Celluloid Presidents: A Religious Revival

KAREN SCHNEIDER Celluloid Presidents: A Religious Revival Hollywood has been Busy of late purportedly demythologizing presidential history, providing intimate portraits of flawed and vulnerable men in films such as Jefferson in Paris, Nixon, and Thirteen Days. But the number of historically revisionist films about real presidents pales in comparison to the recent plethora offilms about fictional ones. In an eight-year period (1992-2000), Hollywood released more than fifteen films either directly about a fictional president or that feature one in a prominent role.1 Why such a dense cluster of celluloid presidents? Writing for American Spectator, Mark Steyn remarks that "every summer Hollywood makes a point of releasing movies with the kind of president it would really like"—idealized correctives for perceived lack (45). More specifically, in "State of Denial," J. Hoberman argues that The American President was "step one" in "the remaking of the President [Clinton)" (17). But this is only part of the picture, for many Hollywood films seem to revel in portraying the president as a perfidious villain. In "The president and the image," Stella Bruzzi has observed that both kinds of presidential films have been made possible by two factors: the "greater accessibility" to the political and private lives ofthe presidents afforded by the media and the "petvasive disillusionment " born of the well-publicized failings of Nixon and Clinton in particular (16). Bruzzi sees the presidential characters in such films as falling into two broad categories: "the good saviours" and "the destructive demons." Once again, though, this is only part of the story, which is both more complex than this antithesis allows and more familiar than one might think. For in response to the particular crisis of faith Arizona Quarterly Volume 59, Number 4, Winter 2003 Copyright © 2003 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004-1610 138Karen Schneider evoked by a new familiarity with past presidents and exacerbated by a growing awareness of Clinton's moral failings, the malleable cinematic figure of the president—whether vile or virtuous—became the chosen vehicle for a somewhat desperate revival of America's Civil Religion (acr). Historian Robert D. Linder explains that in general "civil religion" (a term coined by Rousseau) consists of an "informally held set of fundamental political and social principles concerning the history and destiny of a state or nation" (734). As sociologist Robert Bellah and others have elaborated, America's collective political consciousness can be best understood as a form of secular religion based on a shared belief in America as the "promised land" (Bellah 175), the glorification of an Ametican Way of Life marked by individualism, pragmatism, and pluralism , and a fervent faith in a "form of government and [the] political principles associated with it" (Fitzgerald). Succinctly capturing this multi-faceted notion, Norman Mailer is reported to have said, '"In Ametica, the country [is] the religion'" (qtd. in O'Btien 53-54). acr's governing principles include "liberty and justice for all," equal opportunity and equal rights, governmental power limited by a system of checks and balances, and due process of law. In Civil Religion and the Presidency, Richard V. Pierard and Robert D. Linder identify "the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and . . . Lincoln's Gettysburg Address" as the "sacred scriptures of the . . . public faith . . . which bound the people of the nation together in a political and religious union" (51). America's Civil Religion has accordingly developed "a collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals . . . institutionalized in a collectivity " (Bellah 175). One cluster of such symbols is the presidency itself and its attendant iconography—the White House, Air Force One, the oval office. Charles Lindholm and John Hall identify Frank Capra as "Hollywood 's high priest" ofAmerica's Civil Religion in the '30s and '40s, but are quick to add that Capra's films (e.g., Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) also struggle with a less sanguine side of "American national identity "—its "anti-politics," a deep-seated distrust of politicians and the political process (32). In the wake ofWatergate and a spate ofother unsavory revelations, the nation's cynicism grew deeper. The Founding Fathers—"the demigods" ofAmerica's Civil Religion (Fitzgerald)—and some of our most revered pastors—fdr, Eisenhower, jfk—had proved...