"Make My Day!": Spectacle as Amnesia in Imperial Politics
Author(s): Michael Rogin
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Representations, No. 29 (Winter, 1990), pp. 99-123
Published by: University of California Press
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MICHAEL
ROGIN
"Make My Day!":
Spectacle as Amnesia
in Imperial Politics
I
T H E T H I E F H I D E S the purloined letter,in Edgar Allan Poe's story,by
placing it in plain sight. His theftis overlooked because no attemptis made to
conceal it. The crimes of the postmodernAmerican empire, I want to suggest,
are concealed in the same way.Covertoperations actuallyfunctionas spectacle.
So let us begin like Poe's InspectorDupin, and attendto the evidence beforeour
eyes.'
The last presidentof the United Stateswas a Hollywood actor.His vice president, the man who succeeded him,was the directorof the Central Intelligence
Agency.To understand how the career paths of these two men, ratherthan discreditingeitherthem or the politicalsystemin whichtheyhad risen to the top,
uniquely prepared them forthe presidencyis to name the two politicalpeculiarities of the postmodern American empire: on the one hand the domination of
public politicsby the spectacle and on the other the spread of covertoperations
and a secretforeignpolicy."Going public,"Samuel Kernell'sphrase forthe shift
from institutionalized,pluralist bargaining among stable, elite coalitions to
appeals to the mass public, coexists with going private,the spread of hidden,
unaccountable decision makingwithintheexecutivebranch.How are we to think
about the relationshipbetweenthe two?2
It may seem that spectacle and secrecysupport each other by a divisionof
labor,one being publicand theotherprivate,one sellingor disguisingthe foreign
policy made by the other.The Iran/Contraexposure broke down that division,
on thisview,by revealinga secretforeignpolicythatnot onlyviolated public law
againstaiding the Contrasbut also contradictedpublic denunciationsof the AyaThe privatizationof American
tollah Khomeini and of bargainingwithterrorists.
the
foreignpolicythatcharacterizedIran/Contrasignified,in thisinterpretation,
takeoverof policyby private,unaccountablearms merchantsand stateterrorists
by means of private,secret operations. Although the executivejunta owed its
power to officialsin high public positions,the argumentcontinues,it was not a
public body.
REPRESENTATIONS
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*
Winter 1990 (?
THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY
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OF CALIFORNIA
99
Such an interpretation,which divides public image fromsecret operations,
ignores secrecy'srole beyond covertoperational borders,producing signals for
elite and mass audiences. To begin with,the "neat idea[s]" that produced Iran/
Contra (to recall Oliver North'sapt phrase) were acted out as a filmscenario in
the heads of thejunta, who, arongwiththe right-wingideologues let in on parts
of the story,formed the audience for their own movie. ("Ollie was a patriot,"
remarkedformerReagan press spokesmanLarrySpeakes. "But I sometimesfelt
he thoughthe was playingsome kind of role, that he was watchinga movie on
the screen withhimselfthe starin it.")3And just as Iran/Contrawas acted out as
a spectacle withinthejunta, othercovertoperationshave been intended to function as spectacle forrelevantaudiences-enemies and allies abroad, mass public
and opinion makers at home. Politicalspectacle in the postmodern empire, in
otherwords,is itselfa formof powerand not simplywindowdressingthatdiverts
attentionfromthe secretsubstanceof American foreignpolicy.
To introduce the entanglementbetween the two apparent opposites, spectacle and secrecy,let us consider theirconjunctionin the modus vivendiof the
two presidentialfigures,the Ronald Reagan of spectacleand the George Bush of
covertoperations. "Plausible deniability,"
as the phrase used to exculpate Reagan
inadvertentlyadmitted,points to a presidentwhose operations in frontof the
camera were meant to render plausible the denial thathe also operated behind
it. That has been true since Hollywood, when PresidentReagan of the Screen
ActorsGuild engaged in two covertactions: first,he informedon his coworkers
to the FBI and helped organize the anti-Communistblacklistwhose existencehe
denied; second, he negotiatedthe exemptionforMusic Corporationof America
that allowed it alone among talent agencies to produce movies and television
showsand simultaneouslyto representactors.The formercovertactionlaunched
Reagan's politicalcareer. The latter,puttinghim in frontof the camera on the
GE Television Theater, moved him frommoviesto TV; helped him perfectthe
intimate,living-roomimage thatwould be crucialto his politicalsuccess; and gave
him the capital and capital-producingfriendshipsthat would underwritehis
politicalcareer.4
These examples, which reverse the usual image of Reagan as mere entertainer,make covertaction into the source of his power. Reagan's dominationof
American politicshas come, however,not fromhis compartmentalizedmastery
of either covertaction or spectacle but fromhis confusionof the two.Just as it
facilitatedhis rise fromHollywood actingto Washingtonpower,that confusion
also protected the president from the worst consequences of the Iran/Contra
exposure. When Reagan took responsibilityfor Iran/Contrawiththe words "It
happened on my watch,"he placed himselfon the permeable border between
public display and covertoperation. "My watch"identifiedhim as commanderin-chief,standingon the bridge as he did in the role of submarinecommander
in his last Hollywood movie,HellcatsoftheNavy.Justas the scriptof that movie
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freed the fictionalcommander fromresponsibilityforthe loss of his ship, so "It
happened on my watch" allows the real president to evade responsibilityby
assuming it. The line firstseparates the visible commander-in-chieffrom the
guiltypartiesin charge of operationsdown in whatone formerpresidentialchiefhas called the "engine room." Second, the line identifiesthe presidentnot
of-staff
simplyas the object at whom we look but as one of the watchersas well. "My
watch"makes the presidentjust another ordinaryAmerican spectator,as much
or as littleresponsibleas the restof us-there and not thereat the same timeas in the head and upper body shotof Reagan at the 1984 Republicanconvention.
At once on camera and part of the televisionaudience, the presidentlounged in
shirtsleeves and watched his wife (a tinyimage much smallerthan he) raise her
arms and, saying"Win one forthe Gipper,"turntowardthe giantimage of presidential head and torso lounging and watchinghis wife-an infiniteregression
that
thatdrewtheconventionand televisionaudience intothepicture,identifying
audience as one of and as subject to the one of itselfit was watching.Reagan's
managers planned everydetail of thatscene, includingthe special podium built
without a single edge or straightline-"Curves everywhere,"as its creator
described it, "brown, beige, nothingjarring.... The eye comes to rest there.
Earth tones and rounded shapes are peaceful.""The podium was a giantwomb,"
comments Garry Wills, "into which the country would retreat along with
Reagan."5
The Reagan spectacle points,then, neitherto the insignificancenor to the
autonomyof the signbut ratherto itsrole in producingpower.By thesame token,
the formerCIA directorwas no more a powerfulinxisiblepresence before he
became chief of state than the formeractor was a powerlessvisibleone. That is
not because, as RobertDole charged, Bush is the perennialgood-boymarionette
who doesn't pull his own strings.Bush has had, afterall, a substantialrelationship
to the CIA. He was, first,the formerdirectorwho broughtin Team B to politicize
intelligencejudgments, to exaggerate the extentof the Sovietmilitaryand political threatto the United States,and therebyto laythegroundworkforthe massive
militarybuildup and expanded covertoperationsthattogetherdefinethe Reagan
Doctrine in foreign policy.And, second, his national securityadviser, Donald
Gregg, was (according to Congressional testimony)linked through CIA agent
Felix Rodriguez to the illegal Contra supply operation, including the ill-fated
Eugene Hassenfuss and probably to Contra drug running as well. Moreover,
Bush has falselydenied his substantialinvolvementin tradingarms forhostages.
Bush's claims of ignoranceand privilegedcommunication,like Reagan's assumpevidence plausible deniabilityratherthan the absence of
tion of responsibility,
eitherpresidentor vice presidentfromthe scene of the crime.6
Bush, like Reagan, calls into question the distinctionbetweenmass spectacle
and covertpower. He does so in two ways. First,Btush'sevasions exemplifythe
public use of the claim of secrecy,in the name of national security,that allows
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men like Bush, John Poindexter,and Oliver North to avoid political responsibility.And, second, Bush remindsus of the set of beliefsof the men (and women
likeJeane Kirkpatrick)who carryout and defend covertoperations.Whetheror
not Bush is a figurehead,he standsforfantasiesabout our enemies that-I have
cited Reagan and the Rea-ganDoctrine,Bush and Team B to suggest-operate
not in the firstplace in popular culturebut at the most secretlevels of decision
making.These fantasies,reinforcedbybeing shared among the covertoperators,
constitutethe spectacletheyproduce forone another.
In a recent review,Ian Baruma agrees that Ronald Reagan's jokes, Rambo,
and JerryFalwell "tell us somethingabout popular culture in America, but it
would be simplisticto say that theydirectlyaccount for United States foreign
policy-even though the link might exist somewhere in the president's own
mind."7In dismissingthe organizingprincipleof the president'smind,however,
Baruma is makinga big mistake.For if the link existsnot only in Reagan's mass
mind-the public spectacle-but in the minds of those who thinkup and implement our foreign policy,then to separate fantasyfrom policy works simplyto
preservea realm of public discourse forreasonable men like Baruma to speak to
power.
The public Reagan/Bushrelationto secretoperationsalso introducesa third
formof power,the power of amnesia. The secret,retroactivefindingthatPresident Reagan forgothe signed, like the incessant"I don't recall"s of John Poindexter and Edwin Meese, may seem merelyto disconnecthigh public officials
fromsecret,illegal activities.Amnesia of thissortslides into claims of privileged
communicationon the one hand-Bush cannot tellus what,as vice president,he
advised the presidentabout arms and hostages-and ignorance on the otherin drugs although that was comBush denies he knew Noriega was trafficking
monplace informationin the CIA when he was in charge of it-"not a smoking
bargun," one formerNSC stafferhas remarked,"but rathera twenty-one-gun
rage of evidence."Amnesia here seversthe linkbetweenwhatgoes on behind the
scenes and whatin frontof thecamera, as when Reagan forgetsthe movieorigins
of the lines he deliversas his own, or isjust as surprisedas the restof us to learn
that he never spoke to Mikhail Gorbachev the words that Larry Speakes attribwe see themas protecting
uted to him.8If we disbelievethoseclaimsof forgetting,
secretcomplicity.If we believe them,the realityprincipledisappears. Let us not
dismissthe latterhypothesistoo quickly,for I am going to suggestthatmemory
loss is not confinedto the presidentand his men, and thatitsustainsnot onlythe
covertactions hidden frompublic view but also the imperial spectacles that we
have all seen. Covertactionsderivefromthe imperativesof spectacle,not secrecy.
They owe their invisibilitynot to secrecybut to politicalamnesia. What is displayed and forgottenin imperial spectacle is the historicalcontentof American
politicaldemonology.
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II
If spectacle and secrecydefine the politicalpeculiaritiesof the postmodern American empire,racial and politicaldemonologydefinethe peculiaritiesof the historicAmericanempire.Countersubversionand racism,I willargue,
provide the contentforthe covert,specular form.But thiscontentis hidden by
the formthatseems to revealit.Racismand countersubversion,likethe actorand
the CIA director,are concealed fromcontemporaryeyes bybeing in plain sight.
of whatone continuesto see politicalamnesia,in order
I am callingthisforgetting
to yoke togetherthe argumentsof Russell Jacoby'sSocial Amnesiawiththose of
In this motivated forgetting,that
FredricJameson's The PoliticalUnconscious.9
which is insistentlyrepresented becomes, by being normalized to invisibility,
absent and disappeared. Instead of distinguishingcircuses for the mass mind
fromsecret,elite maneuvers,as ifthe formermerelycovered over the forcesthat
drive the latter,we need to see how the links between going public and going
privateare strengthenedby amnesia. Consider two illustrationsfroma source I
have been tryingto legitimate,the moviesthatmatterto Ronald Reagan. Instead
of these motionpictures,as ifthe films
of reportingonly myown interpretations
were self-enclosedtexts,let me practicesome informalreceptionanalysis.
"Go ahead. Make myday!" PresidentReagan invitedCongress,promisingto
veto a threatened tax increase. Reagan was quoting Clint Eastwood as Dirty
Harry,of course. But it turned out to be hard to rememberin whichof the four
DirtyHarry movies the lines appeared and in what contextEastwood delivered
them. Like many others,I firstthoughtthe lines came fromthe original movie,
DirtyHarry(1971), in the scene where Eastwood holds a gun on a killerand dares
him to draw,neitherthe killernor the audience knowingwhetherthereis a bullet
leftin Eastwood's gun. But although thatscene opens and closes the movie (the
firsttimethe killerfailsto call Eastwood'sbluff,the second timehe is blownaway),
Eastwood says "Make myday!" neithertime.He speaks thatline in SuddenImpact
(1983) to a hoodlum holding his gun to a femalehostage'shead. In the scene that
closes the movie the hoodlum is a rapist; in the scene thatopens the movie he is
black. Eastwood is daring a black man to murder a woman, in other words, so
thatDirtyHarry can killthe black. No question thistimeabout whetherhis gun
is emptyand Eastwood at risk.The liveshe proveshis toughnessbyendangering
are female and black,not his own.
When the presidentsays"Make myday!" he is aspiringto Eastwood's power,
but the audience is in a more complicated position. Theories of the male gaze
viewersare passive spectatorscloser to the helpless,femalehosnotwithstanding,
tage position than to Eastwood's. This is not only because of their passivityin
theateror livingroom but because of theirlarger,politicalhelplessnessas well.
to women. By rein"Make myday!" blames thatimpotenceon thecriminal-threat
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scribingrace and gender differenceand identifying
withthe rescuer,Clint Eastwood, the filmoffersviewersimaginaryaccess to power.
The audience's relationshipto this particularscene, however,is more complicated yet.Eastwood made SuddenImpactduring the Reagan presidency,as the
racial and sexual antagonismsof the 1980s put womenand blacksintothe picture
at their own expense. The president who quoted Eastwood's line had made
women and blacks his targets,notablythroughthe tax cuts thatevisceratedtheir
welfare-statebenefitsand that he was defendingwhen he said "Make my day!"
But myclaim here is not only thatwomen and blacks were presentin the presidential unconscious but also that theywere absent fromthe memoriesof those
who had seen the picture. Whenever I spoke on Reagan and the movies after
seeing SuddenImpact,to studentand nonstudentaudiences, in myown classes and
in public lectures,I asked whetheranyonerememberedthecontextof the famous
words. Everyonerecognizedtheline,forithas become a culturalcliche.But those
who thoughtthey had seen the movie foundered on the scene. Some wrongly
placed the words in the episode, between men alone, of the firstmovie. Others
got the movie and general settingright,but forgotkeycharacters.As mysample
reached the thousands,onlyone person rememberedeithertheblack man or the
woman. That exceptionwas himselfa black man; he forgotthe woman. Amnesia
allows Eastwood and Reagan to have theirrace and gender conflictand digestit
too. The whitehero is remembered; the contextthatproduced him is buried so
that it can continue to support StandingTall (the titleof yet another Reaganquoted movie) in the world. In the Americanmythwe remember,men alone risk
theirlivesin equal combat. In the one we forget,whitemen show how tough they
are by resubordinatingand sacrificingtheirrace and gender others. The white
man dares Moamar Qadaffito blow up a cafe (maybehe did and maybehe didn't)
so that he can drop bombs on men, women, and children of color. "Go ahead.
Make myday!"
My firstexample of politicalamnesia concerns race and gender; my second
is about countersubversion.In his 1940 movieMurderin theAir,Ronald Reagan
plays an undercover member of the Secret Service (forerunnerof the wartime
OSS and the postwarCIA). The secretagent,Brass Bancroft,penetratesa Nazi/
Communistplot to steal the plans fora secret,defensivesuperweapon thatbears
an uncanny(and, I have argued, notaccidental)resemblanceto StarWars.I introduced mybook "RonaldReagan,"theMoviewiththatfilm.But I told the storyof
sabotage, subversives,House Un-AmericanActivitiesCommitteeinvestigation,
and secretweapon as if I were describinghistoryand not a movie. In the fall of
1987, after "RonaldReagan," theMovie appeared, I visited a college freshman
English class thatwas studyingpoliticalwritingand had read the Reagan essay.
One studentasked whetherI had wanted readers to believe I was tellinga true
story,and since thatwas indeed myintentionI asked othermembersof the class
whetherit had worked. An Asian-Americanresponded thathe had been taken
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in at firstbut realized thetale was fictionand notfactwhen I broughtin the House
Un-AmericanActivitiesCommittee.Relyingon intelligenceand common sense
to compensate for historicalignorance,this studentassumed that HUAC could
only be made up; how could he know thatit was also American history?It was a
history,moreover,thatoperated withparticularforce,if not against the parents
or grandparentsof this studentthen against other Asian-Americanswho were,
indistinguishablefromthem.
fromthe pointof viewof the makersof thathistory,
in
theAirpoint to two amnesias
Murder
and
These responses to SuddenImpact
whose forgettingsare hardly identical. One is personal, the other social, since
whatone has actually
ignoranceof Americanhistoryis not the same as forgetting
seen. Millions of Americans familiarwith"Make my day!" never have seen the
movie, moreover.They may know the line from televisiontrailersthat do not
show the actual scene, or fromcomputer "toy"programsin which a digitalized
voice speaks the words. As "Make myday!" entersthe common culture its roots
disappear, and HUAC and Sudden Impactcome to resemble each other as
instancesnot of individual forgettingbut of historicalmemoryloss. At the same
time film,by functioningin Reaganite politicsto confuse the historicalwiththe
imaginary,also preservesan objectivememoryof scenes thathave now entered
history.SuddenImpactallowsus to hold to accountthe culturethatvoices the movie's most famous words.
That is notto damn all speakersof the line,however."Make myday!" declares
an aggressionthatleads back in Americancultureto racial and sexual inequality,
even if manyhave used the phrase withoutknowingitsfilmicsource or historical
meaning. (The same would apply,foran earliergeneration,to Theodore Roosevelt'sinjunctionto speak softlyand carrya big stick.)No one wantsto be accused
of knowingand forgettingthe origin of "Make my day!" But instead of exculpatingthe innocentlyignorantand sendingthosewho have forgottentheirguilty
knowledge to hell, the concept of politicalamnesia pointsto a culturalstructure
of motivateddisavowal.That structurewillvaryin implicatingindividuals(from
those who want othersto forget;to those who forgot;to those who, withvarying
degrees of wilfullness,never allowed themselvesto know) and events(readers of
earlier drafts of this essay have been more willing to acknowledge race and
amnesia in Bush's use of Willie Horton, withwhich I willconclude, than in Reagan's invocationof ClintEastwood).
It is not necessaryto agree about who and what fitwithinthe structureof
political amnesia to understand how it works. Since amnesia means motivated
forgetting,it implies a culturalimpulse both to have the experience and not to
retainit in memory.Politicalamnesia signifiesnot simplymemoryloss but a dissociationbetween sensationand ego thatoperates to preserveboth. Amnesia signals forbidden pleasure or memoryjoined to pain. It permits repetition of
pleasures that,if consciouslysustained in memoryaver time,would have to be
called into question. From this perspective,the politicalspectacle opens a door
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the viewerwants to close so thatit can be opened again. There is, first,the forbidden pleasure in the sensationsthemselves,a sensoryoverstimulationthat in
politicalspectacleis more typicallyviolentthansexual (or sexual bybeing violent).
Amnesia disconnectsfromtheirobjects and severs frommemorythose intensified, detailed-shots of destruction,wholesaled on populations and retailed on
body parts.There is, second, the historicaltruthexposed bythe mythiceffortto
cannibalize it-that the white male sacrificedwomen and people of color, for
example, in the name of his own courage. Historical amnesia allows race and
countersubversionto continue to configureAmerican politicsby disconnecting
currentpractices from their historicalroots. Politicalamnesia works,however,
not simplythroughburyinghistorybut also throughrepresentingthe returnof
the repressed. An easily forgettableseries of surface entertainments-movies,
televisionseries,politicalshows-revolve before the eye. The scopic pleasure in
their primal, illegitimatescenes produces infantileamnesia once the images
themselvesthreatento enter the lasting,symbolicrealm.'0 The recoveryof historicalmemoryexposes these processes.
Spectacle is the culturalformfor amnesiac representation,forspecular displays are superficialand sensatelyintensified,shortlived and repeatable. Spectacle and amnesia may seem at odds, to be sure: amnesia,a term fromdepthhistoricalanalysis,pointsbackward,to the nineteenthcentury'sconcernwiththe
past. Spectacle,by contrast,names the spatial pleasures of contemporaryvisual
entertainment.But thisopposition,underlined in modernistand postmodernist
analysis,is what enables spectacleto do itswork.
Spectacles, in the Marxist modernistview,shiftattentionfromworkersas
producers to spectators as consumers of mass culture. Spectacles colonize
everydaylife,in thisview,and therebyturndomesticcitizensinto imperialsubjects. Spectacle goes private by organizing mass consumption and leisure; it
attachesordinary,intimateexistenceto publicdisplaysof theprivatelivesof political and otherentertainers.Spectacles,in the postmodernview,definethe historical rupture between industrialand postindustrialsociety-the one based on
durable goods production,the otheron informationand serviceexchange. With
autonomous spheres,
the dissolution of individual subjects and differentiated,
not only does the connectionbetweenan object and its use become arbitrary,in
thisview,but skilledattentionto displayalso deflectsnoticefromthe object to its
hyperreal,reproduciblerepresentation.The societyof thespectacleprovidesillusory unificationand meaning, Guy Debord argues, distractingattentionfrom
producers and fromclasses in conflict.Simulacricgames have entirelyreplaced
the real, in Jean Baudrillard'sformulation,and offernot even a counterfeitrepresentationof anythingoutside themselves."
Spectacle is about forgetting,for the Marxistmodernist,since it makes the
concept of amnesia suggeststhatthe
tie to productioninvisible.The historicizing
forgottenlinkin politicalspectacleis the visibletie to the past. Spectacle contrasts
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to narrative,forthe postmodernist,as fragmentedand interchangeableindividuals, products,and body parts replace the subject-centeredstory.Politicalspectaclesdisplaycentrifugalthreats-threatsto the subjectand threatsto the stateto containas wellas to enjoythem.Instead of dissolvingthe subjectintostructures
or discourses,the concept of amnesia pointsto an identitythatpersistsover time
and thatpreservesa falsecenterbyburyingthe actual past.
Americanimperialspectaclesdisplayand forgetfourenablingmythsthatthe
culturecan no longer unproblematicallyembrace. The firstis the historicalorganizationof Americanpoliticsaround racialdomination.Once openlyannounced,
American political racialismmust now give unacknowledged satisfactions.The
second is redemption throughviolence, intensifiedin the mass technologiesof
entertainmentand war. The thirdis the beliefin individual agency,the need to
forgetboth the web of social tiesthatenmesh us all and the wishforan individual
with
power so disjunctivewitheverydayexistence.And the fourthis identification
the state,to whichis transferredthe freedomto act withoutbeing held to account
that in part compensates for individual helplessness but in part reflectsstate
weakness as well.
Covertspectacles,the Reagan Era's main contributionto American imperial
representation, display state-supported American heroes in violent, racial
combat. Covert spectacles-movies like Rambo(whichbegins,"A covertaction is
being geared up in the Far East") and politicalschemeslike aid to the Nicaraguan
2-preserve the fictionof a center.It is notjust thatAmerica
"freedomfighters"'
occupies thatcenter,but thatinternationalpoliticscomprisesa coherentnarrative
where secret agents-the word agenthas a double meaning-are at once connected to a directingpower and also able to act heroicallyon theirown. In a world
of impersonal forces,massive suffering,and individual helplessness,the covert
spectacle providesthe illusion,throughviolence,of personal control.The visual
characterof the story,moreover,encourages immediateaudience identification,
elevatinga visionaryideal above chaotic,ordinary,dailyexistence.'3
Political spectacles incorporate fragmentarysurface pleasures-the crotch
shot in Rambo,for example, where the camera pulls back to reveal that it was
showingnot femaleprivatepartsbut thecrease insidethehero'selbow,now safely
tucked between biceps and forearm;or the explosions of violence in FirstBlood,
PartI and PartII-into a larger whole. Resuscitatingthe centerratherthan disintegratingit, politicalspectacle providesthe pleasure of meaning-givingorder.
In so doing, political spectacle heals the riftbetween present and past. Mass
advertisinghas marketed reassurance about historicalconnectedness since its
origins in the 1920s.'4 The covertoperator,bringingthe past into the present,
offersthat reassurance as well. Enteringraciallyalien ground, he regresses to
in order to destroythe subversiveand appropriate his power.
primitivism
Two American historiessupport the covert spectacle, the historyof racial
demonology and the emergence of a specular foreignpolicy.I want brieflyto
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outline those histories,suggestingat greaterlengthhow World War II provides
the missing link between them. World War II, byjoining demonology to the
covertspectacle,configuredboth the firstCold War and itsrevivalunder Reagan.
Finally,since amnesia itselfmustbe historicized,I willconclude withthe connection establishedin the 196-s between racial demonologyand imperialspectacle.
For the displayand forgettingof thatlinkproduced both the Reagan Doctrinein
foreignpolicyand the Bush presidentialcampaign.
III
As withthe career paths of the currentpresidentand his predecessor,
so withour historicalorigins,the obvious is rendered invisiblebybeing taken for
granted.The United Statesis a settlersociety.Americabegan in European imperialismagainst people of color. The Americanempire startedat home; whatwas
foreignwas made domesticby expansion across the continentand by the subjugation, dispossession, and exterminationof Indian tribes. Other settler societies-South Africa, now Israel-came to depend on the labor of indigenous
populations. The American colonies, afterexperimentingwithIndian workers,
enslaved Africansinstead. The United Stateswas builton the land and withthe
labor of peoples of color.
Academic divisionsbetweendomesticand internationalpoliticsseparate the
American empire from its domestic,imperial base. With the end of the continental frontier,the racial basis of American expansion carried forwardinto the
Philippines,the Caribbean, Latin America, and eventuallythe Asian mainland,
withfull consciousness (since forgotten)of the continuitybetween the triumph
of civilizationover savageryat home and the whiteman's burden abroad. (Rudyard Kiplingurged America to takeup thewhiteman'sburden in the Philippines,
connectingthat war to European imperialismas well.) The distinctionbetween
European powers that held colonies and the United States,which generallydid
not, wronglylocates the imperial age in the late nineteenthcenturyinstead of
three centuries earlier,at the dawn of the modern age. Imperial expansion to
extend thearea of freedom(in AndrewJackson'swords)was integralto American
politicsfromthe beginning.The linkage of expansion to freedominstead of to
theacquisitionof colonies prepared the United Statesto see itselfas the legitimate
defender of freedomin the postcolonialThird World.
To tracea line fromColumbus to, say,ElliottAbramshardlyprovesthe racial
motivationsof America'sThird Worldinterventions-Iran in the 1950s, Zaire in
the 1960s, Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, Nicaragua and El Salvador today,to
name some prominentexamples. Race entersin threeways,however.First,most
subjectsof American interventionare peoples of color,and the racial historyof
the United Statesmakes it easier to dehumanize and do awaywiththem.Second,
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American political culture came into being by definingitselfin racialistterms.
And third,categoriesthat originatedin racial opposition were also imposed on
politicalopponents,creatingan Americanpoliticaldemonology.
To illustratethese threepoints,I borrowan example fromJonathanKwitny's
EndlessEnemies.'5WalterCronkiteopened the CBS eveningnewson 19 May 1978
withthese words: "Good evening.The worstfearsin the rebel invasionof Zaire's
Shaba province reportedlyhave been realized. Rebels being routed from the
miningtownof Kolweziare reportedto have killeda numberof Europeans." Easy
to pass rightover thatremarkable"worstfears,"which,as Kwitnysays,makes it
betterto killblacks than whites.Colored deaths,myfirstpoint,do not count the
way white ones do. That is because the historyof imperialismand slaveryhas
encoded a nightmareof racial massacre so that it speaks even throughWalter
Cronkite.That nightmareof red and black murderingwhiteinvertsactual history,in which massacres (certainlyin the big, world-historicpictureand in most
individualcases as well) were usuallythe otherwayaround. There was, as Kwitny
shows,neithera rebel invasionof Zaire nor a massacreof whites.Far more blacks
were killed than whitesin the fightingthatdid occur,and "the worstmassacre of
produced figmentof the
Europeans in modern Africanhistory"was a historically
Post.It neverhappened.
imaginationof the Washington
Imaginaryracial massacres make peoples of color not simplydisposable but
indispensable as well, for-and this is my second point-the fantasyof savage
violence defines the imperial imagination. Racial inversions,in which victims
metamorphoseinto killers,may seem at mosttojustifyEuro-Americaninterventions in the Third World,not to cause them. Surely the color of the mineralsin
Zaire, not the people, provoked the covertAmerican interventionof the early
1960s that was responsible for killing Patrice Lumumba and making Joseph
Mobutu the dictatorof the postcolonialstate.If Vietnameseoil won'tdo the work
of Zairian copper, then geopoliticalconflictwill. Or the domino effect?Or antiCommunism?Or unconsummatedmale bonding? Why werewe in Vietnam? As
the procession of explanations moves fartherand fartherfrom solid, mineral
ground, it moves closer to race. Not race as a naturalcategoryof difference(and
even mineralsacquire value fromcultureand not nature) but as a culturalfield,
inseparable fromthe economic and politicalforcesit has helped to constitute.
Racial conflict,as Richard Slotkin,Richard Drinnon, and I among many
others have argued, created a distinctiveAmerican political culture. It linked
to violentconquest
freedomto expansion in natureratherthanto social solidarity,
to
of the racial otherratherthan peaceful coexistence.The covertoperator,"consummatingan act of racial revenge or rescue," is the mythichero of American
expansion.'6 The rescue of the helpless female hostage from peoples of color
established sexual as well as racial difference-against the threats of racial
uprising, female independence, and the feminizationof helpless white men,
SuddenImpacttransportsthe frontiermythinto the cityas well. "Make my day!"
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The impact of the racial historyof the United States transcendsrace-my
thirdpoint-contaminating our politicalcultureas a whole. The conflictin the
New World between protestantbourgeois white men and peoples of color not
onlyproduced a racial demonologybut underliesthe broader countersubversive
traditionin American politits.'Racialand politicaldemonologyare oftenexplicitlylinked, as in the hostilityto aliens in Murderin theAir, and as among the
governmentofficialsand media spokespeople who fantasizeda racial massacrein
Zaire. Zaire illustratesthe interconnectionbetween race and countersubversion
because Cuban troops in Angola were held responsiblefora conflictwithwhich
theyhad nothingto do. Balunda who had fledto Angola afterthe defeat of their
effortto create an independent state(whichput themon the "Right"in the Cold
War procrustean bed during the 1960s) were in 1978 tryingto return home
(whichput themon the "Left").'7
in the beginningof the sixteenthcentury(and
"The crisisof ethnocentricity
fora long timeafterward),"to borrowCarlo Ginzburg'sphrase,came about when
Europeans discovered other places and peoples that did not revolve around
them. But Europeans in the New World used thisCopernican revolutionin politicsto make themselvesthe centeragain. 8 The claimsof the Reagan Doctrineto
roots in American historyshould thus not be lightlydismissed.The distinctiveness of Reagan's foreignpolicylies elsewhere,not in itsdemonologicalvisionper
se but in the characterof its Cold War revival.For the Cold War, by centering
countersubversionin the national securitystate,marked a break withthe past.
at the beginThat shift,in turn,had itsoriginsin WorldWar II, both structurally
ning of the Cold War and in the career patternsand mentalityof those who
revivedthe Cold War under Reagan. World War II, moreover,is the distinctive
historicalmomentwhen the United Statesseems innocentof the chargesof racial
and politicaldemonology.The birthof the nationalsecuritystatefromout of "the
good war" (as Studs Terkel has labeled it) produced the Cold War'sspecular foreign policy.9
IV
Beginning withthe Cold War's originsin World War II, demonology
has been used to dramatizeand justifythe covertspectacle.But if racial demonology organized American politicsbefore the war,and if the war has organized
our politicssince,then the grip of the good war has importantlyto do withhow
it seemed at once to justifydemonology and to free American politicsfromthe
stigmaof race.
WorldWar II justifieddemonologybecause in thatwar we confronteda truly
demonic foe. It is easy enough to show how the presence of Nazism distorted
postwar politics; how the concept of totalitarianismpromoted a binarydivision
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between the extremesof Rightand Lefton the one hand and the Free World on
the other; how the resultingdistinctionbetweenauthoritarianismand totalitarianism,well beforeJeane Kirkpatrickresuscitatedit,20was an emptyplaceholder
faithfulneitherto the actual domesticqualities of the regimesit contrastednor
to their ambitionsabroad but ratherto theirrelationshipto the United States;
and how anti-Communismjustified both coups against democratic regimesGuatemala, Iran, Chile-to protectthem fromtotalitarianismand the embrace
of merelyauthoritarianregimesthat(withour help) use death squads and massivebombingagainsttheirown populations.A thoughtexperimentmightbe able
to reproduce all these effectsin the absence of World War II. In real historical
time,however,WorldWar II offeredan objectivecorrelativeforthe countersubversionthatpreceded and succeeded itbyprovidinga genuinelydemonic enemy
bent on world conquest.
In so doing, in addition, the good war shiftedthe stigmaof racialismfrom
the United States to its enemies, Germany and Japan. Jim Crow continued at
home, of course, notablyin the armed forces.American participationin the war
had nothing to do with saving European Jewry,moreover,and was, as David
Wymanhas shown,activelyhostileto effortsto do S0.21 That was hardlythe dominant postwarperception,however,and since racial murderwas the centerpiece
of Nazism and at worsta sideshowforAmerica,the good war seemed to bringto
an end the racial underpinningsof Americandemonology.Racialismhad spread
frompeoples of color to Southern and Eastern Europeans during the alien and
Red scares of the industrializingUnited States; before 1930 American history
was more dominated than was German by racism.But the New Deal and World
War II could be seen as reversingthe racialistdirectionof American politicsand
as beginningto bringAmericanracismto an end.
That is its effecton Ian Baruma, whom I quoted earlier and to whom I now
Mercy:Race and Powerin
want to return.John Dower's recentbook, WarWithout
thePacificWar,shows the brutalizing,murderous impact of racial hysteriaon
American and Japanese policy.Baruma disagrees; he believesthat"Dower overstates... the moral equivalence of both sides"; thatwhatracismemerged against
theJapanese "was more the resultof war . .. than the cause of it"; thatthe propaganda required by a mass war should not be confused withthe causes of the
war; and that the easy,postwarresumptionof friendshipwithJapan shows the
superficialityof negative racial stereotypesduring the war. One has to distinguish, Baruma writes,the Nazi war against the Jewsand the American conflict
withJapan. "Jewswere killedbecause theywereJews.Japanese got killedbecause
theywere part of a nation bent on militaryconquest." My quarrel is not withthe
distinctionbetween Nazi genocide and Americanracism,but withusing thatdistinctionto obliteratethe racial characterof America'swar withJapan and-BarAmerican foreignpolicy.22
uma's explicit project-the characterof subsequyent
To takefirstthewar againstJapan:surelyBaruma would at leastacknowledge
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the racistbasis forthe internmentofJapanese-Americansduring the war. However,he suggestsinstead thatthe differingattitudestowardGermans and Japanese were based on "logical reasons that Dower does not take into account.
Japanese-Americans,being relativelyrecentimmigrants,stilllived in highlyvisexplains Baruma. "'Good' Germans were
ible, culturallydistinctconmfifiuities,"
more of them,"thatis, refugees from
were
there
acknowledged simplybecause
Nazi terror.23
Whydoes Baruma normalizeJapanese internment?The good war has wiped
out of his historicalmemorythe exclusion of Japanese fromAmerica and the
raciallybased residentialsegregationof those who were here. It has made him
forgetthat the Italians, more recent immigrantsthan the Japanese, were not
rounded up, deprived of theirlibertyand propertywithoutdue process of law,
and placed in concentrationcamps. Baruma suppresses not only the racially
based exclusionof thousandsof good Germans,Jews,fromthe United Statesbut
also the presence of many bad Germans,the thousands of organized and active
supportersof Nazism in the German-AmericanBund who were not rounded up
and jailed. He has forgottenthat,underneaththe fantasiesaboutJapanese aliens,
about the disloyaltynot only of Japanese born in Japan but of those born in the
United Statesas well,theresimplywere no bad Japanese. He failsto citethe racist
justificationsforJapanese internmentbyhigh United Statesand WestCoast state
officialswho could cite no evidence at all ofJapanese disloyaltyor of any danger
to American security.Baruma neglectsone of Dower's mosttellingfindings,that
although cartoons and propaganda against Germanyduring the war depicted
Hitler and Nazism rather than the Germans as the enemy,the demon in the
Postcartoon
Pacificwar was thedepersonalized 'Jap." Thus aJuly 1942 Washington
captioned "Mimic"shows Hitlerdestroyingthe townsof Lidice and Lezakyin the
foreground,whilein the backgrounda gorillalabelled "Jap"tramplesCebu. Cartoon Japanese are apes and rodents; American leaders (sounding like cartoon
figuresbut wielding real power) call for theirextermination."The Japs will be
worriedabout all the timeuntiltheyare wiped offthe face of the map," warned
Lt. Gen. John Dewitt,who headed the WesternDefense Command and interned
theJapanese-Americans.Marineswore "Rodent Exterminator"on theirhelmets,
cartoon in March 1945 showed a Japanese "lice epidemic." "To
and a Leatherneck
the Marine Corps," reads the caption, "was assigned the gigantictask of extermination."That cartoonappeared thesame monththatthefirebombingof Tokyo
killed on a single night80,000 to 100,000Japanese-fewer than would soon die
on a single nightin Hiroshima,more than Nagasaki.24
Dresden and Hamburg were firebombedbefore Tokyo, to be sure; World
War I's depersonalized,mass killingpreceded themall. But insteadof citingindiscriminatemass slaughterto minimizethe significanceof racism,one mightbetter
rememberthe raciallyimperialistprehistoryof WorldWar I, a war produced not
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onlyfromimperialistrivalriesin Lenin's sense but also fromthe brutalizationsof
colored peoples, Slavs,Jews,and othersviewed as raciallyinferior.25
The Tokyofirebombing,defended as an effortto break theJapanese fighting
will,was aimed at no material,militarytargets.It was psychologicalwarfare,a
spectacleto terrorize,demoralize,and destroythe civilian,Japanese mass public.
And thatfirebombingproduced anotherspectacularduringthe Cold War.In the
Hollywood, anti-Communistparable Them!,theJapanese rodentsreappeared as
giant ants, mutationsfroma desert atomic explosion. In historythe atom bomb
destroyedthose labeled rodents; in fantasyit created them in order to destroy
themagain. At the climaxof Them!,the ants are tracedto theirbreeding ground,
withits strong"brood odor," in the stormdrains under Los Angeles. They are
obliterated in a holocaust of fire. What looks like futuristicscience fictionis
actually,in the service of anti-Communism,a record of the firebombingof the
fortheFBI, was
past. Gordon Douglas, who had also directedI Wasa Communist
that,"beforea completecure may
puttingon screen the injunctionin Leatherneck
be effected,the originsof the Plague, the breeding grounds in the Tokyo area,
forthe hundreds
mustbe completelyannihilated."Failingto accept responsibility
of thousandsofJapanese deathsbyfirebombsand atomicdestruction,Hollywood
made nuclear explosions reproduce the rodentswho, now become Communists,
had to be wiped out all over again.26
The firebombingof Tokyo also produced movies of another sort. Unlike
Them!,which was made for a mass audience, these were part of a covertoperation,"one of the better-keptsecretsof the war,rankingup withthe atomicbomb
project." "Everyone who has ever seen a picture based on World War II" will,
accordingto theirnarrator,recognizethebriefingin whichhe supplied the voiceover. To prepare real pilotsto bomb Tokyo,Hollywood special effectsmen built
a completeminiatureof thecityforsimulatedbombingruns.They "intercuttheir
movies of the model with real scenes taken from flightsover Tokyo," thereby
creating a series of movies that taught pilots about the real thing. Each movie
concluded when the narratorsaid, "Bombs away."The narratorwho has been
describinghis role in World War II is Capt. Ronald Reagan. AfterI read this
account in his autobiographyand then wrote about it, I stressedhow, to make
himselfa participantin the war while he was actuallystationedin Hollywood,
Reagan had broken down the distinctionbetweenfilmedwar and real war,simulated bombing runs and real bombs: "As a result,none of the explosivesin his
account, fromthe bombs he narratesto the atomicbomb, fallon real targets."27
But I was stillbeing taken in, forReagan is not simplypretendingto have participated in a war but is also distancinghimselffrom the real bombs his movie
instructionshelped drop. The actual people at riskweretheinhabitantsof Tokyo;
as Reagan tellsthe story,he becomes the secretagent close to danger.Turninghis
covertoperation into spectacle, Reagan has made invisiblethe real, obliterated
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113
Japanese. The white man, in no danger himself,cinematicallyparticipatesin
killingmen, women,and childrenof color. "Make myday!"
When the Japanese governmentmercilesslybombed the civilianpopulation
of China in 1938, the United States Senate denounced "this crime against
humanity. .. reminiscentof thecrueltiesperpetratedbyprimitiveand barbarous
nations upon inoffensivepeoples."28The rhetoricof thiscondemnationblamed
modern total war on American Indians. It helped prepare the United States,in
the name of fightingsavages, to imitatethem,or rather,Them!-not historical
Indians, but the monstersrecreatedin the imperialmind.
V
WorldWar I I laid the structuralfoundationsin politicsforthe modern
First,the good war establishedthe militaryindustrialstateas
empire.
American
the basis for both domesticwelfareand foreignpolicy.Second, it made surveillance and covertoperations,at home and abroad, an integralpart of the state.
bipartisan
Third, it drew the politicalpartiestogetherbehind an interventionist,
foreign policy directed by Democrats during the major wars (World War II,
Korea, and Vietnam),and bythe formerDemocrat,Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s.
Fourth, the good war's popularitylinked the mass public to the structuresof
power. Mass enthusiasmforthe nationalsecuritystatecould not be mobilizedfor
subsequent hot wars and was actuallythreatenedbythem.Nevertheless,onlyfor
a few years during and afterthe American defeat in Vietnam were the fundamental assumptionsabout America'srole in the world establishedduring World
War II ever challenged by significantsectorswithinAmerican politics.Finally,
World War II celebrated the undercover struggle of good against evil, and
therebyprepared the way forthe covertspectacle.
World War II slid easilyinto the Cold War,as Communismreplaced Nazism
and one Asian enemy,China, took the place of another,Japan (so thattheJapanese demons of World War II movies could be recycledwithinthe decade as
Hollywood North Koreans and Chinese).29But the Cold War was foughtmainly
with symbols and surrogates. It organized politics around ideology and conspiracy(Communistsin governmentat home, secretinterventionsabroad) just as
ideology was supposed to be coming to an end. It maybe, as Fred Block argues,
thatthe staterecognized its need to play a foreign,economic role as the alternaand recasteconomicchallengesas Cold War
tiveto domesticsocial reconstruction,
and militaryones to mobilizepopular support. In any case, Richard Barnet suggests,the permanentmobilizationof the American population-to sustain high
state policies, and ongoing internationalallitaxes, foreignaid, interventionist
ances-marks a fundamentalbreak withthe peacetime past. The worryin the
now famous National SecurityCouncil memorandum no. 68 as the Cold War
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began-that America would be crippled by internalweakness at the momentof
itsgreateststrength-reflectedthe state'snew economicand securityrole and the
fear thatthe population would not supportit. Genuinelycovertactionswere one
response to fearsof popular flaccidity;the politicsof spectacle as politicalmobilizationwas the other.30
The spread both of covert operations and of foreign policy as spectacle
responded to the tensionsamong economy,state,organs of public opinion, and
instrumentsof nuclear war thatemerged in the shiftfromWorld War II to the
Cold War and thatwere accentuatedat the end of the firstCold War period with
the American defeat in Vietnam. Postwar worries about the weakness of the
American statenonethelesspresumed an American hegemonythatmore recent
economic and politicaldevelopmentshave called into question. A multinationaldominated internationalizedeconomythatresistsstatecontrolsets the stage for
defensive,American nationalism.The sources for that nationalismlie in state
structuresthat lack the power eitherto controlthe economy or to mobilize the
populace and so turnto covertaction and the spectacle; in the politicaleconomy
complex; in a nuclear-dominatedmilitarystrategy,
of the military-industrial
where weapons functionas symbolsof intentionsin war games rather than as
capabilities;and in the permeationof public and private
evidence of war-fighting
visual media.3'
space bythe fiction-making
Public anti-Communistmobilizationoperated alongside genuinely covert
operations in the early Cold War years,the one to engage masses, the other to
serve the interestsof elites. That separation broke down withJohn Kennedy,
however,for whom the theoryand practiceof foreigninterventionsserved less
to preserveimperialintereststhan to demonstratethe firmnessof Americanwill.
Vietnam functionedas the most importanttheaterof destruction,fromKennedy's Green Beret adventurismthroughNixon's expansion of the war to testour
resolve to meet a future"real crisis."32But Vietnam failed as symbolicforeign
policy,notjust because the United Stateslost the war but also because American
sufferingand turmoilcould not immediatelybe dissolvedinto spectacle.
The full-fledgedabsorptionof American foreignpolicybysymbolicgesture,
therefore,awaited the Reagan presidency.The men whose consciousness was
formedbyWorldWar II revivedtheAmericanempireafterVietnam-Paul Nitze
and the other membersof the Committeeon the PresentDanger, who prepared
the ideological ground forthe Reagan administration;WilliamCasey,who moved
from the wartimeOSS to direct firstReagan's presidentialcampaign and then
the CIA (and, as he shiftedfromelectoral spectacle to secrecy,to subordinate
intelligence collection to covert activities); and Reagan himself, who made
trainingand morale moviesduringthewar and who metthe crisisin his personal
and professional life after it by leading the fightagainst Hollywood Communism.33The Reagan Doctrine-inspired by the ideological adventurer Jack
-recuperated in political
Wheeler, known as the "Indiana Jones of the right"34
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115
theaterwhat had been lost in imperialsubstance.A foreignpolicyrun fromthe
expanded, hidden, militarizedNational SecurityCouncil aimed, by reversing
Vietnam ("Do we get to win this time?" Rambo wants to know), to reenact the
good war as a movie.
the persistenceof dreams about American
rieflects
The covertspectacle thau~s
dominance in the face of the erosion of the materialand ideological sources for
American preeminence in the world. The budgetaryand politicaldemands that
the American governmentinflictson its people in the name of militaryand
nationalsecuritycontribute,to be sure,to tradeand budget deficitsand economic
decay. But at the same timethe decline in a solidlybased Americanpreeminence
has generated effortsat symbolic recovery that center around militaryand
national security.This combat withthe Soviet Union takes two forms:a visible
(as theyare
militarybuildup in weapons thatcannot be used, and low-intensity
called) militaryinterventionsin the Third World. Together these demonstrate
American resolution withoutsubstantialrisks at home. Foreign policy is conducted by theatricalevents-Grenada invasion,Libyan bombing, Persian Gulf
flagging,Honduran "show of force"-staged for public consumption. These
interventionsmaywell succeed, but theirsignificancelies less in stoppingthelocal
spread of "Communism"than in convincingelite and mass publics thatAmerica
has the power to have its way. Substitutingsymbolsfor substance,these staged
eventsconstitutethe politicsof postmodernism,so long as one remembersthat
symbolsproduced for consumptionat home and abroad have all too much subon the ground
stance for the victimsof those symbols,the participant-observers
in the Third World.35
Individual covert operations may serve specific corporate or nationalsecurity-cliqueinterests,and the operations themselves are often (like Iran/
Contra) hidden fromdomesticsubjectswho mighthold themto politicalaccount.
But even where the particularoperation is supposed to remain secret,the governmentwants it known it has the power,secretly,to intervene.The payofffor
many covertoperations is theirintended demonstrationeffect.The covertspectacle is a formof therapeuticpolitics.By focusingattentionon itself,it aims to
controlnot simplypoliticalpower but knowledge.
Most obviously,the specular relationto politicallifehas implicationsfordemocraticgovernance.Spectatorsgain vicariousparticipationin a narrativethat,in
the name of national security,
justifiestheirexclusionfrominformationand decision making. Covert operations as spectacle pacifydomestic as well as foreign
audiences, for theytransformthe politicalrelationbetween rulers and citizens
fromaccountabilityto entertainment.Vicarious participation,moreover,is also
granted to the rulers themselves,for those who sponsor and promote covert
action almost never place themselvesat risk.Vicarious participationin the spectacle of the covertheals in fantasyand preservesin factthe separation of those
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who plan fromthose who killand are killed,the separationthatRichard Barnet
has called bureaucratichomicide.36
Secrecyis a technique notjust forvicariousinclusionand politicalexclusion,
however,but also for definingthe real. Covert actions,obscured by disinformation, require the state to lie. When John Poindexter denied that the Libyan
bombingaimed to killQadaffi,and defended the spread of disinformationabout
alleged Libyan terrorismas a strategyto keep the Libyan leader offbalance, he
also had a domesticpurpose. He was orchestratingan entertainmentthat,in winning popular applause, would underline for the mass audience the need for
secretplanning,accountable to no one and to no standardof truthoutside itself.
Poindexter wanted a mass public that stopped asking what was true and what
false because it knewwhichside it was on. The termforthe psychologyat which
withtheaggressor.Destabilizingorientingcues
Poindexter aimed is identification
fromany source, the state was to become the single anchor in the midstof the
shiftingrealitiesit displayed. And thatwould increase trustin government,for
the less one experiences alternativesto power,the more one needs to see it as
benign.
Aggressionis thus not opposed to intimacybut rathera technique for producing it-much as, conversely,intimacyin the American presidentnormalizes
the violence he authorizes.The benignversionof spectacleplayson our ontological insecurityby offeringtrustin the sources of information.That answers the
questionJames Lardner recentlyasked in his reviewof BroadcastNews:"Whyare
the networks' anchormen so much more vivid to us than the stories they
present?"37Presidentialintimacy,as in the "giantwomb" GarryWillsdescribed at
the 1984 Republican convention,or Bush's call fora "kinder,gentlernation"four
years later, offersus the securityof trustingthe head of state as much as we
trustedWalterCronkite.
The formpromoted by politicalinfantilizationis reliance on centralpower;
its content is reassurance that we can continue to live in the (fantasized) past.
Aspirationsto appropriate basic trustmaywell fallshort,into mass cynicismand
withdrawal.But theydo succeed in investingthe imaginarywithas much truth
effectas the real-or rather,I have been arguing,the otherway around. Where
political spectacles compel attentionand are not turned off,they acquire the
power of fiction.For whyshould the mass audience be able to tellthe difference
betweenTV series and moviesand the politicalspectaclesthatalso appear on the
into
screen,so long as the realityprinciplenever reaches,directlyand forcefully,
their lives (as it did, for example, in the 1930s depression or the 1960s draft)?
The spectacle aims eitherto keep the realityprincipleentirelyat bay (Star Wars
as invisibleshield) or to seize controlof theinterpretations
placed on itsintrusions
from
of
shifts
terms
debate
American prepaWars
the
aggressive
political
(Star
rationsto win a nuclear war to the pros and cons of nuclear defense).
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117
The covertspectacle thus breaks down the distinctionbetween politicsand
theater (or rather,movies)-from the one side in police, spy,adventure, and
thrillers(includingold moviesstarringRonald Reagan) where the
science-fiction
audience is privyto the hidden world of counterinsurgencywarfare,and from
the otherside in Reagan's invocationof lines fromsuch moviesand reenactments
of theirplots-in his praise to Oliver Northon theday he firedhimthattheevents
thathad made North a "nationalhero" would "make a great movie."38
This movie reenactmentof history,whether directed from Hollywood or
fromWashington,puts fewAmericansat risk.Instead of actuallyrefightingthe
Second WorldWar,itenlistsThird Worldpeoples as surrogates.The covertspectacle is therebygrounded in the historyof American expansion, not eastward
against established European powers but westwardand southwardagainst vulnerable racial others.But the 1960s, byrecoveringimperialhistoryin civilrights
struggleand Vietnam, challenged the racial constitutionof American national
identity.The Reagan doctrine had to forget,therefore,the moment in which
American historywas remembered.
VI
"The crisisin ideological confidenceof the 70s, visibleon all levels of
Americancultureand variouslyenacted in Hollywood's'incoherenttexts,'has not
VietnamtoReagan. "Instead
been resolved,"writesRobin Wood in Hollywoodfrom
it has been forgotten."Wood is referringto the shocksadministeredto the dominant (whitemale) politicsand cultureby black protest,Vietnam,and the emergence of a mass-basedfeminism.Two 1967 SidneyPoitiermovies,as Ed Guerrero
has argued, represented Hollywood's last effortto incorporaterace into liberalism. These twincelebrationsof the black,middle-classprofessional,GuessWho's
ComingtoDinnerand In theHeat oftheNight,togetherwon sevenAcademyAwards.
But Hollywood containmentexploded the nextyear-in the Tet offensive,on the
streetsof America'sinnercities,at the Chicago DemocraticNational Convention,
and withthe assassinationsof RobertKennedyand MartinLuther King,Jr.Wood
analyzed the Hollywood moviesthatregisteredculturalbreakdownwithoutbeing
of the (more
able to resolveit.Ella Taylorhas offereda comparableinterpretation
domesticated)space opened up on 1970s television,undercuttingthe traditional
familyand findingrefugein imaginedworkplacecommunities.The Carterpresidencywould lend itselfto similartreatment.39
The Reagan regime put America back togetheragain by exploitingand disavowingthe 1960s. On theone hand, Reagan capitalizedon thesharpestelectoral
polarizationin Americanhistoryalong race and gender lines. Beginningin 1968,
a large majorityof whites(overwhelmingin everyelectionbut 1976) has opposed
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the presidentialchoice of a large majorityof peoples of color. Beginningin 1980
men have voted more stronglyRepublican for presidentthan have women. No
presidentsinceJamesMonroe has receivedas enormousa share of the whitemale
vote as Reagan received in 1984-75 percentby myrough calculation,ifJewish
votersare excluded-and the gap betweenmen and womenwas as large or larger
in the presidentialvote fouryearslater.On the other hand, since the 1960s subversive,colored, and female voices have called into question the racial and political demonologythatoftensilenced such voices in the past.
The response to thisdouble pressure,whichundercutsthe Reagan regime's
claims to universalityas theyare being made, is regression.1980s Hollywood has
been dominated, writes Wood, by "children's filmsconceived and marketed
largely for adults," an analysis that applies to Washingtonas well. Even if not
technicallyscience fiction(like StarWars,the movie,and Star Wars,the weapon),
1980s filmsrestoretraditionalrace and gender divisionsby abandoning pretensions to verisimilitude."The audiences who wish to be constructedas children
also wish to regard themselvesas extremelysophisticatedand 'modern,"' Wood
explains, and theydo so by admiringthe skillswithwhichtheyhave been infantilized.Productionis not hidden as the real source of power; itratherappears on
the surface as one more display.Taking pleasure fromproduction numbers,in
filmterminology,from the special effectsof spin doctors, in the language of
politicalcampaigns, audiences enjoy at once the effectsproduced on them and
the way those effectsare produced. "We both know and don't know that we
are watchingspecial effects,technologicalfakery,"Wood writes,suggestingthat
being in on the infantilizingtricksallows one to regressand enjoy them.40
The self-awarequalityof the mass spectacle,to whichpostmodernismpoints,
should thus be read not as a sign of maturitybut as an escape fromtroubling
depths so thattheirresidues can safelyappear on the surface.As the mass public
withdrawsfrompoliticalengagementto spectacles,lo and behold it watchesselfironizing-IndianaJones-or self-pitying-Rambo-displaysof racialdemonology.
Fredric Jameson once distinguished entrapping displays of nostalgia, which
emphasize the beautyand accuracyof surfacereproductions,fromself-knowing
formsof pastichethatcreatedistancefromthepast.4' He wrotebeforethe politics
to allow us to return
and the movies of the Reagan years used self-knowingness
in
to the past (or go Back to theFuture another movie invoked by the president)
withouthavingtimetravelremindus of whatwe now knowwe mustnot do. When
an imperial white male wins a white woman in violent combat with evil, dark
tribes,as in the Indiana Jonesmovies,everyoneknowsthatthesesurfacecartoons
are not meant to be taken seriously.So we don't have to feel implicatedin their
displays,can thinktheyare sendups of 1930s serials ratherthan precipitatesof
currentcovertoperations,and forgetwhat we have seen. "Go ahead. Make my
day!"
"MakeMyDay!"
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119
VII
George Bush mighthave borrowedhis filmcriticismduring the 1988
campaign fromRobin Wood. "We have turnedaround the permissivephilosophy
of the 70s," Bush boasted- so that a societythat once enjoyed movies like Easy
Ridernow prefers"DirtyHarry"films."ClintEastwood's answer to violentcrime
is 'Go ahead, make myday,"' Bush continued. "My opponent's answer is slightly
different.His mottois, 'Go ahead, have a nice weekend."' Bush was invoking,of
course, the Massachusetts weekend furlough program under which Willie
Horton, the blackconvictedmurderer,had been allowed to leave prison. Horton,
as the Bush campaign was making sure everyAmerican knew,had terrorizeda
whitecouple and raped the woman. The black criminaland whiterapistwhom
Eastwood had dared to make his day had merged in the figureof Horton; Bush
was castingDukakis as the impotentliberal who could not protecthis wife.The
buddies who went seeking America, according to the advertisingcampaign for
Easy Rider,and "couldn't findit anywhere"had in Bush's movie reviewsturned
into Dukakis and Horton.42
Bush's campaign was not the firstattemptto organize American politics
around the specterof interracialrape. Repeated ads showinga revolvingprison
door,combined withthe Horton victim'swell-advertisedcampaign tour forBush,
AttackingDukakis as weak on defense as well
reproduced TheBirthofa Nation.43
as on violentcrime, moreover,the Bush campaign linked imperial to domestic
racial politics,for the Dukakis of Bush's televisionads would make Americans
vulnerable to aliens abroad and at home. Open racist appeals were now forbidden, however,and Bush (and his supportersin my presidencyclass) denied
that Bush's version of "Make my day!" had anythingto do with race. But the
Republican candidate had succeeded in replacing Jesse Jackson with Willie
Horton as the dominantblack face in the campaign. For the firsttime,severalof
mystudentsthen rememberedthe racial and sexual contextfor"Make myday!"
That memoryof the racial antagonism he promoted posed a problem for
Bush, however,to whichhe offereda solutionafterhis victory.The solutionwas
amnesia. Along withtwoothermoviephrases popularized byPresidentReaganand "theEvil Empire,"
"Win one forthe Gipper,"fromKnuteRockne,AllAmerican,
fromStar Wars-"Make my day!" willbe included in the new edition of Bartlett's
BookofFamousQuotations.If Bush has his way,however,the words willbe severed
from their meaning. "The American people," the new president reassured us
afterhis election,"are wonderfulwhen it comes to understandingwhen a campaign ends and the workof businessbegins."Bush wanted Americansto believe
thathis campaign spectaclewould have nothingto do withhis conductof government. He was makinghis businessthat"greatact of Americanamnesia,"as political scientistJames Barber called iton electionnight,bywhichour politicsforgets
the forces that drive it. The new presidentbrushed offBarbara Walters'sques120
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tions about the campaign on the eve of his inauguration."That's history,"said
George Bush. "That doesn't mean anythingany more."44
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
An earlier versionof thispaper was presentedin the series "The Peculiaritiesof the
American Empire," sponsored by the History Department,Rutgers University,29
April 1988. The titleof the session forwhich this paper was writtenwas "The Postmodern Empire." I am gratefulfor the responses of Richard Barnet, Fred Block,
forthe differences
Victoriade Grazia, and Michael Schaffer,who share responsibility
between the paper theyheard and thisone. I have also benefitedfromthe comments
and membersof theRepof Ann Banfield,Kathleen Moran, H. BradfordWesterfield,
editorialboard.
resentations
There are risksin adopting the InspectorDupin position,as D. A. Miller has pointed
It willpositionme as thesubjectsupposed to know,detecting
out to me mostforcefully.
crimesthatothersoverlook. Given the directionof the argument,thiswillcast me as
the double of mywhite,male target,not onlyantagonizingwhitemen who do not see
themselves defined by imperial American political culture but also speaking for
women and people of color in the name of coming to theirdefense. Acknowledging
this risk hardlydisarms it. But being unable to envisioncriticismwithouta place to
stand, the best response I can make to such suspicionsis the argumentof the essay
itself.
Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies
of PresidentialLeadership(Washington,
D.C., 1986). The depictionof imperialpoliticalcultureon whichI am about to embark
identifiesoperatingmentalities,powerfulforces,and individualsin whomtheyreside.
I am concentratingon extreme tendencies that came to a head during the Reagan
years and, as the currentlegal indictmentsfacing some of these individuals attest,
however powerful in our historyand politicsand however sanitized in respectable
accountsthereof,theyhave not alwaysgottentheirway.Nonetheless,the Bush regime
representsthe normalizationof the politicsof the Reagan era, not theirreversal.AntiCommunism undergirded the Reaganite shift from domestic welfare to military
spending, the expansion of secretgovernment,and the conduct of foreignpolicyas
spectacle. The advertised end of the cold war has reversed none of these developments,and, insofaras thedrug warand thedefenseof traditionalfamilyvalues inherit
the role of anti-Communism,thatwillintensifywhat I link here to going public and
going privatein foreignpolicy,the racialistbasis of American politics.
San FranciscoChronicle,19 March 1987, 15.
(New York,1986); Garry
The sources forthisparagraph are Don Moldea, Dark Victory
Wills,Innocentsat Home (New York, 1987); and Michael Rogin, "RonaldReagan," the
(Berkeley,1987), 1-43.
Movie,and OtherEpisodesin PoliticalDemonology
On Hellcatsand the 1984 Republican convention,see Rogin, "Reagan,"theMovie,4042; GarryWills,"More Than a Game," New YorkReviewofBooks,28 April 1988, 3.
Robert Scheer, WithEnoughShovels:Reagan,Buish,and NuclearWar(New York, 1982),
36-65; ContraWatch4-5 (May-June 1987): 3; Christopher Hitchens,-"Minority
Report,"Nation,17 October 1988, 333-34.
Ian Baruma, "Us and Others,"NewYorkReviewofBooks,14 August 1986, 24.
"Make My Day!"
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121
8. San Francisco Examiner, 24 April 1988, A-6; New YorkTimes, 30 April 1988, 11; Rogin,
"Reagan," theMovie, 7-8; San Francisco Chronicle, 13 April 1988, 9; 14 April 1988, 20.
9. RussellJacoby,SocialAmnesia(Boston, 1975); and FredricJameson,ThePoliticalUnconscious(Ithaca, N.Y., 1981).
10. Thanks to Kathleen Moran for this argument,which is expanded in the following
section.
11. Cf. T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers
oftheSpectacle(1967; Detroit,
(Princeton,N.J., 1984), 9, 68-69; Guy Debord, Society
(New York, 1983), and "The Ecstasyof Commu1983); Jean Baudrillard,Simulations
Essays in PostmodernCulture,ed. Hal Foster (Port Townnication,"in The Anti-Aesthetic:
send, Wash., 1983), 126-34; Dana Polan, Power and Paranoia: History,Narrative,and the
AmericanCinema,1940-1950 (New York,1986), 293-98; FredricJameson,"Postmodernism; or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,"NewLeftReview146 (July 1984),
58-69.
12. For linkingRamboto Iran/Contra,I am indebted to Ronald Reagan, and I have analyzed the connection between Iran/Contraand FirstBlood, Part I and Part II, in
"Ronbo," London Review ofBooks, 13 October 1988, 7-9.
oftheSpectacle,and to Jacques Lacan,
13. This formulationis indebted to Debord, Society
"The MirrorStage as Formativeof the Functionsof the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Experience,"Ecrits,trans.Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977), 1-7.
14. Roland Marchand, Advertisingthe American Dream: Making Wayfor Modernity,1920-
1940 (Berkeley,1985).
EndlessEnemies(New York, 1986), 11-14.
15. Jonathan Kwitny,
ThroughViolence(Middletown,Conn., 1973), and The
16. Richard Slotkin,Regeneration
Fatal Environment
(New York, 1985); Richard Drinnon, Facing West(Minneapolis,
1980); Michael Rogin, Fathers and Children: AndrewJackson and the Subjugation of the
American Indian (New York, 1975), and "Reagan," theMovie. The quotation in the text
is from Richard Slotkin, "The Continuityof Forms: Myth and Genre in Warner
Brothers' The Charge of theLight Brigade," in this issue, pp. 1-23.
17. Kwitny,Endless Enemies, 13-15.
(London, 1980), 78, 92. On the historyof
18. Carlo Ginsburg,The Cheeseand theWorms
American demonology, see Rogin, "Political Repression in the United States," in
"Reagan," theMovie, 44-80 and passim.
19. Studs Terkel, "TheGoodWar"(New York,1984).
68 (November
20. Jeane Kirkpatrick,"Dictatorshipsand Double Standards,"Commentary
1979): 34-45.
21. David Wyman, The Abandonmentof theJews (New York, 1984).
22. See John Dower, War WithoutMercy:Race and Powerin thePacific War (New York, 1986);
and Baruma, "Us and Others,"23-25.
23. Baruma, "Us and Others,"24.
24. Dower, WarWithout
Mercy,34, 38-39, 78-92. See also Richard Drinnon,KeeperofConcentrationCamps: Dillon S. Myer and AmericanRacism (Berkeley, 1986); and Peter Irons,
Justiceat War (New York, 1983).
25. See Dower, WarWithout
Mercy,325; Baruma, "Us and Others,"25; Hannah Arendt,
The Origins of Totalitarianism(New York, 1951).
26. I analyzed Them!in "Kiss Me Deadly: Communism, Motherhood, and Cold War
Movies," "Reagan,"theMovie,264-66, but did not make the connectionto the Tokyo
Mercy;see Dower, 174-75; and, on depictions
firebombinguntilreading WarWithout
122
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27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
of Asians in Hollywood fromWorld War II to Vietnam,Tom Engelhardt,"Ambush
AsianScholars3 (Winter-Spring1971): 64-84.
at Kamikazi Pass,"BulletinofConcerned
Rogin, "Reagan,"theMovie,24.
Mercy,38-39.
Dower, WarWithout
Engelhardt,"Ambushat Kamikazi Pass."
Fred Block, "Empire and Domestic Reform"(Paper delivered at the conferenceon
"The Peculiaritiesof the American Empire," Rutgers University,29 April 1988);
Richard Barnet, commentsat the same conference;James Fallows,NationalDefense
(New York, 1981), 162-63.
Of the enormous literatureon these subjects,I have found particularlyhelpfulJonathan Schell, TheTimeofIllusion(New York, 1975); and Fallows,NationalDefense.
(Boston, 1982); Bruce Miroff,PragmaticIlluCf. GarryWills,TheKennedy
Imprisonment
PoliticsofJohnF Kennedy(New York, 1976), 35-166; Schell, Time
sions:ThePresidential
ofIllusion,90-95.
See Scheer, WithEnoughShovels;and Rogin, "Reagan,"theMovie,27-37.
Ben Bradlee, Gutsand Glory:TheRise and Fall ofOliverNorth(New York, 1988), 15355.
21 March 1988, 104RichardJ. Barnet,"Reflections(National Security),"NewYorker,
4 April 1988, 23.
14; "Talk of the Town,"NewYorker,
RichardJ. Barnet, TheRootsofWar(New York, 1972).
James Lardner, "Films,"Nation,28 January1988, 94-98.
New YorkTimes,30 November 1986, 12-Y.
Vietnam
toReagan (New York,1986), 162; Edward Villaluz
Robin Wood, Hollywoodfrom
Cinema(Ph.D.
in U.S. Narrative
Guerrero,TheIdeologyand PoliticsofBlackRepresentation
Families
diss., Universityof California,Berkeley,1989), 68-79; Ella Taylor,Prime-Time
(Berkeley,1989).
Wood, Hollywood,163-66.
FredricJameson,"The Shining,"SocialText4 (Fall 1981): 114.
Maureen Dowd, "Bush Boasts of Turnaround from 'Easy Rider' Society,"New York
Times,7 October 1988, A-i 1; Elizabeth Drew, "LetterfromWashington,"New Yorker,
228.
31 October 1988, 94; Wood, Hollywood,
Birthofa
Cf. Michael Rogin, "'The Sword Became a FlashingVision': D. W. Griffith's
Nation,"in "Reagan,"theMovie,190-235. Having writtenon the politicalsignificance
of Birth,I was sufferingfromamnesia, and the connectionbetweenBirthand Willie
Horton was pointed out to me by MartinSanchez-Jankowski.
21 November 1988, 41; InternaNew YorkTimes,28 November 1988, B-4; New Yorker,
tionalHeraldTribune,21 January 1989, 4.
"Make My Day!"
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123