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PLAY IT AGAIN, HILLARY:
A DRAMATURGICAL EXAMINATION OF A
REPEAT HEALTH CARE PLAN
PERFORMANCE
W. John Thomas
[T]he tone of the new [performance] . . . is different from that of the first. It
had to be, since we know what’s coming.1
Over a decade ago, this journal published two of my attempts to explain
Bill Clinton’s presidency and, especially, the 1993 Health Care Reform Plan
(Plan I)2 that both Bill and Hillary Clinton made a central tenet of Bill’s first
term in office.3 In the first piece, using the dramaturgical metaphor that
sociologist Erving Goffman first articulated in The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life,4 I argued that in order to maximize the effect of their public
presentation of Plan I, the Clintons sought to maintain a clear separation of
their “behind the curtain” activities from those that took place “in front of the
curtain.” I concluded that the presentation and the Plan failed because the
presentation’s participants failed to maintain that separation: “Portions of the
 W. John Thomas, Professor of Law, Quinnipiac College School of Law. J.D., 1982,
University of Arizona, LL.M., 1988, M.P.H., 1996, Yale.
1. PAULINE KAEL, FOR KEEPS 710 (1994).
2. Health Security Act, H.R. 3600, 103d Cong. (as introduced in the House Nov. 20,
1993).
3. W. John Thomas, The Clinton Health Care Reform Plan: A Failed Dramatic
Presentation, 7 STAN. L. & POL’Y REV. 83 (1996) [hereinafter Thomas I]; W. John Thomas,
The Presentation of Bill Clinton Revisited: The Case for Contextual Analysis of Political
Performance, 8 STAN. L. & POL’Y REV. 127 (1997) [hereinafter Thomas II]; see also Robert
Pear, Hillary Clinton Gets Policy Job and New Office, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 22, 1993, at A1
(describing the First Lady’s new domestic policy role in the Clinton White House and her
involvement in the administration’s proposal to “revamp the nation’s health-care system”);
Robin Toner, Health Care Plan Moves to Center of Political Stage, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 9,
1993, at A1 (reporting the launch of President Clinton’s nascent plan to “overhaul[] the
health care system”).
4. ERVING GOFFMAN, THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN EVERYDAY LIFE (1959). This is
Goffman’s seminal work on dramaturgy, and I am certainly not alone in thinking that
dramaturgy helps to explain political behavior. See, e.g., Peter M. Hall, The Presidency and
Impression Management, 2 STUD. IN SYMB. INTERACTION 283 (1979).
283
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public audience simply rejected the Clintons’ performance [when] they found it
false, or at least dissonant with the performers’ identities. For whatever reason,
the Clintons have not been able to maintain the separation of character and
performer that Ronald Reagan, for example, managed so effortlessly.”5
Then, in the 1996 Presidential election, “Despite Whitewater, Travelgate,
Filegate, Paula Jones and campaign-finance shenanigans with a shady cast
large enough to populate a new Coppola epic, [Clinton] took the oath of office
not in manacles but with an approval rating rivaling Ronald Reagan’s.”6 In
short, the “character issue,” or what I, in Goffmanian fashion, termed
“performer focus”7 did not doom the campaign as I claim it doomed the
presentation of Plan I three years earlier. Indeed, the conflation of performer
and character appeared to have little impact on voting.
My second article was my attempt to reconcile the election result with my
commentary about the presentation of Plan I.8 The article compared particular
elements of the presentations of Plan I and the campaign—their casts and
scripts—and concluded that the performances themselves were not sufficiently
different to explain the dissimilar results. The political contexts of the
performances, however, were sufficiently different to produce different
outcomes. Most notably, the Clintons presented Plan I during the rise of the
Contract with America, Newt Gingrich’s package of legislation designed to
reduce drastically the role of government in America.9 By contrast, the
campaign took place after the spectacular failure of the Contract. Characters,
performers, and performances associated with government became much more
appealing after Congress and the public rejected the Contract’s antigovernment thesis.10
I retained the Goffmanian dramaturgical metaphor, but attempted to fine
tune it by drawing from the work of a drama writer of a very different stripe,
film critic Pauline Kael.11 Goffman did not consider the ramifications of the
context of a performance. Kael, however, urged that we can only properly
evaluate performances when we view them against a backdrop of the “implied
system of values” supplied by the context.12 I concluded my second article by
5. Thomas I, supra note 3, at 96.
6. Frank Rich, Character Issue R.I.P., N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 22, 1997, at A21; see also
R.W. Apple, Jr., Economy Helps Again: Clinton Rode Wave of Discontent in 1992; With
Times Better, He Gets to Ride Again, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 6, 1996, at A1.
7. Thomas I, supra note 3, at 94.
8. Thomas II, supra note 3.
9. REPUBLICAN CONTRACT WITH AMERICA (Sept. 27, 1994), http://www.house.gov/
house/Contract/CONTRACT.html; see also Kenneth J. Cooper, GOP Offers a “Contract”
To Revive Reagan Years, WASH. POST, Sept. 28, 1994, at A1 (describing the unveiling of the
Contract with America); Tom Curry, The House Delivers, But Then What?, TIME, Dec. 25,
1995, at 75 (summarizing the Contract’s ten provisions and providing a progress report).
10. Thomas II, supra note 3, at 128-29.
11. Thomas II, supra note 3, at 129. See generally, KAEL, supra note 1.
12. KAEL, supra note 1, at 562.
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urging that Goffman’s metaphor illuminates political activity best when
considered in its context.13
Well, to paraphrase a President who was able to stay in character
regardless of context, “here we go again.”14 On September 17, 2007, now
Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton unveiled a central plank in
her campaign platform: The American Health Choices Plan (Plan II).15 It’s a
sequel!16 Or is it a remake?17 Regardless of which it is,18 Plan II represents a
variation of the dramaturgical metaphor that Goffman did not contemplate: a
revived script, performed in a new context, with the original leading actress but
an otherwise all-new cast. But, this is well-trod territory for film critics, and, as
“the most influential film critic of her time,” Kael has led the way.19 In
characteristic biting tone, Kael has assessed first and second works
independently and, then, judged the second in light of the first. At times, she
found the original sufficiently lacking that she refused to analyze the second
work.20
13. Thomas II, supra note 3, at 130.
14. In the second presidential debate of 1980, Ronald Reagan famously responded to a
question about Medicare with the phrase, “There you go again.” President Jimmy Carter &
Governor Ronald Reagan of California, Second 1980 Presidential Debate (Oct. 28, 1980)
(transcript available at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/80debates/cart4.
html). That phrase has since been cataloged as one of the great moments in Presidential
debates. Interview by Jim Lehrer with President Ronald Reagan (Aug. 7, 1989) (transcript
available at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/interviews/reagan.html); Scott
C. Smith, There You Go Again: Great Moments from Presidential Debates, COUNTERBIAS,
Oct. 7, 2004, http://www.counterbias.com/130.html; see also Editorial, There You Go Again:
Another Angry and Pointless Debate Between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, WASH.
POST, Jan. 24, 2008; at A18 (reprising Reagan’s “[t]here you go again” in the title of the
editorial).
15. HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT, AMERICAN HEALTH CHOICES PLAN (2007), http://
www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/healthcareplan/americanhealthchoicesplan.pdf [hereinafter
PLAN II]; see also, Patrick Healy & Robin Toner, Wary of Past, Clinton Unveils a Health
Plan, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 18, 2007, at A1.
16. A sequel is defined as “the next installment (as of a speech or story); especially: a
literary, cinematic, or televised work continuing the course of a story begun in a preceding
one.” MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sequel (last
visited Apr. 1, 2008) (emphasis in original).
17. A remake is “one that is remade; especially: a new version of a motion picture.”
MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE, http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary/remake
(last visited Apr. 1, 2008) (emphasis in original); see also MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE,
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/remade (last visited Apr. 1, 2008) (defining
remade as “ma[de] anew or in a different form”). For a more complex discussion of remakes,
see generally PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM: RETAKES ON REMAKES (Andrew Horton & Stuart Y.
McDougal eds.,1998).
18. I explore the implications of whether Plan II is a remake or sequel infra at Scene
Two.
19. Lawrence Van Gelder, Pauline Kael, Provocative and Widely Imitated New Yorker
Film Critic, Dies at 82, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 4, 2001, at C12.
20. See, e.g., PAULINE KAEL, REELING 138 (1976) (“There’s probably no way to rethink
th[e] material without throwing it all away.”). For example, Kael characterized the setting of
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This third, and final, one act episode in my SLPR / Clinton trilogy
summons the ghosts of Goffman and Kael once again and attempts to make
dramaturgical sense of Plan II and its presentation.21 Scene One presents a brief
reprisal of the works of Goffman and Kael and articulates how these disparate
bodies of work fit together to aid in understanding political performance. Scene
Two describes Plan II. Scene Three brings together the context, the lead
actress / director’s performance, and the expectations of the remake’s audience
to assess Plan II’s presentation. Finally, the Epilogue offers a few concluding
words about the utility of the Goffman / Kael analytical framework.
SCENE ONE: GOFFMAN AND KAEL BRIEFLY REPRISED
A. Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman gave “a mordant irony to the pretensions and theatricality
of everyday interaction.”22 In 1959’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,
Goffman articulated the centerpiece of that ironic exposition, the dramaturgical
metaphor:
The dramaturgical perspective . . . can be used as the endpoint of analysis, as a
final way of ordering facts. This would lead us to describe the techniques of
impression management employed in a given establishment, the principal
problems of impression management in the establishment of identity and
interrelationships of the various performance teams which operate in the
establishment.23
All performances, whether in the theater, life, or the political arena, employ
a “front” to “define the situation for those who observe the performance.”24 By
maintaining a separation between that front and what stays behind the curtain,
“a performer tends to conceal or underplay those activities, facts, and motives
which are incompatible with an idealized version of himself and his
products.”25 Thus, a performer may manage an “impression of infallibility” by
concealing her errors, or she may wish to reveal only the end product of her
efforts to conceal either that she devoted little effort to the project or,
Frank Kapra’s 1937 Lost Horizon as a “middle-class geriatric utopia [where] . . . you can
live indefinitely, lounging and puttering about for hundreds of years. . . . [T]he Orientals are
kept in their places, and no blacks . . . are among the residents.” She flatly rejected the
possibility of a successful remake. Id. at 137-38.
21. Well, this will be the final piece unless Chelsea Clinton decides to run for elected
office some day. Goffman died on November 19, 1982. William Dicke, Erving Goffman,
Sociologist Who Studied Every Day Life, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 22, 1982, at B16. Kael died
September 3, 2001. Van Gelder, supra note 19.
22. Geoffrey Nunberg, The Theatricality of Everyday Life, N.Y. TIMES, May 10, 1981,
at 11 (reviewing ERVING GOFFMAN, FORMS OF TALK (1981)).
23. GOFFMAN, supra note 4, at 240.
24. Id. at 22.
25. Id. at 48.
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conversely, to cloak “long, tedious hours of lonely labor.”26 She may also seek
to conceal unclean, illegal, or cruel “dirty work” or the circumvention of formal
procedures.27
Goffman’s “everyday” examples of performance include the roles of
waiters, tailors, grocers, and auctioneers. To function effectively, the performer
must not only play the appropriate role, but must also convince the audience
that she is content to do so and does not aspire to any other station.28 She must
also stay in character.29 This, indeed, is the “paradox” of acting: the actor must
be herself, while conveying to her audience someone else.30 “Actor means ‘I
the character,’ not ‘I myself.’”31 If the actor does not convey the character, she
fails to perform the underlying work, conveying to the audience only her own
identity.
B. Pauline Kael
[Pauline Kael was] the most quotable critic writing; but what is important and
bracing is that she relate[d] movies to other experience, to ideas and attitudes,
to ambition, books, money, other movies, to politics and the evolving culture,
to moods of the audience, to our sense of ourselves—to what movies do to us,
the acute and self-scrutinizing awareness of which is always at the core of her
judgment.32
Kael argued that context can shape a performance and affect audience
reaction to it. World events and cultural norms give both performers and their
audiences shared points of reference. For example, she urged, “There is no way
to estimate the full effect of Vietnam and Watergate on popular culture, but
earlier films were predicated on an implied system of values which is gone
now. . . .”33 The loss of that implied system of values—the context in which we
viewed pre-Vietnam film—informs the meaning of post-Vietnam films.
Political analysts have long urged that one can assess the substance of
political action only by considering its context. We can, for example, better
understand Presidents’ challenges to judicial review by viewing those actions
within their “particular political context[s].”34 And, the post-9/11 political
context informs our understanding of President George W. Bush’s nearly
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
Id. at 43-44.
Id. at 44-46.
Id. at 75-76 (quoting JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, BEING AND NOTHINGNESS 59 (1956)).
Id. at 48-49, 71.
JOHN HARROP, ACTING 4 (1992).
Id. at 5-6.
Eliot Fremont-Smith, No Lies, N.Y. TIMES, May 21, 1968, at 45 (reviewing
PAULINE KAEL, KISS KISS BANG BANG (1968)).
33. KAEL, supra note 1, at 562.
34. KEITH E. WHITTINGTON, POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF JUDICIAL SUPREMACY: THE
PRESIDENCY, THE SUPREME COURT, AND CONSTITUTIONAL LEADERSHIP IN U.S. HISTORY 49
(2007).
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ubiquitous use of presidential “signing statements” to explain or, some might
say, compromise the legislation that he has signed into law.35
Allusion to Kael’s work enriches the analytical calculus by directing us to
consider the political actor’s performance qua performance in its context. In
1952, for example, when running for the Vice Presidency, Richard Nixon spoke
to the country to address challenges to his “honesty and integrity.”36 In the
most famous lines of the speech—those which gave the speech its nickname—
Nixon referred to a “little cocker spaniel . . . , black and white, spotted [which
his] little girl Tricia, the 6-year old, named . . . Checkers.”37 The words spoke
for themselves, but Kael would undoubtedly have urged us to notice Nixon’s
wife, Pat, who stoically sat next to him while he spoke of her “respectable
Republican cloth coat” that he had purchased with donors’ contributions.38
Context is similarly consequential to other political performances.
Consider, for example, Jimmy Carter wearing a sweater and sitting by a
fireplace while urging the public to turn down the thermostat to conserve
energy.39 Or, consider George W. Bush declaring in May 2003 that “[m]ajor
combat operations in Iraq have ended” while standing on an aircraft carrier
under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished.”40
C. The Goffman / Kael Analytical Framework
To ascertain the potential benefit of the Goffman / Kael framework,
consider a campaign stop of any of today’s presidential hopefuls. At the
appointed moment, the candidate takes the stage and recites a prepared speech.
35. See Peter M. Shane, Presidential Signing Statements and the Rule of Law as an
“Unstructured Institution,” 16 WM. & MARY BILL RTS. J. 231, 232 (2007) (chronicling the
President’s “signing statements”).
36. Richard M. Nixon, Address to the Republican National Convention Accepting the
Nomination for Vice President (“Checkers Speech”) (Sept. 23, 1952) (transcript available at
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Richard%20Nixon%20-%20Checkers.
pdf).
37. Id.; The History Place Great Speeches Collection: Richard M. Nixon “Checkers
Speech,” http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/nixon-checkers.htm (last visited Apr. 1,
2008) (noting that the speech will “forever be known as Nixon’s ‘Checkers Speech.’”).
38. The History Place Great Speeches Collection: Richard M. Nixon “Checkers
Speech,” supra note 37.
39. President Jimmy Carter, Televised Address on Proposed Energy Policy (The
Sweater Speech) (Apr. 18, 1977) (transcript available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/
carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html); see also Frank Pelligrini, The GOP Tries On Jimmy
Carter’s Sweater, TIME, June 29, 2001, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,165
957,00.html (alluding to the cardigan of “Jimmy Carter’s famous conservation speech
wardrobe”).
40. President George W. Bush, Remarks from the USS Abraham Lincoln Announcing
the End of Major Combat Operations in Iraq (May 1, 2003) (transcript available at http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html); “Mission Accomplished”
Whodunit: White House Changes Stories on Much-Mocked Banner at Carrier Speech, CBS
NEWS, Oct. 29, 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/29/iraq/main580661.shtml.
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It is likely to be the same “stump speech” that the candidate recited yesterday
and will recite tomorrow.41 But, we can parse the words and look for a message
tailored to today’s crowd or crafted to fine tune the intended message or
address recent news. Is the candidate staying on message, changing the
message in light of last night’s poll results, or massaging the message to suit
the audience?
Now, consider what Goffman adds to the analysis. He asks us to view as a
stage the platform on which the candidate stands. He asks us to consider who
stands off stage, “behind the curtain,” or joins the candidate “in front of the
curtain.” Does the candidate stay in character or allow her “I myself” to show?
On this count, consider Hillary Clinton’s teary moment the day before 2008’s
New Hampshire primary.42 Did that help her candidacy by infusing her
character with a warm and caring aura? Or, did it blur the character by allowing
the “I myself” to enter the campaign?
Finally, consider Kael’s contribution to our exercise. She broadens our
view beyond the staging area. Are we in a red or blue state? Is this the
candidate’s home state or a state he or she carried in a previous campaign for
the presidency? Perhaps most intriguingly, give a listen to the tune playing over
the sound system. Does it add meaning to the scene? Wherever he appears,
John McCain plays ABBA’s disco hit, Take a Chance on Me.43 Democrats
seem to lean toward U2. Barak Obama plays City of Blinding Light while John
Edwards prefers Pride.44
And, what of our subject, Senator Clinton? She clearly believes in the
power of the contextual, musical message. After receiving thousands of
suggestions from supporters, Clinton selected Celine Dion’s You and I as her
campaign theme song.45 Apparently tiring of taking the stage to the lyrics, “I
can hear your voice calling out to me, Brighter than the sun and darker than the
night, I can see your love shining like a light,” Clinton retired the song in late
January 2008.46 In its stead, she now plays Big Head Todd and the Monsters’s
Blue Sky, which intones, “[Y]ou can change the world . . . . There is no other
41. See, e.g., Jonathan Alter, Big Ideas from Boring Old Stump Speeches: Today’s
Throwaway Campaign Lines Often Wind Up As Tomorrow’s Best Programs, NEWSWEEK,
Jan. 7, 2008, at 66.
42. See Jodi Kantor, The Tracks of Her Tears, NY TIMES POLITICS BLOG, Jan. 8, 2008,
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/the-tracks-of-her-tears/.
43. Talk of the Nation: Musical Messages in Campaign Soundtracks, (NPR radio
broadcast Jan. 29, 2008), available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story
Id=18514559 (discussing political theme songs as contextual spheres that candidates use to
humanize themselves).
44. Id.; Carrie Brownstein, Do You Hear What I Hear?, NPR MONITOR MIX, Jan. 7,
2008, http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/2008/01/do_you_hear_what_i_hear_1.html.
45. Tom Regan, Clinton Dumps Celine Dion Song at Campaign Events, Dec. 6, 2007,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2007/12/clinton_dumps_celine_dion_song.html.
46. Id.
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one / Believe and you will find blue sky.”47
SCENE TWO: PLAN II—THE REMAKE.
There’s probably no way to rethink this material without throwing it all
away.48
A remake is a “new version of a” previously made performance.49 A sequel
is a continuation of “a story begun in a preceding” work.50 A remake seeks to
improve a presentation. A sequel seeks to continue it.
So, is Plan II a continuation of the 1993-1994 health care reform story or is
it a newly cast version of Plan I? Well, Plan II certainly does not continue what
Plan I sought to start. Plan I required as a general rule that all Americans enroll
in state or federally administered regional health plans that provided
comprehensive benefits.51 Plan I also restructured the insurance market though
the purchasing power of large “health care alliances.”52 Each state would have
at least one alliance and large states would have several.53 To control costs,
Plan I tied the national health care budget to the consumer price index.54
Plan II does very little of what Plan I would have done.55 At sixteen pages
as compared with Plan I’s 1368 pages, Plan II cannot possibly replicate Plan I.
Indeed, it does not even mirror Plan I’s structure. Gone are the Alliances and
any controls on prices. Gone is the mandate to participate.
So, what is left? Well, the overall goal—to insure all—and a minimum
package of acceptable benefits remain.56 Unlike Plan I, Plan II does not specify
those benefits, but simply refers to the benefits offered by existing programs
like Medicare and the Congressional health care plan.57 And, instead of Plan I’s
mandatory participation, Plan II presents a “choice”: keep what you’ve got or
choose from two options, one of which resembles current Medicare and the
other of which models the congressional health care plan.58
Plan II, therefore, looks like a classic remake. It has jettisoned everything
47. Id.; Big Head Todd and the Monsters, All the Love You Need Song Lyrics and
Credits, http://bigheadtodd.com/alltheloveyouneed/lyrics.pdf (last visited Apr. 1, 2008).
48. KAEL, supra note 20, at 138.
49. See supra note 17.
50. See supra note 16.
51. Health Security Act, H.R. 3600, 103d Cong. §§ 1002, 1004, 1101 (as introduced in
the House Nov. 20, 1993).
52. Id. §§ 1300-1303, 1311-1313.
53. Id. § 1202(a).
54. Id. § 9102(e)(2)(C).
55. See generally PLAN II, supra note 15.
56. Id. at 1.
57. Compare id. (remaining silent on specific benefits), with H.R. 3600 § 1101
(mandating “comprehensive benefits”).“”
58. Id. at 4.
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that the director found problematic or uninteresting, retaining only the essence
of the original. Pauline Kael calls a remake a variation.59 The basic outline of
the story remains, but the setting, actors, and characters have been changed.
Does it matter that Plan II is a remake rather than a sequel? It would to
Kael. A good sequel “enlarges the scope and deepens the meaning” of the first
presentation and is structured so that “two great big pieces . . . come[] together
in your head while you watch.”60 The effect of the presentations on the
audience is cumulative.
But, a remake aspires to and demands a different aesthetic goal. It seeks to
supplant, not complement the original. Even the “core idea” of Blow Out, for
example, comes from a film other than the one director De Palma remakes.61
Not only does Blow Out not attempt to add to the original, Blow Up, but in a
clear indication that De Palma is casting the original aside, a character
dismisses it: “I saw Blow-Up—I know how this comes out.”62 De Palma’s
stated goal, within the remake’s presentation, is to supplant the original.
What motivates one to present a sequel or remake rather than an original
work? The motivation for producing a sequel needs little explanation: the
original fails to complete the story. Certainly, this was, at least in part, George
Lucas’s motivation for producing six Star Wars episodes.63 Of course,
economic considerations likely played a part in his decision to produce more
episodes. But, the multi-episode work began with Lucas’s realization that the
original simply did not tell the full story as he envisioned it. Sequels are not a
rarity in drama. It would be very difficult to argue that Tolkien’s Lord of the
Rings trilogy would have been complete as a single or double volume.64 And,
any parent knows that the Harry Potter series would not have reached its proper
end until J.K. Rowling killed off either Harry or his nemesis, Lord
59. KAEL, supra note 1, at 901 (describing Brian De Palma’s 1981 Blow Out as “a
variation on” Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 Blow Up); id. at 812 (suggesting that Phil
Kaufman’s 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers presents a “set of variations on” Don
Seigel’s 1956 original yet “has its own macabre originality”).
60. Id. at 595 (discussing the Godfather, Part II).
61. Id. at 901 (asserting that the film’s “core idea probably comes from . . . De Palma’s
1968 film Greetings”).
62. Id.
63. George Lucas, Remarks to Celebration III Star Wars Convention (Apr. 23, 2005)
(recording available at http://www.starwars.com/community/event/celebration/f20050419/
indexp17.html) (“There was originally to be one film . . . . then I got to a draft that’s kind of
what we know now, but it was 200 pages.” So, to tell the full story “that became three films.
I never thought I’d go back and do the original [back] stories . . . . But then the necessary
technology came along, and I came to grips with being known forever as George ‘Star Wars’
Lucas.”); StarWars.com, Thank the Maker: George Lucas, http://www.starwars.com/
community/event/celebration/f20050419/indexp17.html (last visited Apr. 1, 2008).
64. J.R.R. TOLKIEN, THE HOBBIT (Allen & Unwin 1937); J.R.R. TOLKIEN, THE LORD OF
THE RINGS (Allen & Unwin 1954-1955) (containing The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two
Towers, and The Return of the King).
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Voldemort.65
But, what of the reason for a remake? Well, as Robert Eberwein has
pointed out, there is the matter of economic efficiency.66 One can simply save
time and money by recycling an existing script. And, there should be a ready
audience for a story that people found pleasing the first time around.
This same observation certainly could hold true of political performance. A
position that has sold well before might sell well again and the script / stump
speeches are in the can. But, this cannot be what motivates Hillary Clinton.
Plan I was, by anyone’s reckoning, a flop.
Kael addressed just this point. She dismissed the possibility of a
meaningful remake unless the original presented sufficient material that one
could “rethink” it. A sequel might continue or even improve on an original
story,67 but a remake retains at least the “core” of the original, otherwise it, too,
is an original.68 If that core is valueless, one would have little reason for
retaining it for another presentation. Rather, the original should be
“throw[n] . . . away.”69
Eberstein offers an explanation for remaking an admittedly imperfect
previous work. Some directors simply remake films because they believe the
originals to present important stories, symbols, or ideas that might be improved
upon retelling.70 For example, Frank Capra reported that he remade Lady for a
Day into A Pocketful of Miracles because “[he] wanted to experiment with
retelling Damon Runyon’s fairy tale with rock-hard, non-hero gangsters.”71
Similarly, Franco Zeffirelli remade The Champ because he “identified strongly
with the family problems” addressed in the script, which brought back to him
“the whole trauma[, t]he whole syndrome of anguish” that the original’s setting
evoked.72
There are at least two possible, positive outcomes for a remake. Consider
John Guillermin’s 1976 remake of Marian Cooper’s and Ernest Schoedsack’s
1933 King Kong. To Pauline Kael, the “new King Kong isn’t a horror movie—
65. J.K. ROWLING, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE (1998); J.K. ROWLING,
HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (1999); J.K. ROWLING, HARRY POTTER AND
THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (1999); J.K. ROWLING, HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
(2000); J.K. ROWLING, HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (2003); J.K.
ROWLING, HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (2005); J.K. ROWLING, HARRY
POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS (2007).
66. Robert Eberwein, Remakes and Cultural Studies, in PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM: RETAKES
ON REMAKES, supra note 17, at 15, 18.
67. See KAEL, supra note 1, at 595 (discussing the Godfather, Part II).
68. See id. at 901 (discussing the “core” idea in Brian DePalma’s Blow Out).
69. KAEL, supra note 20, at 138.
70. See Eberwein, supra note 66, at 18-19.
71. Id. at 18 (citing Stephen M. Silverman, Hollywood Cloning: Sequels, Prequels,
Remakes, and Spin-Offs, AMERICAN FILM, July-Aug. 1978, at 24, 26).
72. Id. (citing Donald Chase, The Champ: Round Two, AMERICAN FILM, July-Aug.
1978, at 28, 28).
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it’s an absurdist love story. Taking into account the feelings that have
developed about Kong, the moviemakers have pared the theme down” to its
essential elements.73 The audience’s familiarity with the original enables the
director to focus, or, perhaps, re-focus, attention on a few, fundamental themes.
A remake can even displace the original. Consider John Huston’s Maltese
Falcon. His 1941 film “supplants the previous two [film] versions and, to a
certain extent, the original novel.”74 The remake neither revives nor pays
homage to the original. It casts a bold shadow that obscures the original. Of
course, there is no guarantee that the remake will surpass, or even match, the
original. Consider Pauline Kael’s take on Martin Scorcese’s 1991 remake of
1962’s Cape Fear: “I thought it was a spectacularly bad movie for Scorsese to
have made. He thought he’d do a genre film like one he’d admired but it turned
out all wrong. I don’t think he’s a hack but it turned into a piece of hack
work.”75
So, let’s return to Senator Clinton. Health care reform was a decided flop
during her husband’s tenure in the White House. Does she think that the
remake is a better vehicle for a convincing performance? Well, despite or,
perhaps, because of “the scars to show from” Plan I’s failure, Clinton is
confident: “I’ve . . . learned some valuable lessons that have shaped how I
approach health care reform today.”76 She must be convinced that the original’s
“core”—universal health care—has value. Perhaps she thinks that Plan II can
even displace the original from the public’s memory.
SCENE THREE: LEAD ACTRESS / DIRECTOR
ALIGNS WITH THE DESIRES OF HER AUDIENCE
I don’t know what the hell was going on in the remake, but they took the
material seriously in all the wrong ways[, a]nd they lost the humor that made
the original so extraordinary.77
In 1992, Hillary Clinton set out “to find a [health care] story to tell, with
heroes and villains.”78 Two years later, she had her story and her villains. But,
the story was of her collapsed health care reform plan and she and her husband
73. KAEL, supra note 1, at 710.
74. Leo Braudy, Afterword: Rethinking Remakes, in PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM: RETAKES ON
REMAKES, supra note 17, at 327, 328.
75. PAULINE KAEL, MOVIE LOVE: COMPLETE REVIEWS 1988-1991 (1991).
76. Senator Hillary Clinton, Remarks on American Health Choices Plan at the
Broadlawns Medical Center (Sept. 17, 2007) (transcript available at http://www.hillary
clinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=3329).
77. FRANCIS DAVIS, AFTERGLOW: A LAST CONVERSATION WITH PAULINE KAEL 110
(2002) (reflecting on the 1997 remake of Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 Lolita based on the 1955
novel by Vladimir Nabokov); Allen Barra, “Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline
Kael” by Francis Davis, SALON, Nov. 20, 2002, http://archive.salon.com/books/review/
2002/11/20/kael/index.html (book review).
78. BOB WOODWARD, THE AGENDA: INSIDE THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE 147 (1994).
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were the villains. “We’ve killed health care reform,” declared Republican
Senator Bob Packwood, “[n]ow we’ve got to make sure our fingerprints are not
on it.”79
How is one to revive a performance when the original died a rather
inglorious death? As Kael pointed out, sometimes one has to “throw[] away”
the original.80 If an actress or director—or an actress / director—is committed
to the core ideas of the original, the effective strategy for re-performing the
original may be to jettison all but the core.
And, indeed, beginning with Plan II’s title, Senator Clinton seems to have
jettisoned all but the core of Plan I. Speaking almost precisely thirteen years
after Packwood declared Plan I dead, Senator Clinton told supporters, “I
learned [with Plan I] that people who are satisfied with their current coverage
want assurances that they can keep it. Part of our health care system is the best
in the world, and we should build on it; part of the system is broken, and we
should fix it.”81 She had also learned that critics found traction by assailing
Plan I as forcing Americans into selecting choices they don’t want. So, Plan II
features “Choice” in its title.82
Other aspects of Plan II’s presentation are profoundly different from the
presentation of Plan I. First, consider the packaging. Clinton presented Plan I as
a finished product, with all of its Ts crossed and Is dotted. For some, there were
just too many Ts and Is. But, more critically, it was a “done deal.” Clinton and
her task force had completed the project in secret, neither seeking nor accepting
advice from the outside. That audiences were skeptical should have come as no
surprise.
Senator Clinton has packaged Plan II very differently. She has opened the
process: “I learned about how to build the national consensus you need to get
health care passed. My plan is the result of discussions with many people:
doctors and nurses, hospitals administrators, and lawyers, unions and most
importantly, America’s families, who are frustrated with the system we have
now. I have been asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of listening.”83
Consider, also, the “unveiling.” With Plan I, Clinton and her task force
produced a program that Americans didn’t know they needed and then, in
effect, told the recipients, “Here, we’ve fixed your problem for you. There’s no
need to ask questions because we’ve already considered them all.” Clinton
exhibited what Goffman called a “certain bureaucratization of the spirit.”84 The
Atlanta Journal Constitution probably spoke for many when it responded to the
79. Adam Clymer, Any Additional Delay for Health Bill Means Death for Proposal
This Year, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 18, 1994, at 36.
80. KAEL, supra note 20, at 138.
81. Healy & Toner, supra note 15.
82. PLAN II, supra note 15.
83. Clinton, supra note 76.
84. GOFFMAN, supra note 4, at 56 (discussing how one harnesses one’s self to fit the
presentation).
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bureaucratization by running a piece entitled, Dear Clintons: Regular Folks
Have Healthy Ideas, Too.85
Clinton’s performance is less bureaucratic this time around. Meeting with
Clinton and her Plan I task force appeared to be an exercise in futility: “In 1993
we had meetings with [the leader of Clinton’s health care task force,] Ira
Magaziner, but he turned his hearing aid off. There was no negotiation, no give
and take.”86 Public appearances were equally futile public relations exercises.
In his 2007 film Sicko, Michael Moore immortalized one of the defining
moments of Plan I’s presentation. At the beginning of her testimony before the
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Clinton responds to
Republican Senator Dick Armey’s welcome by comparing him with infamous
suicide assister Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Armey replies, “The reports of your charm
are overstated and the reports of your wit are understated.”87
Senator Clinton has apparently located that missing charm and put it to use
in Plan II’s presentation. Her health care television ad depicts her walking
among school children, holding babies, comforting parents, and talking with
children in hospitals.88 Her campaign manager has framed the presentation in
Goffmanian terms: “We needed to take time for people to get to know her
better and to see that she has very good intentions before we asked them to
consider trusting her with health care again.”89 The performance begins with
character development before turning to its story line.
Both the performance and story line appear in a very changed context.
When the curtain comes up on a new Presidency next January 20, one thing is
certain: it will feature a backdrop that is very different from the one that
provided context to Plan I’s presentation. In 1994, average per capita health
care costs in the United States were approximately $3,600; today, that figure is
$7,500.90 And, where there were approximately forty million uninsured
85. Steve Sternberg, Dear Clintons: Regular Folks Have Healthy Ideas, Too, ATLANTA
J. CONST., Apr. 30, 1993, at A11.
86. Susannah Meadows, How Hillary Won Over the Health-Care Industry, NEWSWEEK,
Sept. 17, 2007, http://www.newsweek.com/id/40947 (quoting Charles Kahn, Executive Vice
President of the Health Insurance Association of America).
87. Mary Ann Akers, Michael Moore’s Sicko So Meano to Hillary, WASH. POST BLOG,
June 21, 2007, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2007/06/michael_moores_sicko_so_
meano.html; Adam Clymer, First Republican Supports Health Plan, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 30,
1983, at A23.
88. Hillary’s Health Care Plan, http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/55.aspx (last
visited Apr. 1, 2008).
89. Healy & Toner, supra note 15.
90. Trends in Health Care Costs and Spending, KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION FACT
SHEET (Kaiser Family Found., Menlo Park, Cal.), Sept. 2007, available at
http://www.kff.org/insurance/upload/7692.pdf; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services,
Historical National Health Expenditure Accounts, http://www.cms.hhs.gov/National
HealthExpendData/02_NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.asp (providing national health
expenditure summary data for the years 1960-2006).
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Americans in 1994, there are forty-seven million today.91 Health care
consultant Mary Kate Scott has crystallized the contextual difference: “In the
1990s, when Hillary first came out with the plan, the average Joe thought, ‘I’ll
always get health care.’ Right now there’s scarcity. We actually feel the
pain.”92
“[R]emakes emphasize the clash between principles of continuity and
principles of innovation[, ]the constant interplay between the desires of artists
and the desires of audiences.”93 With the original, Hillary Clinton clashed with
her audience. With the remake, she finds her desire as the artist / director to be
better aligned with the desires of her audience.
Pauline Kael, were she still living and interested in health care
performance, might be buoyed. Having traversed an affectless period,
audiences appear more ready to embrace a challenging performance. Witness
President Bush’s recent veto of the SCHIP program.94 The brainchild of Hillary
Clinton and Ted Kennedy, Congress enacted the State Children’s Health
Insurance Program in 1997 to provide insurance to uninsured children.95 On
October 3, 2007, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded
the program by $35 billion over five years. Apparently sensing that he’d have
difficulty finding a favorable audience for his actions, Bush executed the veto
in private, without public or press attendance.96 Senator Charles Grassley, a
member of Bush’s own party, accused the President of holding the SCHIP
program “hostage” to his administration’s other policy goals.97 Grassley added
that Republicans were making “outlandish accusations” in an attempt to
characterize the program as “socialized medicine.”98
91. THE HENRY J. KAISER FAMILY FOUND., THE UNINSURED: A PRIMER 13 fig.12 (2007),
available at http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/7451-021.pdf; N.C. Aizenman &
Christopher Lee, U.S. Poverty Rate Drops; Ranks of Uninsured Grow; Census Data Show
Mixed View of Post-Recession Economy, WASH. POST., Aug. 29, 2007, at A3.
92. Meadows, supra note 86.
93. Braudy, supra note 74, at 333.
94. 42 U.S.C. §§ 1397aa-1397jj (2007); David Espo, Child Health Veto Will Be
Election Issue, WASH. POST, Oct. 3, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/10/03/AR2007100300864.html. For general information about the
program, see Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, State Children’s Health Insurance
Program, http://www.cms.hhs.gov/home/schip.asp (last visited Apr. 1, 2007).
95. Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Pub. L. No. 105-33 § 4901, 111 Stat. 251, 552; Peter
Daou, Hillary to Republicans: “Lay off Graeme Frost,” DAILY KOS, Oct. 10, 2007,
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/10/223446/39/153/396487 (quoting a statement
by Hillary Clinton which described SCHIP as “a program that [she] helped start in 1997 with
Ted Kennedy and others”).
96. Espo, supra note 94 (“President Bush cast a quiet veto Wednesday against a
politically attractive expansion of children’s health insurance, triggering a struggle with the
Democratic-controlled Congress certain to reverberate into the 2008 elections.”).
97. Jonathan Weisman & Christopher Lee, GOP Senator Says Bush Should Put Health
Bill Before Policy Goal, WASH. POST, Sept. 25, 2007, at A4.
98. 153 CONG. REC. S12130 (2007) (statement of Sen. Grassley).
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The debate, then, is not about the legislation, itself. Nor is the debate about
the performance qua performance. Rather, the debate is about context. Does the
expanded SCHIP program fit without dissonance within the exiting American
Health Care System or is it a program that belongs properly in another health
care context. Critics are attempting to contextualize the performance in a way
will “stir” or “frighten” the audience. Public opinion polls indicate that
whatever the context, eighty-six percent of Americans are not frightened by the
program.99
This is the audience before which Hillary Clinton will step if she is elected.
It’s an audience that is not as repressed about considering health care
alternatives as was her 1993-1994 audience. Senator Clinton will be performing
in a context into which her proposal fits more harmoniously than it might have
more than a decade ago. And, she has presented Plan II in a way that should not
alienate her audience the way that she alienated Plan I’s audience.
EPILOGUE: AVOIDING THE CLOCKWORK ORANGE.
We become clockwork oranges if we accept all this pop culture without asking
what’s in it.100
In the introduction to the 1986 edition of his 1962 novel, A Clockwork
Orange, Anthony Burgess described the book’s title as “meaning . . . an
organism lovely with color and juice, but [that] is in fact only a clockwork toy
to be wound up by God or the Devil . . . or the Almighty State.”101 Pauline
Kael, reviewing Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film adaptation of the book, turned
that title on its head. Criticizing the film, she urged that we can avoid becoming
the clockwork automatons against which Burgess warned only by viewing
critically the elements of popular culture that we encounter, including A
Clockwork Orange.102
The same ought to be said about political presentations. If we don’t ask
what’s in them, we become but automatons, accepting what we are given.
Goffman’s work tells us that knowing what’s in the performance requires
knowing the performances qua performances. Kael’s work urges that we
consider context and that we evaluate originals and remakes both on their own
merits and comparatively.
As the public minister said to the central character, Alex, in A Clockwork
Orange, “Public opinion has a way of changing.”103 A good presentation can
99. Press Release, Robert Wood Johnson Found., Opinion Poll: Nine in 10 Voters
Want SCHIP Reauthorized (Aug. 23, 2007), available at http://www.rwjf.org/newsroom/
newsreleasesdetail.jsp?productid=21931.
100. KAEL, supra note 1, at 418.
101. ANTHONY BURGESS, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, at ix (1986).
102. KAEL, supra note 1, at 418.
103. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (Warner Bros. 1971).
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be instrumental in bringing about that change. Goffmanian and Kaelian
analysts who dare to tread where others will not104 can be instrumental in
explaining performances as such and revealing the implications of character
and context on presentations.
CODA
[S]he is a very good actress indeed. . . . [A]s first lady, she played the diverse
roles of someone interested in China and someone interested in china. . . . [A]s
a presidential candidate, she morphed from Queen Elizabeth I to Norma Rae,
as Newsweek put it. . . . [T]hrough humiliation and pain, she has shown
herself to be a skilled survivor. She said she embraces the old saying, ‘Fake it
till you make it.’105
As we all now know, Hillary Clinton did not “make it.” On June 7, while
claiming a victory in the popular vote,106 she withdrew from the race,
conceding that her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama,
had an insurmountable lead in the delegate votes essential to winning the
contest.107
Commentators have variously identified the cause of her loss as the specter
of a Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton dual family dynasty,108 the baggage of Bill
Clinton,109 and sexism in the media.110 But, fault also lies with her
performance during the campaign. As Peter Baker and Jim Rutenberg put it in
the New York Times, Senator Clinton did not present a consistent character:
“Mrs. Clinton variously tried presenting herself as the friend having
conversations with the American people, then the experienced hand and tough
warrior before settling on heroine of the working class.”111
104. GOFFMAN, supra note 4, at 2 (“So it remains for the microanalysts of interaction to
lumber in where the self respecting decline to tread.”).
105. Maureen Dowd, Watch Out, Meryl Streep! She’s a Master Thespian, N.Y. TIMES,
June 8, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/opinion/08dowd.html?ref=opinion.
106. Katharine Q. Seelye, The Long Goodbye, N.Y. TIMES CAUCUS, June 6, 2008,
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/the-long-goodbye-2/.
Barack
Obama’s
supporters debate this contention. Id. Commentators are divided. Id. In six possible methods
of counting the popular vote, each candidate wins according to three of the methods. Id.
107. Hillary Clinton, Remarks in Washington, D.C. (June 7, 2008) (transcript available
at http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=7903). In so doing, she embraced
her opponent’s message: “It is this belief, this optimism, that Senator Obama and I share, and
that has inspired so many millions of our supporters to make their voices heard. So today, I
am standing with Senator Obama to say: Yes we can.” Id.
108. See, e.g., Nicholas D. Kristof, The Dynastic Question, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 31, 2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/opinion/31kristof.html.
109. See, e.g., William Kristol, Desperate Husband, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 28, 2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/opinion/28kristol.html.
110. Katharine Q. Seelye & Julie Bosman, Critics and News Executives Split Over
Sexism in Clinton Coverage, N.Y. TIMES, June 13, 2008, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/
fullpage.html?res=9C00E6D71F3EF930A25755C0A96E9C8B63.
111. Peter Baker & Jim Rutenberg, The Long Road to a Clinton Exit, N.Y. TIMES, June
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But, if she wavered in her overall presentation, Clinton provided a
consistent performance on the issue of health care. Indeed, some commentators
have labeled her health care plan as her lasting legacy in the political
landscape.112 More importantly, Obama has accepted the influence of her
performance: “When we finally win the battle for universal health care in this
country, she will be central to that victory.”113
Clinton’s presentation reverberated beyond health care. As she noted in her
concession speech, her candidacy has inspired women across the country:
“Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this
time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is
shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure
knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.”114 As Maureen Dowd
succinctly and, dare I say, dramatically put it, “Hillary has brought back that
old feminist religion, at least for now.”115
Given the disparities between men’s and women’s health care under our
current system,116 this may be the ultimate health care plan performance
legacy.
8, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/politics/08recon.html?fta=y.
112. See. e.g., Robert Weiner & John Larmett, Clinton's Legacy: Health-Care Truth,
PALM BEACH POST, June 14, 2008, http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/
epaper/2008/06/14/m10a_weiner_commentary_0614.html.
113. Id.
114. Hillary Clinton, Remarks, supra note 107; see Dana Milbank, A Thank-You for 18
Million Cracks in the Glass Ceiling, WASH. POST, June 8, 2008, at A1.
115. Dowd, supra note 105.
116. see Carol Lloyd, Gender Disparities in Healthcare, SALON, Jan. 10, 2008,
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/01/10/preventable_deaths/index.html.