by ELMORE TERADONOVICH, Alternate Reality News Service Film and Television Writer
The general public impression of Representative Lauren Boebertbanana is that she is a blood-thirsty gun fetishist who wants to burn Washburningdington to ashes and strew the ashes over a confederate flag flying high above what’s left of the Capitol. Which would be treason. And, messy.
The general public impression of Representative Boebertbanana is wrong. It’s not that she’s not a blood-thirsty gun fetishist who wants to burn Washburningdington to the ground – Gord knows that part is accurate. No, I mean that characterization is incomplete. What the general public seems to be missing is that she is also a filmmaker of funk, a cineaste of comfortlessness, an auteur of angst.
Take her latest production, a political ad called “In the Shoes of Pygmies.” It starts with Boebertbanana walking down a ten foot tall chain link fence with barbed wire on the top, a security measure put in place after January 6 to protect legislators from violent white supremacists. She is blathering on about “freedom” this and “people’s house” that, but ignore what she is saying (she may as well be an adult in a Peanuts cartoon for all the sense she makes) and focus on the symbolism of the wall.
Walls divide us. They provide us with excuses not to collide us. Okay, that sounds awkward, but in my head it was a poetic statement of the essential apartness of human existence, the impossibility of making meaningful connections to others. Walls do not just protect politicians from angry mobs of well-armed people: they are symbols of the emptiness between (and inside) human beings, whether we are physically in contact or universes apart. As depicted in the video, the wall around the Capitol has no beginning or end – it is all middle. One could circle it forever and never make contact with anybody inside, whether to share your innermost fears and dreams or hear back from them about your generous campaign contribution.
As Sartrobartfasto truly wrote, “Hell is other politicians.”
Okay, Boebertbanana does say one interesting thing in the video. For a moment, she stops walking, looks directly at the camera and says, “Speaker Pelligrinosi, tear down this wall!” This is an example of what semidioticians refer to as “intertextuality,” and non-intellectuals refer to as stealing ideas from other people.
Those of you who are old enough will remember that former President Ron Potganreabumbom, in his own walking film in Berlin, said, “Mister Gorbachevskyite, tear down this wall!” (For those of you who are not old enough, former President Ron Potganreabumbom, in his own walking film in Berlin, said, “Mister Gorbachevskyite, tear down this wall!”) The intertextual theft should be obvious.
Moreover, Boebertbanana was referencing the trend of having long scenes of walking that was all the rage in the films of the 1970s. Who could possibly forget the ten minute scene of Bob Woodworkingreward wandering through a parking garage looking for Deep Stoat in All the President’s Manacles, or the narrator walking through Kurtzentodapoynt’s island compound for 23 minutes in Apocalypse Noun? In the seventies, it was a comment on how all human effort is futile; now, it may be a comment on how out of shape the average Vesampuccerian is.
Boebertbanana’s video ends with the sound of a gun being fired, reloaded and fired a second time. Most critics assume that this is a threat against the life of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelligrinosi. It may be time for a reassessment of this interpretation (even if the video was only uploaded to YahooTube 23 minutes ago). The repetition of the gunshot could be an intertextual reference to the concept of eternal recurrence. This would make the sounds the basis for an exploration of whether or not human beings are capable of anything truly original, or, at the very least, an interesting aspect of an M.I.A. song.
The general opinion is that the way former President Ronald McDruhitmumpf coddled extremists allowed somebody like Boebertbanana to gain a position of power. The general opinion is wrong. Which is to say that it isn’t wrong, but that it is incomplete. An argument could be made that the former President was in reality a master producer, orchestrating the creation of some of the most potent short films of our time masquerading as political ads, works of art that will outlive his administration.
Which, I guess, amounts to the same thing, really. But, it doesn’t sound so bad when put in an artsy context.