SINISTER SINGER

By James Bowman

(Times Literary Supplement, September 18, 1992)

 

In 1927, when Sinclair Lewis took on what is now called "the religious right" in Elmer Gantry he made all his clergymen secret atheists. Because he could not imagine how anyone with any brains could be a religious believer. It followed that those with intelligence enough to manipulate the credulous fools who did believe must themselves be hypocrites and scoundrels. Such a failure of imagination, the consequence of excess of ideological passion, may not have been fatal to a novel which is compelling in other ways but it is one which vitiates many a less hardy satire.

A good example is Bob Roberts, a film produced and directed by as well as starring Hollywood's new golden boy, Tim Robbins. This tale of right-wing, folk-singing politician cannot rest content with making its hero a demagogue on the subject of drugs, it must also make him a secret drug dealer; it is not enough that he is a "yuppie fascist," he must also be a crook and a murderer. Yet to Robbins there seems nothing disproportionate or implausible about saying in an interview at he thinks of this moral monster as "a young George Bush with a guitar"!

Well, actually, if you can imagine George Bush a folk singer, Bob Roberts is probably close to what he would sound like. He's that bad. But it is easier to imagine Bush with a guitar than it is to believe that these songs, which were written by Robbins and his brother and given such waggish titles as 'Drugs Stink" or "The Times are Changin' Back", could ever be found on the Billboard charts, as the story demands that we believe. Tim Robbins, it seems, is as contemptuous of his audience's taste as he is of any protests on behalf of good faith among right-wingers.

Certainly candidate Bob is utterly corrupt, and all of his followers and supporters are fools or knaves - or, most frequently, deranged. Yet Robbins, who will believe anything to the discredit of the right, also believes that there are enough dupes and madmen in the state of Pennsylvania, at any rate, to elect such a man to the United States Senate. Curiously, however, there is at best a half-hearted attempt to discredit his political views, which are incoherent when they are present at all. Almost all we know is that Roberts is against drugs (though to a young supporter he writes: "don't use crack; it's a ghetto drug"), crime, and government spending on the poor.

The error and iniquity of such an agenda can presumably be taken for granted. Robbins is more interested in exploring the credulity or foolishness of those who are not so indignant about this monster as he himself is. Television news, in particular, comes in for a real pasting, and it is as television newsfolk that many of Robbins's special Hollywood friends (including Susan Sarandon, with whom he has two children) camp it up as buffoons, oblivious to Bob Roberts's sinister nature. It is left to a scruffy journalist from the alternative press (Giancarlo Esposito) to spot him for what he is.

But the more perspicacious members of the media can be funnier than the fools. More unbelievable even than the staged assassination attempt, even than the right-wing folk-song groupies, is the television producer who sacrifices her career for the sake of shutting down a broadcast rather than allow Roberts to sing one of his songs on the air. Not all the humor is unintentional, to be sure, but even when the jokes do come off, the prevailing tone of moral earnestness makes the laughter die in our throats. The comedy of "protest" songs with refrains like "We are marching for self-interest" or 'Hang 'em high for a clean living land" or "This world turns its back on God/We must fight to protect him'' can scarcely survive what Bob's opponent, Senator Brickley Paiste, calls the "whiff of sulphur in the air" around the singer.

It was as an inspired bit of casting to let Gore Vidal play Brickley Paiste. Not only does he have the fleshy, dissolute, once-handsome appearance of a sixtyish US Senator of the progressive persuasion, but the left-wing paranoia about "a national security state" and conspiracies of the CIA, the Pentagon and defence contractors are vintage Vidal. He is not given a dialogue credit, but his speeches to camera, which are a part of the film's documentary style, could easily be himself ad lib. But Paisteism, which is quite as funny as Robertsism, is taken seriously by Tim Robbins, and his setting the election against the backdrop of the Gulf War is meant to suggest an obscure corroboration for Paiste's dark fantasies.

As Roberts's evil henchman, Lukas Hart III, Alan Rickman also does a splendid job - and a very passable American accent made easier for him by the constant growl with which he speaks. His funniest line is when he says to a reporter: "Excuse me, I have to go pray", but it makes him sound like his way-over-the-top Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves - the sort of postmodern, theatrical villain that Bob Roberts proves to be as well. We cannot hate anyone of such baroque, flamboyant wickedness, any more than we can love a politician like Brickley Paiste, who says that "politics is about reality not image. Let us be real together." We can only laugh at both of them. But, in the end, there is no smile on Tim Robbins's face.

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page