As spectacle dominates electoral politics, real political business is conducted elsewhere, writes Azmi Bishara Some enlightened rationalists still maintain that Ronald Reagan's victories in two Californian gubernatorial elections and two presidential elections furnish the ultimate proof that it is not the person in the White House that counts. It is not the president that rules the US, they say, but established governing institutions and the organised interplay between interest groups. This is true, but only to an extent. The US president is not an autocrat. But, if he has firm convictions, an agenda and political backbone, he will make his mark during his term in office. If George W Bush had views, an agenda and a personality different from those he does, he would, if he wanted, be able to check the influence of the neo-conservatives. The weakness of his character and the convergence of his will with that of the neo-conservatives are not proof of the insignificance of the office of the presidency or its occupant. People ridiculed Reagan because he unconsciously used lines from his films in his speeches, and when he lied he strayed into the fancy of his roles on the silver screen. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a picture of Ronald Reagan hanging in his office in Santa Barbara. The Austrian-born actor, who boasts of having worked his way up from being a penniless immigrant, wants to run for governor of California. Unfortunately, the most fascist reactionaries in politics and economics are of that supercilious sort whose smugness resides in having come from a poor family, endured hardship, but nevertheless, achieved success. But the worst aspect of the myth of the self-made man is not its triteness, but rather its magical hold on the destitute, deprived and depressed, or on those mired in the boredom of routine, waiting for a miracle to happen that would give their life meaning, such as be infront of the movie camera instead of the mirror. Today's Cinderella is a consumer idol, muscle-bound in body and mind, who claims to have pulled herself up by her own bootstraps and peddles superhuman stunts in cheap films and interviews with the press. Here we have stardom par excellence, glitter with no substance to mar it, pure and unadulterated spectacle. Cinderella's parts are virtually free of dialogue. Weren't we talking about the governorship of California, though? Indeed we were. And why the surprise at Cinderella's bid for the post? The economy of that state is bound to the entertainment industry, leisure time, spectacle and Hollywood. Showbiz is to California as agriculture is to Iowa. It's only natural that the candidate for a political post should be an entrepreneur from the acting sector. This is not a case of a conservative or liberal businessman, or an investor in the acting sector looking to line his pockets through politics as would an investor in the agricultural sector in Iowa. This is a case of the pursuit of vacuous stardom. The capital that Schwarzenegger brings to the campaign is violence-packed films, body-building, the worship of brute strength and the retrograde aesthetics of machismo. He may differ somewhat from his rival, Sylvester Stallone, who -- in the Reagan era, no less -- led the Americans to a retroactive victory in Vietnam, liberating them from their complex by crushing enemy helicopters with his bare hands. At least Schwarzenegger is supposed to have a sense of humour. After all, he played the part of a pregnant man, and you'll split your sides laughing at the acute wit of which he in all his machismo is capable. But is a talent for comedy, granting him that optimistically, a sufficient qualification for running for governor of California? Of course, there are other levels to consider. Take for example the fact that one of Reagan's campaign managers was a Republican right-winger with a definite ultra- conservative agenda. The son of a former Nazi, he had no qualms about playing up to American Jewish organisations, using towards this end a group of public relations advisers of Jewish origins. These are the same organisations that will never forgive the entire people of Palestine for Amin Al- Husseini, the Palestinian mufti of the 1930s who declared his support for Nazi Germany. Consider, too, that porn stars have also run in the California gubernatorial elections. California has not attained the heights of Italy, where porn stars have been elected to parliament. In 1999, some members of the Democratic Party thought that the answer to Reagan was to field Warren Beatty. Beatty was considered a "real" star, whatever they might have meant by that, and had won an Oscar, in contrast to that star of grade-B films who had made his way into the White House, pursued by the shadow of Bedtime for Bonzo, in which Reagan tried to teach a chimpanzee how to speak. The plan failed to pan out because Beatty was much too liberal. In 1998, actor/wrestler Jesse Ventura won the gubernatorial elections in Minnesota. Pop and film star Sony Bono had represented a California district in the House of Representatives and, in 1998, his wife, Mary Bono, took his seat, overcoming her rival in the polls, Ralph White, another movie star. Fred Grandy of Love Boat fame represented Georgia in Congress for four terms. In Arizona, Fred Thomas, actor and Republican from Tennessee, prevailed over former naval officer and Vietnam POW, John McCain, in the Republican nominations for senator in McCain's home state. Americans, who had once voted for war heroes, now vote for the actors who play their roles in the movies. It appears that the American public no longer celebrates valour, but merely celebrates celebrity for celebrity's sake, regardless of how that status was acquired or perhaps for no reason at all. Of course, there are exceptions. Actress Helen Douglas lost the California senatorial elections in 1950 to Richard Nixon, and screen star Shirley Temple Black lost her bid for a congressional seat in 1967. The election of Joseph Estrada, erstwhile star of cheap action films, as president of the Philippines represents a different situation. Here we have the compound workings of the worlds of consumerism, stardom and Third World mythologies, which have reached heights unmatched by any other culture other than in India, where every third governor of the state of Tamel Nadu is a film star. The cinema in India offers heaven to the poor on the silver screen. If the "dream industry" is used to describe Hollywood metaphorically, the term applies literally to India, where the cinema sells illusions to the poor far more expertly and powerfully than the politicians. However, the mythological world of the screen, which serves as the opiate of the people in India, Egypt and other poverty-stricken nations, plays another role in late modernism, where it converges with the emerging world of celebrity status, the growing weight of the leisure industry, the growing influence of the mass media in politics, the increasingly consumer-oriented nature of politics itself and the decreasing value of art in favour of spectacle tailored to the box office. Herein resides the secret as to why actors' fame, and consequently salaries, are greater than those of writers -- unless the writer is an author of bestsellers sold in airports and supermarkets -- or singers, unless theirs is the music played in elevators and shopping malls. Any activity involving an audience involves an element of role-playing and show. In this sense, there is an element of "acting" in any activity that involves ritual, whether in the court, on the political podium or in a house of worship. The very repetition of official rites has a clear theatrical element. However, this does not make judges, politicians or priests actors, unless the implication is that a politician, judge or priest is acting in the sense of play-acting, a charge as severe as lying because of its connotations of insincerity and ulterior motive. As this suggests, "acting" is a word of multiple applications. In addition to performing a dramatic part, it means to serve on another's behalf as a representative or deputy and it can connote pretence and artifice. Modern mass culture, the emergence of mass society and the development of the omnipresent technology to address it directly and the rise of the democratic, demand to involve the public directly in the formulation public policy. Such factors have worked to increase the influence of showmanship in politics. They have also been instrumental in the development of the "aesthetics of politics", an especially ugly aesthetic -- if one can combine the two words -- as manifested in such rituals as parades, military marches, official reception ceremonies, visits to the tomb of the unknown soldier, the entrance of the president to the podium with an escort of the guards of honour and to the accompaniment of the national anthem. This aesthetics reached its peak in those mammoth spectacles produced by Nazi, fascist and Communist regimes and is preserved by North Korea with marchers parading on empty stomachs, uniforms of a dismal gray and a leader in the final phases of charisma. The first spectacles of modernism bolstered totalitarian ideologies that placed heavy emphasis on substance as opposed to form and process. Ironically, however, they became parodies of themselves when unable to develop into a ritualistic mass religion other than in parades, hollow sculpture and inflated architecture that made fascist and Communist structures a travesty of the Gothic just as their hierarchy and ritual evoked the Catholic Church and the Vatican. However, late consumerist modernism, especially in those countries in which people participate in politics through comparative shopping in the mass media malls and political party arcades, has reduced the need for all that ritualistic ceremony. By transforming politicians into celebrities, fame and life blend into a hypothetical world, imagined by the public along with the cast of actors, businessmen, military heroes and sons and wives of politicians. This blending into a hypothetical world depends on the politicians being exciting, somewhat eccentric or even merely stupid enough to tantalise, since stupidity and feeble- mindedness can come across as charm and humour in the world of the mass consumption of entertainment. In modern consumer society, political culture is being reshaped through two processes that are converging with amazing speed. The first is the growing influence of showmanship in politics, in tandem with the growing sway of the media and the interaction between the public and the politician through the media, which is the underhanded way of transforming the politician into a star and the public into a consumer of pictures, appearances and clichés. As Neil Postman pointed out, already in the mid-1980s, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, any candidate who stands for elections in the US cannot afford to be fat or bald. Such is the hold of the entertainment industry over the media that the news media is becoming a part of the leisure industry and news a form of entertainment. News entertainment can be "serious" or "light", but it has to grab and hold the audience's attention, which means reducing information to the "sound bite", rapidly segueing from one story to the next, and lots of drama, or melodrama, if called for. Those not content with such things can resort to their own resources or to the occasional "serious programme" billed as being geared to the "serious public". Not only must the politician be entertaining, he must have an image, a personality, a presentation that conforms to the laws of supply and demand. Politics may remain a serious business, but political performance is rapidly becoming synonymous with acting, in the sense of both sham and showmanship, especially during electoral campaigns when contact -- falsely billed as communication -- with the public is at its most intensive. This phenomenon, in turn, has generated the dangerous impression that "serious politics" have nothing to do with elections. These are the politics of interest groups, political platforms, the immutable civil service, senior officials and assorted donors to the political parties, the politics of a cynical culture that is sceptical of everything that has a bearing on principle, morals, rationality, and that treats the public on this basis and in spite of this basis. Mass consumer society has given rise, secondly, to an even worse process: the rise of a stardom ethic that has obliterated the boundaries between the stars of rock music, politics, big business and the cinema. Naturally, no one expects the politician to perform Hamlet or the business magnate to jump onto the stage with an electric guitar. Nevertheless, the process I am referring to is taking place quite naturally in the world of politics, the public sphere in which all have the right to contribute. One cannot help but detect a false naiveté when a muscle-bound actor declares that if doctors and lawyers can run for office, why not actors. Nothing is more stomach-churning than when the nouveau-blessed play the victim and invoke political correctness, especially when the actor- stroke-victim is not fielding himself in order to advocate the equality between his profession and others, but because he is a star and all he has to do is to take the natural step from one world of acting to another. If the media is the primary stage of politics, the star, by definition, will feel just at home on that stage as on any other. Businessmen, on the other hand, have traditionally tended to spurn fame. Self effacement and asceticism were originally the marks of the rising bourgeoisie and conspicuous consumption and ostentation the marks of the late bourgeoisie. In any event, every country will have its share of businessmen who make their success cause for public display. Real estate magnate Donald Trump, for example, as well as a host of Arab businessmen, make every party a news event. Trump had nominated himself for US president at the same time Warren Beatty was being considered. (What had Clinton done to people? Perhaps because of his womanising, others who used women as décor, as medals of achievement or as merchandise felt they had a right to become president). Certainly, there are businessmen who hold convictions regarding the shape and welfare of society. Undoubtedly such individuals exist in all occupations. The question is what are these convictions and how credible is their advocate? Unfortunately, the actors, businessmen and media personalities we refer to see politics as merely another way to perpetuate their stardom and are contributing to the transformation of politics into spectacle. Spectacle by its very definition involves the suspension of the rationality that is fundamental to the democratic process.
