The New Culture of Reinvention

When we are all hyper-aware of the men behind the curtain - whether in reality TV or the presidential campaign - we judge our products not by their inherent value, but by how well they pull off the illusion

by Bernie Heidkamp

A film about Al Gore’s life, shown at the Democratic Convention/photo by Jonathan Klein

How can someone who played basketball on the collegiate level and climbed one of the highest peaks in North America be considered less of a man than an opponent who rode the coattails of his rich inheritance most of his life, using nepotism to avoid war and get his start as a businessman?

This paradoxical dilemma has dogged Al Gore’s campaign since the primary season, as he has lagged behind George W. Bush both politically and personally in the voters’ minds. From the results of several post-convention polls this weekend, however, Gore seems to have overcome his earlier handicaps and in the spirit of the ‘manliest” movie of the summer - Gladiator - the two candidates are finally entering the electoral arena on equal footing.

How did Gore change his image so dramatically? The turning point came on the last night of the convention. While many pundits have focused on how effectively Gore delivered his all-important speech, the most significant moment came earlier. It was a series of photo stills contained within a larger photo bio-montage that his wife, Tipper, introduced. Those key stills showed Gore throughout his 20s and early 30s with various levels of facial hair.

In almost all the photos, Gore was his usual well-postured, overly-handsome self. But there was something extra - a sideburn here, a goatee there and even a beard. And when he wasn’t showing off the facial hair, his face was full of lather or he was actually shaving. In those short moments, Gore came alive - as a human being and a man all at once.

As the photo montage went on to describe the breadth of Gore’s accomplishments since his youth - culminating, in my mind, with the climbing of Mt. Rainier with his son (I mean, climbing a snow-capped mountain is some really heavy shit - just read Jon Krakauer) - Gore began to fill out a long-cherished image of the American man: the rugged individualist. 

This image enables Gore to excuse or explain away many of the qualities that the public and punditry have criticized most sharply. Gore is aloof? Well, of course, he’s aloof. He’s an American man - struggling with issues of war, destruction and denial (from Vietnam to the greenhouse effect) that we will never be able to understand fully. Gore is too serious and not spontaneous enough? Well, of course, his mind is working overtime because he is burdened with more responsibility than we will ever accept. In this context, was there a better man to nominate Gore the night before than his old Harvard chum Tommy Lee Jones, who has made a career out of playing the modern-day urban frontiersman in the movies (the dedicated yet utterly unemotional U.S. Marshal in The Fugitive, for example)?

Gore, of course, tempered this rather harsh image with its apparent contradiction: the loving family man. Testaments from his daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, on her father’s ability to build dinosaur dioramas and his acceptance of late-night collect calls from college, helped chip away at the stony-faced image (pity, though, that the capable Gore daughter, touted as an adviser to the campaign, was reduced to playing the role of "daddy’s little girl"). The photo montage also included footage of Gore dressed as Frankenstein for Halloween, an apparently sacred holiday in the Gore home.

The Kiss/Reuters

His wife and daughters took center stage throughout the convention, and as numerous columnists have noted, romantic kissing - both recollected (by Mr. Jones, no less, who fondly remembered Tipper and Al making out like a couple of horny teenagers while they were just hanging out at his house) and performed live - was a dominant motif of the convention. Not since Roseanne has there been as much analysis of a kiss as there was over the Gores’ three-second smooch on national television. Almost immediately after the embrace ended, pundits were quick to question whether "the kiss" was scripted to show Gore’s tender side and to prove his honor and fidelity. Writing in The New York Times, Caryn James provided one of the least cynical assessments.

“Though some viewers were charmed by the Gore kiss and others squirmed, no one doubted that it was based on reality,” wrote James. “There you have what really makes it seem odd. The kiss struck everyone as a political gesture based on truth, and nothing is rarer than that.”

While the family stuff certainly overwhelmed that short series of hairy photo stills in the end, all the voters needed was the hint. Gore has been and is his own man - not just the one emerging from the shadows of Clinton, but also the one who, despite his family attachments, sometimes sits around and lets the grizzle grow.

Whatever one thinks of this balancing act, the results, for the Gore campaign, are encouraging. Polls conducted over the weekend show Gore scored a double-digit bounce after the convention, and is now holding a slight edge over Bush. 

Ultimately, what is most remarkable about this image makeover, however, is not how they did it (it’s old hat, by now) but that the voters saw it coming - and they still bought it! What this reflects is a new culture of reinvention, in which we expect our candidates and celebrities to alter their image continually and we judge them, not by the substance of the new representation of themselves, but how well they pull off the illusion.

In the weeks (and seconds) leading up to Gore’s acceptance speech, political commentators were debating whether Gore would successfully re-introduce himself to voters and cast himself as the likeable, human figure he so desperately needed to become. In addition to the photo history of Gore’s life, his campaign also hired the young director Spike Jonze to create a short film about the Gore family. Jonze is celebrated as much for his stylistic music videos and commercials as for his direction of the clever film Being John Malkovich - a film about fame, celebrity and, most importantly, identity. The Jonze film, which aired early Wednesday night - the night before Gore’s acceptance speech - featured Gore swimming in the ocean surf and making funny faces at his grandson. On the subject of their first date, Gore asks his wife, “Was I a little stiff?” “Not at all,” she replies. They kiss.

Americans reinvent themselves every day. We are OK with reinvention - we just ask that those who embark on the journey do it well. Tammy Faye Baker has returned with her own documentary, and CNN builds a lengthy story around it, complete with testimonials from gay men who identify with Baker because she, too, has been marginalized. Tonya Harding resurfaces every few years for a chat with Larry King; we yawn.

Gore told the country “I want you to know me for who I truly am.” He did his best during the speech to make sure the delivery was not stilted. He had been coached to gesture, to smile, to do anything but yell. With a tone of humility, Gore said, “I know my own imperfections. I know that sometimes people say I’m too serious, that I talk too much substance and policy. Maybe I’ve done that tonight.” The pundits termed the acknowledgement a ’smart move.” The reinvention is deemed, at least by some, a modest success.

Television viewers are neither naive nor ignorant; we’re no longer living in the Quiz Show days when audiences wouldn’t think to question whether the show was rigged. Audiences who do wish to suspend their disbelief turn to fiction-as-nonfiction programming, such as The Sopranos, which best represents what viewers think the Mafia is like, and, as a result, it becomes real. But we are all too aware that the cast members of shows like Real World, Big Brother and Survivor are playing to the camera and their conversations and actions are edited to fulfill a character role (Kelly, one of the castaways, told viewers, "We’re not evil; we just play bad people on TV"). And we accept and enjoy it.

On Big Brother, the show that threw 10 strangers into a media-deprived home, save for the dozens of cameras that monitor and record their every move, the house members routinely obsess over whether viewers are getting the full picture of who they are. Those who have already been kicked out of the house, or off the island Pulau Tiga in the hit series Survivor, go on talk shows and grant interviews to the press so that they may further explain themselves and have the last word on the creation of their identity. No matter that millions of viewers have already spent hours watching them deconstruct their lives. The show’s participants still want to have the final word.

Similarly, one would expect that Gore, who was first elected to Congress in 1976 and who for the past eight years has held the second highest office in the country, would be comfortable with his image, and comfortable with the public perception of that image.

Borrowing from political culture, the final episode of Survivor will conclude with a one-hour ‘town hall” meeting featuring the show’s 16 contestants. They will talk about their experiences and share behind-the-scenes information, all the time working hard to ensure that they are seen as likeable, regardless of their actions on the island. Some will be content, and will return to their lives pre-fame and media exposure. Others will want another try. And we will grant it.

Bernie Heidkamp’s last article for PopPolitics, Just When Men Thought They Were Out, looked at presidential politics, male anxiety and The Sopranos.

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