Trump Behind The Camera
Interior and exterior is film lingua franca and is the most apt way to describe how he came to
power. Movie directors tell stories
through scenes shot inside buildings or on the street and park benches. Remember the park bench scene in Forrest
Gump? Directors also use lights for exterior scenes but not as much as they do
for interior shots.
Analysis on elections tends to focus on exterior shots: previous
elections’ statistics, age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, geographical
position of these United States of America (as people down south call the U.S),
new American citizens, polls and other quantifiable data.
The Trump effect is an enigma for political pundits. They have a difficult time trying to pinpoint
how extras in interior scenes feel. These
voters or extras are more intense. They are
concentrated like dams, deep and black, not transparent like Kool Aid.
Like dams, they feel like water constrained in containers,
limited spaces. That is why President Trump
seems to be the only answer to their problem, about what America ought to
be. Many factors are responsible for feeling
claustrophobic and the media is no longer perceived as the only culprit.
Online blogs, cartoonists, comedians, late night talk show
hosts are exterior shots that ridicule Donald Trump, their saviour. Voters in interior scenes tend to be
introverts. They seldom articulate their
beliefs for fear of being labelled not politically correct.
This is not to suggest that all Trump voters have limited
education or are internet shy. There are
closet Trump voters in all so-called ‘liberal’ spaces. The world can laugh at America until the
internet crashes, they don’t care.
They have a trump card to keep Trump in power: a small
space, an interior space with no lights on tripods and no director to call
action. It is the ballot box.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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