The Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Politics and Celebrity in the Age of Contempt
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An irreverent look at the rise and rise of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, from the journalist the New York Times calls a "huge satirical talent."
"It's the most difficult decision I've made in my entire life, except the one I made in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax."—Arnold Schwarzenegger, announcing his candidacy for governor of California in 2003
From the California recall circus, in which Gary Coleman, Larry Flynt, and Arianna Huffington vied with over one hundred other candidates to replace a supposedly inept governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger emerged triumphant. How did this onetime bodybuilding champion and gay pinup, with no political experience and a string of mediocre action movies to his name, come to take over the world's fifth-largest economy?
In The Schwarzenegger Syndrome, celebrated journalist and novelist Gary Indiana makes the case that this tale is a product of a media-soaked culture in which image matters more than substance. The recall process, a parody of direct democracy, gave Schwarzenegger the chance of a lifetime. With so many candidates in the race, he certainly wasn't the most qualified, the most articulate, or the most credible—but he was the most famous. And for the majority of Californians, that was enough. A witty and biting travelogue through the intersection of celebrity culture with American political life, The Schwarzenegger Syndrome lays bare the dark implications of Schwarzenegger's rise to power in the Golden State.
Customer Review: Honestly California - Sadly American
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.
Customer Review: Worthy but flawed ...
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.
