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11 tweets,
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1. This is the film that predicted Trump. I’m only sorta kidding. Watch the trailer. via @YouTube
2. Chauncey Gardner can not read or write, but he likes to watch TV. He speaks in simplistic sound bites. White people, especially rich ones, love him.
3. The only person who accurately sees what’s happening is a black woman. But no one listens to her.
4. The key difference, of course, is that the simplicity of Peter Sellers’ character renders him a gentle, modest, and kind human, not a malignant narcissist.
5. This is the tweet that made me see this connection. 40% of the country thinks a man with a 2nd grade understanding of the US economy and who gets 100% of his information from Fox News is an economic savant.
6. Here Chauncey Gardner is giving economic advice to the President, played by Jack Warden. Substitute "MAGA!" or "Beautiful Clean Coal!" or "Gchiner is so unfair" and you'll get the idea.
7. "Stuffed with rice pudding between the ears. Short changed by the lord and dumb as a jackass. Yessir, look at him now. All you gotta be is white in America to get whatever you want."
8. When folks watched this film in 1979/1980, I suspect many took Chauncey Gardner to be an exaggerated caricature of Ronald Reagan.
9. Since the 1950s, "Free market economics" has often functioned as a simplistic (but easily graspable) metaphor that conservative politicians have used to justify and articulate policies that disproportionately serve the interests of the already wealthy.
10. In 1980, Reagan seemed to many like a caricature of that dynamic, like a kindly and simple, Chauncey Gardiner version of Hayek. It worked in 1980. And it continues to work with a segment of the population...even shorn of the kindly demeanor.
11. Ok, I've now convinced myself that I need to rewatch this film. @HerbertHistory and #hatm crew...can I nominate Being There for a future session of Historians At The Movies?
