Trump: President or Bad Guy From an 80's Movie?
President or a bad guy from an 80’s movie?
Nearly four years on, the 2016 Presidential election remains an enigma to me. No matter how much the voter breakdown and the electoral college vote is explained to me, I am still confused. It completely perplexes me that anyone would actively put a tick next to Trump’s name.
The reason for my confusion is simple: Trump is a nasty human being. He is a racist, sexist, greedy, narcissistic, thin-skinned compulsive liar. What I could never understand, no matter what I read on voting patterns and voting incentives, was why anyone would vote for someone so obviously evil. But now I think about it, I wonder if it is because of the element of familiarity about him. People had been watching figures like Trump on their film and TV screens for so long that they had become desensitised to his wickedness.
In hindsight, what was so bizarre during the election campaign and preceding primary campaign, was how normalised Trump had become. This normalisation goes beyond the actions of the media: how the right-wing press exalted him, and the left-wing media treated him as a harmless joke. I believe the normalisation of Trump stems from American culture as a whole.
While American and British society are very similar, there is a je ne sais quoi about American culture that is quite often dismissed as simply the US being crazy. An example of this is how certain citizens believe that the government should not put any restrictions on daily life, even for life-saving measures (you can decide for yourself if I am referring to Coronavirus or guns). Not that the UK has a leg to stand on in this regard. I could be very easily writing an article talking about how British cultural hubris has resulted in the current government’s failure in fighting Covid-19.
Trump and his actions were perceived as normal (albeit exaggerated) because he exemplified an aspect of American culture. An aspect of culture that is as American as cheeseburgers and terrible healthcare: 80’s Movie Villains.
The best starting point for this thought is the fact that the baddie Biff in Back to the Future was based on Donald Trump, who was simply a real estate mogul at the time. Biff is a stereotypical bully, an aggressive and violent individual who gets what he wants from intimidating others and cheating. To claim that the character was based on Trump was clearly not a compliment. While Trump has never obviously displayed any violent tendencies, he has very obviously displayed predatory behaviour towards women that is mirrored by Biff.
The parable ‘Greed is Good’ stated by Michael Douglas’s character in the movie Wall Street appears to be the instruction for how Trump has always lived his life. One could even say that it had such an effect on Trump that he cameoed in the sub-par sequel (to my amusement, he only made the DVD extras). Greed has been Trump’s business model for years, a model that has not always been successful.
While Trump has never declared personal bankruptcy, his businesses have filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy six times and he has admitted to playing with bankruptcy laws to avoid paying debts. As long as his personal greed is satisfied, he could not care about his businesses. If you do want to argue that Trump is not motivated by greed: I will simply direct you to his gold toilet, which in itself seems like a movie prop gag.
When researching 80’s movie villains that misbehave towards young women, I landed on Betelgeuse from Beetlejuice. The eponymous character covets the underage Lydia. However, Trump is worse than Betelgeuse. His treatment of women is predatory, infamously exemplified by the statement: ‘when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab them by the pussy.’ Trump is pretty revolting about his own daughter stating in an interview: ‘if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her’. If you were not aware of that anecdote, I apologise for the inevitable nausea.
Trump embodies Victor Maitland from Beverly Hills Cop. If you have not seen this Eddie Murphy action movie, all you need to know about Maitland is that he is a ‘legitimate businessman’ who hires cronies to do his dirty work. Trump, instead of hiring thugs to kill people, simply hired Michael Cohan to threaten a porn star. Trump has plenty of other evil minions: Kellyanne Conway lies for him (sorry alternative facts); Stephen Miller is his personal white supremacist. Fox News and the OAN network act as his personal cheerleading squad (he likes to get his news exclusively from sources praising him) and when he says jump, his cronies in Congress led by Mitch McConnell are too busy jumping to ask how high.
One distinct villainous characteristic that has been omitted so far is Trump’s overwhelming racism. This is because Trump’s views share less similarity with 80s villains, and more with the filmmakers themselves. Examples of racism in 80’s movies include the representation of Indians in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the character of Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles. Decrying all Hispanics as criminals and referring to the ‘Chinese virus’ is not a far stretch from these depictions by Stephen Spielberg and John Hughes.
When reading my comparison, you may be wondering why I am missing a few of the great 80’s movie villains. Hans Gruber from Die Hard; Darth Vader and Jack Torrance from The Shining had to be relegated for the simple fact that Trump is far too stupid to be compared to these baddies. Unlike these villains, he embodies the movie trope of Stupid Evil. A strong example of Stupid Evil is the exhibition of lethal dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and the repeating of this mistake in the many sequels. While this can be forgiven due to the need for movie plot McGuffin’s, Trump does not have the same excuse. He embodies Stupid Evil in his suggestions of fortifying the border wall, he wanted a moat filled with snakes or alligators and an electrified fence with spikes. Another example of this trope is Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road, hogging the underwater reservoir and distributing water by showering down on people. While this is not an 80’s movie, this scene exemplifies the Republican ideal of trickle-down economics that Trump is so fond of. One could also say that the character bears a resemblance to Trump…
A lot of Trump supporters and Republicans feel that Trump’s character is genuine. There are no hidden nasty surprises because he wears all the ugly surprises on his sleeve. For them, there is something reassuring about knowing the devil you vote for. He appeared in all of their favourite movies. He is also the guy that says what his supporters are secretly thinking but know that they are not allowed to speak. It is of no surprise that the phrase ‘snowflake’ came to prominence at the same time as Trump.
The thing is I wish Trump was just a bad guy in a campy 80’s movie. I wish all it took to defeat him was a training montage with Survivor playing in the background. But unfortunately, he is not. And the consequences of his actions extend far beyond our TV screens.
Written by Zoe Williams
Zoe is 22 and originally from Bath but currently residing in Manchester. She just graduated in Politics and therefore loves a good rant about Brexit and Boris Johnson. She is currently working for a Coffee chain that shall remain nameless, but they pay far too little tax and keep their staff’s tips. Unsurprisingly she is on the market for a new job. She is also a textile artist when she finds the time.