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.While the major films about the American presidency in the nineties wereclosely based on cultural fact (and sometimes history) and the lives of real presi-dents, like Clinton or Nixon, and portrayed the political realities of the decadeof spin, the parade of fictional presidents represented in Hollywood movies inthe nineties also worked out a number of political scenarios that represented thegrowing sense that the people and many public intellectuals and media artistsshared, that the decade needed a political makeover.The movies expressed thatneed through nostalgic wish fulfillment of the most exaggerated kind.Presidents as SuperheroesBold moves make history. NixonIf Jack and Bobby Kennedy, as portrayed in Thirteen Days, actually saved theworld during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, then they deserve to be rankedright up there with the presidential superheroes of a cluster of other ninetiesfilms who also take action to save the world.This President as Superhero textadds yet another dimension to the American wish list for leadership.These filmsrepresent presidents who actually get out of their chairs and do things (other thanhave extramarital affairs).Independence Day s young, baby boomer fighter pilot President Bill Whitmore(Bill Pullman), who is at first indecisive but finally heroic and can lead a wing ofF-16s against an alien spacecraft as big as the Grand Canyon, and Air Force One smature, always decisive, two-fisted and machine-gun-packing President JamesMarshall (Harrison Ford) present a totally different image of the American presi-dency opposed to the cynicism toward and the disappointment in Bill Clinton. Ï%The American President 109These wish-fulfillment, comic book superheroes are all that conservative Ameri-cans could want in a president.Both are loving, dedicated, and, above all, faithfulfamily men willing to go to any lengths and brave any threats or danger to savetheir wives and daughters (and, of course, by implication, the larger family thatthey lead, the American people).Both are brave, cunning, inventive former warheroes, and pilots, who are at home with violence and hand-to-hand or plane-to-plane combat.Both are moral and conscientious leaders of the free world.Bothcan fire off a quotable and belligerent one-liner in the best Schwarzenegger orEastwood style.But, most important of all, both are not what Bill Clinton wasperceived to be draft dodger, womanizer, liberal avoider, and appeaser.There is a kind of irony, a sort of incestuous relationship between these filmsand the earlier, more Clintonesque films.Independence Day, for example, wasfilmed on the set used for The American President and Nixon before its alienspaceship s lasers blew the White House to smithereens.Both presidents, as didNixon in his biopic and Shepherd in The American President, have daughters thatthey want to shield from the press and other intrusive realities of being presi-dent in the dangerous nineties, a protective parental stance that Bill and HillaryClinton never wavered from in all their years in the White House.But the bot-tom line for Hollywood is that the American moviegoers paid huge amounts ofmoney, record-breaking amounts of money, to see these presidential superheromovies.Why? One commentator remarks that Independence Day is an emblemof American cinematic sensibility in the late 1990s, 39 a sensibility that clearlyrecognized the desire for wish fulfillment at-large in a country grown sick of thesordid scandal of the Clinton presidency.Independence Day s young President Whitmore is much like Clinton inpersonality and baby-boomer image but not like Clinton in background andcharacter.He is a decorated Gulf War fighter pilot who, when push comes toshove, declares, I m a fighter pilot.I belong in the air, and takes off to leadhis attack squadron of misfit pilots against the huge hovering spacecraft.He isLuke Skywalker all grown-up and riding out against the Death Star once again.Independence Day s plot takes off very quickly with very little time for characterdevelopment.The alien spacecraft appears in the sky as a huge all-envelopingshadow and the battle begins.Symbolically, in sync with the film s all-Americantitle, the spacecraft s shadow, starting at the Lincoln Memorial, moves slowly overWashington DC engulfing the major icons of the American government theWashington Monument, the Capital Building, the White House as it goes.InNew York, the shadow engulfs the Statue of Liberty and darkens the whole sky-line of Manhattan.This shadow triggers a scenario right out of both H.G.Wells sand Orson Welles s The War of the Worlds, panic in the streets and traffic jams aseveryone tries to evacuate the great cities.But President Whitmore is in heroicmode from the very beginning.He sends the vice president and the cabinet tosafety in the bunkers at NORAD, but he refuses to abandon ship: I m not leav-ing.I m staying.I don t want to start a general panic that might cost lives. After the aliens attack and the outcome looks unbelievably grim the citiesin flames, huge laser fireballs everywhere, the enemy ships indestructible, refugee Ï%110 The Films of the Ninetiescamps all over the country, all the icons of America, even the White House,blown up President Whitmore looks for consolation to his past as a warrior. That s the advantage of being a fighter pilot, he declares. In the Gulf War weknew what we had to do.It s not so simple anymore. But actually, in the comicbook, one-liner rhetoric of the film, it really is pretty simple. Let s kick the tiresand light the fires, one warlike pilot exults in the opportunity to play with war ssophisticated toys. Lock and load, another alliterates. Let s kick E.T. s ass. And even the president gets his chance to emulate the Schwarzeneggerian wit: Nuke em.Let s nuke the bastards! he orders.At another crucial juncture, hegives the tense order, Let s do it! Then, in the climactic battle scene, he twirlsoff a whole succession of one-liners like Dirty Harry on speed: Hold on, Com-mand.I want another shot at him, then, Let s take it out before it takes usout, and, finally, to his fighter wing, Gentlemen, let s pave the road. Clearly,there is a much different Hollywood mindset at work in these comic book filmsthan there was in the much more sophisticated, cynical, and ironic Clintonesquefilms.No subtle irony here, just decisive presidential action
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