The Debate

second Kennedy/Nixon debate (photo: United Press International )

There is always excitement at the prospect of a presidential debate. The Kennedy Nixon face off in l960 was of course an iconic moment in politics (being the first presidential debate) as well as television and Nixon may have lost since he lacked a mastery of the medium. If you remember he had been sick and showed it. Sound familiar? But in some ways the anticipation accorded the first debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, exceeded that of any political stand off in memory and was more reminiscent of one of those contests that have a physical aspect like say The Super Bowl or great boxing matches like The Thriller in Manila or The Rumble in the Jungle. One of the famous tourist sites of Rome is the Circo Massimo or the Circus Maximus which was where gladiatorial combats took place and the thrill of today’s circus is still predicated on the same kind of blood thirsty desires that motivated the crowds in Roman times. Will the Flying Wallendas fall? The Icarus myth is, of course, what’s at work in these kinds of revels. One of the acrobats or warriors is flying too close to the sun where his wings of wax will melt. Everyone was saying that the candidates and especially Trump had to talk about the issues: the economy, the inner cities and ISIS, but what, in fact, was really motivating the expected record setting 100,000,000 viewers that were predicted was the desire for gore. The fact that the fight was between a hefty looking man and comparatively diminutive woman only added a David and Goliath affect. Someone was going to fall and in an increasingly tight race that fall would set the tone for the rest of the race.

"Established By the State"

                                                        photo: Pete Souza

"Established by the state,” are the four words that could kill the Affordable Care Act (“Four Words That Imperil Health Law Were All a Mistake, Writers Now Say,” NYT, 5/25/15).  But let’s take a look at some other words that have been of crucial importance to both Americans and mankind in general to see how these four stand up. In his first inaugural address, March 4, 1933, Roosevelt said, "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Kennedy famously supported the West Germans when he said, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” His grammar was wrong (the correct German is “Ich bin Berliner”), but let sleeping dogs die. Critics of the health care plan might call upon Polonius’ famous advice to Laertes, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”  After losing the California gubernatorial race in l962 Nixon said,  “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” “Where’s the Beef?” is what an infamous Wendy’s commercial asked. John Donne said, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Speaking of fast food the Digital Underground were responsible for these iconic lyrics from “The Humpty Dance.”  “I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.” Goethe said, “the eternal-feminine lures to perfection," Camus, “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.” And then there was Santayana’s famous, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” However, in his address before the Democratic Convention in l936, Roosevelt also said, “this generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny." With all the great locutions made in the service of progress, redress and regress, could the rather lame “established by the state” really usurp America’s destiny? Oh and there’s one last quote which is always applicable in matters of jurisprudence, “while the cat’s away, the mice will play."

The Double

John Grimonprez’s film Double Take is based on a Jorge Luis Borges story, August 25, l983, which in turn is based on Dostoevsky’s The Double. In the Borges story, the narrator, who is 61, dreams himself into a future date when he, or his double, is 84 and on his deathbed. Alfred Hitchcock’s double, Ron Burrage, a waiter who worked at Claridge’s, plays a major role in the film. Double Take is deceptive since it’s not really about Hitchcock, but about the way he walked into the outline of his own image in the famed ‘50s series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The infamous Nixon-Krushchev debate at the American exposition in Moscow, the Bay of Pigs, and the image of a body falling from the World Trade Center, captured like a New Image painting, are also elements in this piece of meta cinema, along with cuts from The Birds, Folgers coffee commercials, which provided the commercial spots for  the Hitchcock TV series, and excerpts from the cold war thriller Topaz. Time and history drive the diegesis. There is l960, the year Borges’s short story takes place, 1963, the year The Birds was released and Kennedy was shot, and l980, the year Hitchcock died. The notion of the alter ego, which survives Hitchcock survives  in the form of the voice of Burrage and Mark Perry, who imitates his voice, is almost as haunting as Tippi Hedren’s recollection of being bitten by the birds that Hitchcock used for his film shoot. “If you meet your double, you should kill him,” Hitchcock is quoted as saying. Double Take is pure Borges. It will never be mistaken for Hitchcock.