you can’t teach your parents much of anything. They won’t have it. Don’t waste your breath.

          And this is a real problem. I don’t know about you, but I need to love. If you know me, it might surprise you that I say this because that sounds pretty light hearted. But I’m often testy and grumpy. I like to spend time alone. I become easily annoyed when you people get in my way…especially when you fuckers are holiday shopping or on your way to work. The nerve.

Which, of course, means that I’m not very lovable. But that’s precisely why I need to love.  Because it’s only through my ability to empathize with you that I avoid turning on myself, hardening into that testy, isolated asshole. I am in continual danger of allowing my visits to the melancholy of ambivalence to become a permanent residence among fear and self-loathing. And that’s why I love art. It bridges that gap between you and me. If I’m not ready for the human race, I can indulge one of y'all's creations in order to become one of you yet again. And Clint Eastwood is just one of those artists….

Empathy is, after all, a desirable trait in a teacher....  In proposing the final paper for my Comp I classes this term, a research paper on the role of ideology in film, I offered up one of Eastwood’s best as a possibility. In fact,—if I’m hard pressed—I will acknowledge that Unforgiven (which Eastwood both starred in and directed) is my favorite film. I think that Eastwood does with cowboys in that film what Alan Moore does with superheroes in Watchmen: he envisions the western hero—the assassin with no name—as a reality. William Munny (just some Bill who’s after money) ends up scarred in exactly the same fashion as the prostitute he’s paid to avenge. When, at the end, the Schofield Kid attempts to justify their murderous actions with the easy truism that their victims “had it comin’,” Munny retorts with Eastwood’s signature nihilism: “Kid, we all got it comin’.” There’s no easy sense of good and evil. There’s no redemption. There’s no ultimate meaning.

In Eastwood’s art there are no easy truths. I cannot say the same for his politics. So it goes.

                                                

                                                         *  *  *  *  *

So it goes? Easier said than done. I just cannot shake my utter disappointment with Eastwood. I honestly do not give two shits about many of the other pop cultural figures that play for the political knuckle-draggers and mouth-breathers. So while I enjoy Bruce Willis or Adam Sandler or even that deranged coot Jon Voigt, I just am not all that surprised that they lack intellectual subtlety. In fact I’ve only ever been as conflicted as I am over Eastwood with one other actor: Charlton Heston.

That’s right. Charlton Heston. I love Charlton Heston. At least, I love his work...a lot. As a child I near wore out a VHS tape of Planet of the Apes. It was one of the first we owned. Heston’s iconic line—“Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”—eventually became lost in the fury of an electronic blizzard. And it was right about that time—this was the early 80s—that Heston (who had once considered running for Senate as a Democrat, who had championed LBJ’s gun control legislation, who had marched with MLK, who had opposed the Vietnam war) was born again as the most devolved of right-wing nutjobs, a gun-toting, race-baiting culture warrior that would make Todd Akin look like particularly media savvy version of Bobby Kennedy. After all, we all remember Heston’s other iconic line, the threat that concluded the sort of brazenly reactionary NRA speech which came to characterize Heston's latter years: “From my cold, dead hands!” 
          How does one love that man? Good question. 
          But if I can love that man, then maybe I can make it through Christmas dinner listening to regurgitated Fox talking points without storming out in disgust. From his cold, dead hands, eh? What to do? What to do? But we shall have to ponder that question in our next visit to The Manic Room!...