“To the victor belong the spoils!” That was Camille Paglia’s reaction, reported in a May Salon article, to what she referred to as “the sexiest picture published in the mainstream media in years”—a photo showing a besuited Donald Trump looming possessively over his seated date at a banquet in the early 90s, his pendulous necktie practically tracing the word “phallus” in the air for the benefit of all easily impressed onlookers. Paglia apparently being one of them, although she wasn’t invited to the banquet—for her, the tie is a “phallic tongue” and Trump resembles “a triumphant dragon,” his “spoils” worthy of Rita Hayworth comparisons.
However, the context for the photo—that New York Times article about Trump’s treatment of women through the years—isn’t worth taking seriously, according to Paglia. She sarcastically snipes, “Millionaire workaholic Donald Trump chased young, beautiful, willing women and liked to boast about it. Jail him now!” You’d think the author of Sexual Personae would be interested in exploring the (to put it politely) ambivalence evinced by the by turns booty-begging and paternalistic behavior described in the Times article. But such an analysis would violate one of the prime directives of the alt-right circles Paglia has lately flirted with—Never let empathy for a weaker party interfere with your good time.
Lost in dreams of Tinseltown’s Golden Age, Paglia writes, “Forget all that Capitol Hill and Foggy Bottom tsuris—let’s steer Trump to Hollywood!” Trump: the last angry man, or the last tycoon? Her proclaimed support for Bernie Sanders notwithstanding, it’s clear Paglia’s heart belongs to the Donald. Like the luckless riders on the Trump nighttrain, she enjoys the sense of power—of being hoisted above mediocrity—that comes from the great man’s condescension. To look through Trump’s eyes…To squint sardonically at the world as if to discern the binary code beneath its appearance, the precise ratio of winners to losers, victors to potential spoils, that constitutes the real character of an environment! That’s the worldview we need in charge of our dream factory!
In fact, though, hasn’t Hollywood, more than any other American institution, prepared the way for Trump’s political ascendancy? Movies and TV have trained the public to associate the p.o.v. of the privileged with pleasure and “entertainment.” If the imaginative leap from entertainment to empathy isn’t made, there is no audience, only consumers. What’s new about the alt-right is exactly this: They bring to their identification with Trump the misplaced suspension of disbelief and the sense of entitlement to entertainment that define coerced consumer spectation. As their protagonist hits out at his self-created adversaries, they mirror his movements in their own sphere. The internet gives everyone a tiny platform from which to fight for his or her right to party. If you suggest that there might be an existential difference between such joyriding and genuine participation in a democratic process, well—Good luck getting that to go viral. When I would go to the movies as a kid, a film reel would occasionally melt in the projector and you could get your money back. Now, with digital, that never happens.
The photo Paglia selected for her spank bank reminds me of a much more recent Trump moment: the famous Cinco de Mayo “taco bowl” Twitter photo. Here, Trump’s posture, though seated this time, is virtually the same as when we last saw him: leaning towards us, huddled over something he can’t wait to consume. He’s got a phallic thumbs-up in place of the floating necktie as well as a, shall we say, taco-eating grin on his face. “I love Hispanics!” he pleads for the ages. Trump’s pledge of love is contingent upon the objectification and appropriation of the Other. But I can believe he’s being truthful, that he really is full of love for the less privileged, as long as they are willing to be his lunch. People, countries, cultures, cunts—they’re all there to quell (for an hour or so) billionaire appetites. Such are the new facts of American life.
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Paglia once wrote a book on Hitchcock’s The Birds, but has more recently declared herself a fan of the reality-TV franchise The Real Housewives, comparing it to “the Discovery Channel – the cheetahs stalking the gazelles!” In light of the fact that reality TV is also Trump’s old stomping grounds, it’s worth taking a moment to ponder her curious statement that “there is no doubt that many scenes [on The Real Housewives] are staged…but the conflicts and emotions are real.” If the material is bona fide, as natural as the food chain, then why the need to stage the scenes?
You often hear highly educated people list certain reality shows (The Apprentice was one of them, when it was still on the air) among their “guilty pleasures,” a cliché guarding the strange truth that they can’t quite figure out why they like this stuff. An ontological jolt has been delivered to these shows’ non-fiction premise, knocking conflict and context, drama and social backdrop, permanently out of alignment. Reality TV has only one impenetrable taboo: The primary reason for the enterprise’s very existence—the promise of wealth and celebrity that draws the “talent” to these shows—must never be laid bare. The project would lose all claim to authenticity if the viewer were ever outright disabused of the notion that these events, or something like them, would definitely transpire even if cameras weren’t rolling. That the cast members are laboring under prohibition is nonetheless evident in the often spontaneous-seeming but almost never unpredictable scenes they enact. As they claw for their weekly MacGuffin, it’s anyone’s guess where, or whether, their self-mutilating narcissism ends and exploitation begins. There is a pervading tension between the desperation actually played out (the manifest content) and an underlying desperation that all concerned, probably including the producers as well as the viewers at home, are embarrassed to acknowledge.
In short, the more disreputable reality shows, in their artificial way, replicate some of the felt qualities of real life under capitalism as no strictly fictional or documentary work can. In reality TV as in contemporary life, the first rule of late capitalism is, you don’t talk about late capitalism, not unless you want to relegate yourself to the margins of the hale, hearty, profit-seeking world. And to this odd mimesis, several disparate responses are equally possible. For example, those of a Paglia/alt-right bent could accept without reservation the authenticity, the God-ordained nobility, of the Apprentice/Real Housewives depiction of life and demean those out of step with it as somehow inauthentic, anti-life. (Just as the cheetahs gobble the gazelles, certain groups of people—we know who they are—were simply born to dominate, and that’s how it is. Right?) Alternatively, I imagine many hard-luck Trump supporters might enjoy watching the contortions of which capitalism is capable—look, it can conjure up whole little worlds, wind up the desperate strivers and let them go at each other, and then completely efface itself from the scene. They’d be tickled to see that the force that has swallowed their lives can even swallow itself.
God help the victors, and spare us the spoils.