There is an odd difference between live
theater and television or film. In live theater, there is the proscenium arch
(let's ignore arena and thrust stages) that frames the play, but it
is obvious to the audience that there is a backstage, a part of
reality enveloping the stage area where technicians work and to or
from which the actors exit or enter. The suspension of disbelief is,
in a sense, harder to pull off on a live stage for that very reason.
For that matter, if only in the school auditorium, just about
everyone has been on a stage and seen behind the curtains.
But most people watch television and movies their entire lives without ever actually setting foot on a sound stage (oddly enough, seeing one being shown on a television show or movie doesn't "break the fourth wall") and many are actually surprised to see in real life what they might have known in a sense all along; namely, that the only "stage" in television and film is the camera frame. Everything else is offstage or as they say in film school, if it isn't inside the frame, it doesn't exist. In that sense, television and film, even though the images they project are obviously much smaller or much larger than life-size, create more self-contained fiction that, if realistic enough, is much harder for many people to remember is still just make-believe.
Maybe the best example is melodrama and the afternoon soap operas. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people watch these shows habitually and talk about and perhaps even write to the characters as though they were real people even though every single episode rolls the credits showing which actor played which character.
Contrast that to the celebrity-whatever, someone who is on TV and maybe even in cameos in films as himself or herself. People rarely if ever see them in person except fleetingly. There's no credit crawl at the end of, say, a talk show that reads "David Letterman as David Letterman." Aspiring stand-up comics I know talk about learning to be themselves except slightly exaggerated selves when on stage to project a good comedic persona. Over time a distinct public character begins to emerge. And what happens to comics or TV hosts or people who are famous just for being famous is that they get feedback on what the public likes and doesn't like and their personae becomes more and more shaped by that feedback.
Donald Trump's celebrity is an outgrowth of what I am sure are those genuine personality traits that have worked on-camera; specifically, the blustering blow-hard who relishes and takes full credit for his success and power and blames and belittles others who challenge him. That's the character that, with the help of his publicists, not only got him invited on talk shows in the first place but also got him invited back. He's colorful and controversial, intentionally or not, and he's been portraying the public Donald Trump for so long now that as far as he has been able to, he has become the public character he portrays. He's come, as they say, to believe his own press clippings.
That's not to say the public sees the whole man. He may love little kitties or secretly give money to starving orphans or cry every time he sees It's A Wonderful Life. He may be terrified by spiders or even afraid of the dark and there may be people in his life who routinely call him on his bullshit and get away with it. Maybe he loves them exactly because of it.
But by and large, I suspect Trump is a WYSIWYG guy. He's never going to get into the details of any of his preposterous positions "because I'm not a details guy, I hire people for that." He has been hobnobbing with actors and politicians all his life and he's not so stupid as not to have realized that many successful politicians are every bit as much empty suits as he is. After all, it's not like he's been hanging around boxers and gyms and then decided he could become the heavyweight champ. All politicians do is talk persuasively; to tell the money guys what they want to hear and then tell the voters what they want to hear. Never mind how little good or how much harm they do once elected, it's getting elected that counts. Trump knows how to talk, or thinks he does, so why not, I'm sure he believes, give it a shot?
But most people watch television and movies their entire lives without ever actually setting foot on a sound stage (oddly enough, seeing one being shown on a television show or movie doesn't "break the fourth wall") and many are actually surprised to see in real life what they might have known in a sense all along; namely, that the only "stage" in television and film is the camera frame. Everything else is offstage or as they say in film school, if it isn't inside the frame, it doesn't exist. In that sense, television and film, even though the images they project are obviously much smaller or much larger than life-size, create more self-contained fiction that, if realistic enough, is much harder for many people to remember is still just make-believe.
Maybe the best example is melodrama and the afternoon soap operas. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people watch these shows habitually and talk about and perhaps even write to the characters as though they were real people even though every single episode rolls the credits showing which actor played which character.
Contrast that to the celebrity-whatever, someone who is on TV and maybe even in cameos in films as himself or herself. People rarely if ever see them in person except fleetingly. There's no credit crawl at the end of, say, a talk show that reads "David Letterman as David Letterman." Aspiring stand-up comics I know talk about learning to be themselves except slightly exaggerated selves when on stage to project a good comedic persona. Over time a distinct public character begins to emerge. And what happens to comics or TV hosts or people who are famous just for being famous is that they get feedback on what the public likes and doesn't like and their personae becomes more and more shaped by that feedback.
Donald Trump's celebrity is an outgrowth of what I am sure are those genuine personality traits that have worked on-camera; specifically, the blustering blow-hard who relishes and takes full credit for his success and power and blames and belittles others who challenge him. That's the character that, with the help of his publicists, not only got him invited on talk shows in the first place but also got him invited back. He's colorful and controversial, intentionally or not, and he's been portraying the public Donald Trump for so long now that as far as he has been able to, he has become the public character he portrays. He's come, as they say, to believe his own press clippings.
That's not to say the public sees the whole man. He may love little kitties or secretly give money to starving orphans or cry every time he sees It's A Wonderful Life. He may be terrified by spiders or even afraid of the dark and there may be people in his life who routinely call him on his bullshit and get away with it. Maybe he loves them exactly because of it.
But by and large, I suspect Trump is a WYSIWYG guy. He's never going to get into the details of any of his preposterous positions "because I'm not a details guy, I hire people for that." He has been hobnobbing with actors and politicians all his life and he's not so stupid as not to have realized that many successful politicians are every bit as much empty suits as he is. After all, it's not like he's been hanging around boxers and gyms and then decided he could become the heavyweight champ. All politicians do is talk persuasively; to tell the money guys what they want to hear and then tell the voters what they want to hear. Never mind how little good or how much harm they do once elected, it's getting elected that counts. Trump knows how to talk, or thinks he does, so why not, I'm sure he believes, give it a shot?
The truth, I suspect, is that Trump
doesn't even want the job; it's too much work. But he just might be
able to demagogue his way into getting nominated and then who knows?
In the movie Citizen Kane,
Charles Foster Kane, a man who inherited great wealth and turned it
into great power as a journalist, was thwarted in his quest to become
Governor of New York by publication of an affair he was having. Weak
sauce by today's standards.
Citizen
Trump, like Orson Welles' Kane, is almost the personification of what the Greeks called hubris.
But Trump is no tragic hero. More the bathetic type, I'd wager. To
slightly paraphrase critic Robert Ebert, movie makers talk about "bad
laughs." That's when the audience laughs when it's not supposed
to. Citizen Trump's is conceivably the first presidential candidacy
which is in its entirety a bad laugh.
