The Tangwall Campagin. Is it the first time in American history that a president has been trying to create a kind of cultural current or wishes to influence the content of Hollywood productions?
Fletcher McClellan. Most of the presidents, or at least many of them, tried to influence culture in the broad sense. John F. Kennedy is one of them. I think he considered cultural policy as an embodied novelty. He was the youngest elected president with a young family. He literally brought culture to the White House. Robert Frost had also pronounced a poem during his inauguration.
His cultural ambitions were a little ahead of politics at a time when Congress was still under the influence of Democrats in the South. Ronald Reagan is also an interesting case. He wore jeans or hosted the White House the Southern Rock group of the Allman brothers. He was himself an actor and who used his experience in Hollywood (he was president of the actors’ union) as an instrument of his ” revolution “, With his image of cowboy acquired thanks to the westerns he turned in his youth.
And what impact can measures to increase customs duties on foreign cinematographic productions? Does Trump want to save Hollywood?
It is probably more symbolic than anything else. There is a kind of attempt to help Hollywood, who has gone through difficult moments with significant strikes and recent fires. I do not know if his solution is sensible, even if it is true that more and more productions are relocated abroad for reasons of cost. Trump has an ambivalent relationship, made of love and hatred, with the world of culture. He has always tried to integrate into the influential world of New York.
“He was then always shared between his resentment towards the entertainment industry and his desire to belong to it”
And he was not always well received. This character, let’s say little classic, was able to experience resentment as if he had excluded him from a party in which he wanted to participate. However, it is someone who follows the entertainment news very closely. We see him tweeting on such a celebrity or on this or that program which does not have very good audiences. His show, “The Apprentice”, nominated for the Emmy Awards in the “reality show” category, has never won a reward. He was then always shared between his resentment towards the entertainment industry and his desire to belong to it.
To what extent does the appointment like “Special Ambassadors in Hollywood” by Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone symbolic of the Trumpian era?
Stallone, with his series of films Rockybuilt his career on virile characters. It is a logical choice and a popular figure. Mel Gibson, on the other hand, is more controversial, especially with the charges of anti -Semitism that were brought against him. But Jon Voight is the most interesting of all his supporters.
He is a republican and supporter of Trump, but he continues to enjoy immense respect for the public as an actor. I am not sure, however, that the choice of these celebrities has any impact. Trump prefers to cultivate influencers on social networks, by targeting specific audiences, such as Hispanic men. And you could say that so far it was much more effective than Taylor Swift support.
