Last night Cinecultist had a bunch of wonky political dreams wherein George Bush and John Kerry appeared fulminating away, and CC blames J. Hoberman for it. Watching large chunks of the made for Showtime movie DC 9/11: Time of Crisis is enough to give nearly anyone the fits, as it mythologizes the President's role in September 11th and the few days following in the mostly blatantly propagandistic way possible. As last week's Gipper Memorial shows, the American media and its public is quick canonize one of our former leaders once they're gone but as Hoberman argued in his presentation last night at Ocularis at the Galapagos in Williamsburg, DC 9/11 is an unprecedented during office silver screen-ifying of the American president.
Originally a presentation given at the Rotterdam Film Festival, Hoberman had modified a review/essay he'd originally written for the Village Voice last year to show the construction of GWB Superstar. A very clip intensive lecture (he really does put his projectionists through their paces and the person at Galapagos was up to the task - kudos), Hoberman interspersed his excellent talk with sections from the canceled comedy That's My Bush, campaign commercials, photo ops and press conference footage. The intriguing idea Hoberman's whole argument is hung on is that anything done by our political machine is a constructed text, and like a film text can be read for meaning. Spot-on, thoughtful, informative and entertaining, CC cannot say enough good things about Hoberman's speaking style. He's the kind of cultural critic CC aspires to someday be. You know, if somebody would like to pay us for our cinematic obsessing (hint, hint). But seriously, stop CC before we start a J. Hoberman fan club or something but the guy is really great and you should be sure to click through to the essay above if you're not familiar with it already.
Posted by karen at June 14, 2004 8:09 AM