Customer Reviews

The Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Politics and Celebrity in the Age of Contempt

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I have an anarchist friend who was born in Russia and grew up in an immigrant community in Chicago. He recently criticized me and another person for speaking too derisively of average Americans. I replied that I was born and raised in the Appalachians - in a small village once labeled "the quintessential American town" in a PBS series - where an unhealthy percentage (not all) of the people were vigorously proud of their own ignorance, spiteful toward outsiders, somewhat lazy and had a narcissistic sense of very personal entitlement. I was ready to admit that the economic system, media propaganda, as well as the garbage-entertainment these people were spoon fed from infancy, had all certainly helped mold them. But neither explanation nor history can change the fact of their malevolence. (To put it into American spiritual terms, until we decide to do something about it, we must all lay where Jesus flung us.)

With pointed accuracy, Gary describes many of the characters and low-life reptiles that make up the political picture of California (and America). He apparently speaks as an intelligent observer rather than a recognized "expert" (and one must always ask who recognizes so-called experts and for what purpose), commenting on social and moral implications, carefully identifying some of the mutant freaks that are part and parcel of our toxic system, from the members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, to Schwarzenegger himself, to many others.

Picking up this book in 2007 (only a few short years after the events it describes) is to read nearly lost history. Simple facts thrillingly puncture the amnesia of media culture. The experience is similar to watching Norman Solomon's collection of video clips from TV "news" (sneer quotes not strong enough) cheering the US invasion of Iraq. Add Gary's appropriately vulgar metaphors and intelligent language and you have a fine piece of work. The times and the evidence demand more, not less, emotionally charged imagery, in addition to critical analysis. I would go so far as to say that apollonian disengagement by the very people who ought to be raving mad plays directly into the hands of those who would continue to sell out all vestiges of constructive social cooperation to the violent abuses of top-down power government.

Like anyone writing about social issues should, Gary Indiana allows himself to take some moments to examine his own personal morality, apart from the dictates and approved systems of church, state, and the philosophies that support those structures (and presumably invites the reader to do the same).

I think that Gary does seem to occasionally expect too much of the truth. That is, he may discern some things clearly, and I'm grateful he's passed those observations along, however their effect on outcomes is questionable. He searches for specific reasons why exposure of Schwarzenegger's past actions apparently did not affect the election, and while those reasons may be technically correct, I suspect cultural-media amnesia is more responsible. Any information that gets in the way of power is carefully disseminated in the overall scheme of things. Guy DeBord identified the process of how news and events are parsed to the consumer in a culture which denies past and future "where fashion itself, from clothes to music, has come to a halt" and described the "ceaseless circular passage of information, always returning to the same short list of trivialities, passionately proclaimed as major discoveries...news of what is genuinely important, of what is actually changing, comes rarely, and then in fits and starts."

Gary has watched the movies I could not bear to see and paid attention to the politics I've only begrudgingly followed. He seems to have taken good notes.

I always respected Gary Indiana's prose, but frankly, some of his previous subjects didn't much interest me. It is a sign of the times that people seem to come from far and wide to bear witness to the same ugly truths about our society and government, and I'm happy to meet this writer again right now.

It's a mystery that Gary Indiana is not spoken of as easily as any living man or woman of letters, not a comforting writer, he does not fill his pages with nostalgia for comic book heroes or suffering wise children, but perhaps this book will finally win him his deserved attention. The book helps point the way to the direction of political history, openly biased and fastidiously attentive to research. This is a primer in California politics, media mendacity, entertainment biography, and is also obituary for America, without giving up on a remote chance for resurrection.

After reading this book, go back and read his novels.

Gary Indiana's enormous literary gifts are apparent throughout this diatribe of corruption, fakery, and the dumbing down of America and how our struggling populace embraces movie stars and subthinking politicians as our leaders. Unfortunately, Indiana's language, his strength, is also his weakness. He is so excessive in his verbiage, his obscene sexual metaphors, his overreaching anger, that the prose takes on a redundant quality and worse his ornate fire-breathing language becomes a distraction from his very compelling and insightful polemic. With such great insight and such a profound content, he didn't need to go overboard and razzle-dazzle us with his fireworks language display, which becomes in this book an unfortunate side circus and makes the important issues of fraud, self-promotion, and a gullible voting populace seem at times flippant. It's okay to be maddenned and outraged by our degraded political discourse, but show some discipline and tell the story of Arnold's disturbing political ascent without showing off your literary powers at such an excessive and obsessive degree.

Wow, this is one of the least favorite things I've ever read. Gary Indiana is horribly biased towards the left and the impact on the book is glaring. I was expecting an analysis of how celebrity culture impacts America, instead I get conspiracy theories about how Arnold Schwarzenegger is responsible for anthrax mailings, is gay, and a Nazi. No real insight on the syndrome, but plenty of attacks on the Schwarzenegger. And all wrapped up in an elaborate 24th grade reading level. Is Gary Indiana's vocabulary much larger than mine? No doubt. Does a high vocabulary make someone a good writer? I'll take Hemmingway over Indiana any day. The book reeks of bitterness at a Republican winning the governorship of California (no I'm not a Republican). Dude, get over it.

He does provide a decent overview of the California recall election process, and how little sense it makes. I almost gave the book 2 stars because of this, but the rest of the book is so bad I couldn't do it. Maybe 1 and 1/2 stars at best.

Gary Indiana's incisive anatomy of California politics and the celebrity culture in which our state operates should be required reading for everyone in the USA. But that won't happen, because of "democracy," in which people "like" Arnold Schwarzenegger the same way they are said to "like" Bush, for once we like someone, there's no point in trying to change our mind, we're vapid. The book explores the rise of Arnold from movie star to governor, and the disingenuousness with which the populace has perceived this change. You get everything in this volume, from Wendy Leigh, to the famous PREMIERE article, to the concerted attempts by the LA Times to ruin Arnold's candidacy in the final days of his campaign. The Florida anthrax story is worthy of a book all by itself, and it is still puzzling, one of the few authentic mysteries of modern times.

The book is comprehensive and written beautifully. I don't think Indiana gives enough allowance to the way that Arnold's gubernatorial victory was a comeback for him over the crumbling of the box office beneath his feet. Once the greatest star in Hollywood, his career had become a disaster area you couldn't look away from--BATMAN AND ROBIN, anyone? Indiana gives sensible, and prescient analyses of several of Arnold's movies, both hits and flops, but I don't think exegesis of END OF DAYS and THE RUNNING MAN goes very far past the most obvious places, the way people used to watch Don Siegel's THE KILLERS to watch Reagan whomp Angie Dickinson across the kisser. In this regard Indiana, one of America's greatest critics and thinkers, pinpoints Arnold's appearance in August 2003 to announce his candidacy as emblematic, for it occurred during a taping of THE JAY LENO SHOW.

He further cites Richard Hawkins, the LA artist who has a vast appreciation of Arnold as a, well, as a force to be reckoned with; as part of Hawkins' conceptual art project he got Arnold to sign autographs on copies of Plato's SYMPOSIUM and Arthur Symons' LOVE'S CRUELTY. That Arnold obliged Hawkins is a sign (as in END OF DAYS) of a sort of identification slipperiness that has facilitated his rise in politics. Liberals were slow to pick up on his true nature because, well, not only are we vapid but he did pose nude for PLAYGIRL or whatever.

If you enjoyed reading the social satire, combined with a novelistic appreciation for textures and shadings, of something like Joan Didion's WHITE ALBUM, I expect you'll enjoy this short book very much indeed. While Indiana is pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, he has set several of his lively, penetrating novels in California, and obviously the state fascinates him, the way that Medusa is said to have exerted a hypnotic, horrified pull over all those who gazed naked on her face. With such an enthralled gaze, he has seen things invisible to those of us who live among its rarefied airs, who walk blindly and blithely in its fogs.

Occasionally the breadth of his thought pushes too far across the page, disappearing at the edges into a kind of mobius strip of contempt. On one page he is chastising media commentators for making scandals disappear by claiming that "it is nothing that hasn't happened before," claiming a grasp of history they don't have; a hundred pages later he's mocking the propensity of the media to find "bellwethers" everywhere, particularly in California. To me these two tendencies are in opposition to each other, and if Gary Indiana doesn't think so, he could at least explain why. But what a tiny fault, that won't distract, from the pleasure you'll get from this amazing book. It opened my eyes that's for sure.

Why flawed? Well. Let's begin with why this remains a worthwhile text. Essentially Indiana has done his homework and provides a reasonably broad (i.e. within the limits of sane) range of explanations surrounding this election that, at least from over here in `Old Europe', seems remarkably twisted.

If you like Indiana's work you won't be disappointed, and if you're new to his output this is certainly an excellent place to start. As a `cultural commentator' - a title that frankly seems absurdly as though professionalising something we all participate in, so I guess it means that he gets paid - Indiana starts out well in this text, but in the last few pages everything goes off the scale as he descends into exactly the sort of pejorative commentary he's spent a great deal of time criticising.

At stake is whether the reader, having accepted Indiana's implicit moral framework embedded in the text, really requires barks that point her or him in the direction of Hannah Arendt, Indiana's evident current obsession. The author has an exceptionally uncritical view of Arendt - there's no commentary on the many reporting inaccuracies of her most famous (or popular) text regarding `the banality of evil', no admission that `On violence' reads as though it was a testimonial for Habermas who, let's face it, no-one thinks of as a guiding light (that would be kind of terrifying) - and all this is accompanied by a seemingly random valorisation of Marcuse, that can only be understood coming after Indiana's claim that contemporary readers should approach `The Dialectic of Enlightenment' with `scepticism'. Now, this seems to me to be hugely problematic and implicitly suggests that Indiana himself has not really grasped either negative dialectics or constellations, though he uses the latter obsessively, presumably without realising.

So, are we meant to understand that Indiana considers the Enlightenment project complete, or at least wholly liberated from any infection of mystification? Or would it be more accurate to think that what Indiana actually means when he refers to D of E is actually one particular chapter plus a few paragraphs from the admittedly misguided section concerning the Jews?

Of course I don't have the answer, but I do recognise blinkered preferences when they punch their way out of the page at me ... I can see why, in the USA, the vaguely socialist remnants of the leftwing might want to canonise Arendt, as she has the posthumous aura of a highly moral creature, however as Indiana hasn't actually delivered anything remotely resembling a text within the philosophy of social theory, it has the effect of cheapening her work, and rendering it naive.