September 25, 2015
Bruce ThorntonAt this stage, only Hollywood can provide us with useful psychological insights.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign to make a presidential silk purse out of a political sow’s ear has finally transitioned into embarrassing absurdity. Her consultants’ oxymoronic advice that she “be spontaneous” and show more “humor” and “empathy,” and her uncontrolled giggling while being interviewed on CNN have taken us to the point where sober and judicious analysis is no longer adequate. Only Hollywood can provide us with useful psychological insights. Here follows Hillary analyzed through three film classics.
The Narcissism of an Aging Star Deservedly Forgotten: Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Gloria Swanson plays the has-been silent movie star Norma Desmond, who manipulates broke screenwriter Joe Gillis, played by William Holden, in order to resurrect her long- moribund career. Desmond’s creepy attempts to turn back time to her glory days as a star––vamping around her Hollywood gothic mansion in clownish makeup as she seduces Gillis–– bespeak a surreal obsession with her own passé greatness, one fueled by her refusal to admit that she has no talent for acting in the talkies. She expresses her delusional narcissism in one of the greatest lines ever written for the movies. When Holden comments, “You used to be big,” Desmond answers, “I am big, it’s the pictures that got small.” Desmond stays in her fantasy world to the end, speaking the immortal lines “All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up” as she descends her grand staircase on her way to the insane asylum.
Hillary Clinton is the political Norma Desmond. She was “big” in the 90s, when she was touted as co-President to her satyr husband and cooked up Hillarycare as proof of her gravitas. She played the role of the feminist First Lady to perfection, and then ruined the performance by swallowing her feminist pride to “stand by her man” when his sordid serial adultery came to light and humiliated her before the world. After that she played an Acela corridor celebrity rather than being a politician of achievement, winning a gimme Senate seat in New York, then parking herself as Secretary of State so she could at least stay in the news.
But she never “starred” in either of those roles. ...
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