Death of a President: Burn Him in Effigy

I spoke with a handful of people as we were leaving a viewing of Death of a President. I asked them what they thought. One college-age woman said, "Well - I think its done well, but as to it being controversial, I don't think it was that controversial. I mean there's all this controversy around it, and don't think its controversial. Its more like a look-ahead movie."

Another woman with much gray in her hair said, "Bush inspired me to do something I've never done in my life. In the Bush / Gore election, I went straight down the ticket, didn't even glance at the names, and voted a straight Democratic ticket. I don't like Bush. I want Bush impeached, and it irks me that no one will even talk about it after the Clinton travesty. I think Bush should be impeached, but I think a movie about killing him is immoral." 

This woman's friend said, "I want Bush impeached, too, but not assassinated. This movie makes me feels sympathetic toward him, and I sure didn't have any sympathy for him when I walked in! Its like, yeah, well, I'm not happy that he's not impeached, but at least he's not murdered." The younger professional woman standing nearby said, "That's right. I feel sympathetic, too. So what is this meant to be? It looks like it is meant to be against Bush, but maybe its really meant to be for him. Because I feel sympathetic to him now, too. I feel like I should go home and phone him to make sure he's all right."

I went home feeling under a heavy cloud of burden spread by the realism of the docu-film Death of a President; I felt like I should buy a black dress from Chadwick's and make plans for a funeral. This is a pronounced effect to be had from a movie. I still can't quite shake the gloom.

People are by nature imitative. Look at dressing trends throughout our history, for example. Towns folk and villagers all adorned themselves in the same array; it was the village costume or the national costume. You can still see vestiges of it in European countries. But the documentation of the imitative trait goes all the way back to the Mycenaean empire. And faith in our human monkey-see-monkey-do gene is what made Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain famous.