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| It’s sexy to regard subjective truth as hooey |
Clint Eastwood strolled out on the stage at the Republican National Convention on August 30 amidst applause and the theme music from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This man is the emblem of Republican masculinity. He has the squinted glare and appropriate strut of someone with a concealed weapons permit. Clint Eastwood’s personal ideology doesn’t really match the traditionally conservative perspective (he is a-ok with abortionand same-sex marriage). But, he is a swaggering symbol of the individualism that permeates every Young Republican’s wet dreams.
Eastwood was the GOP’s mystery speaker who brought out the swoon in Libertarians and Republicans alike. And, in his 12-minute, mildly coherent speech, Eastwood revealed that the conservative fantasy of manhood is just as wild and absurd as the premises of Western movies with a sharp-shooter who can save a friend from a hanging with circus-skill aim.
One of the first things Eastwood said for his speech at the RNCwas, “I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, what’s a movie tradesman doing out here?”
Good question, Eastwood. And he made it clear that inviting a symbol out to make a speech at a pretty important national convention was a bad idea. Eastwood’s talking to an empty chair imploded the internet. He was onstage, a conservative fantasy of manliness, talking to the conservatives’ fantasy of a sniveling socialist Obama.
But, as delusional as Eastwood’s speech was, the platform and policies of the GOP are even worse – one moment advocating for personal freedom and the other moment insisting on restricting access to reproductive healthcare and cutting in on civil liberties for an ethnocentric sense of national security.
See, the narrative of the GOP looks a lot like the narrative of Eastwood’s early films: trumped up notions of individual-driven justice and society. Hell, there are even bootstraps in some of Eastwood’s films – real bootstraps. And yes, in these films it’s the people with bulges in their crotches who get to make decisions. Lady-folk mostly get flung around.
The fetishized stoicism of Eastwood’s Westerns and his white-man-saves-the-dayisms of some of his more recent work (Gran Torino – cough cough) play in super swell to the conservative narrative of the U.S. dream. But, when presented on a stage sans script and with an attempt at getting close to reality, it looks awesomely out of touch.