US Capitol Assault Hearings: Big Cinema – Culture


There aren’t many directors who have come up with their own adjective. One of the few is Frank Capra, a great filmmaker of Hollywood in the thirties and forties – “capraesk”, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, means “the celebration and ultimate triumph of the average person, sentimentality”. The epitome of the Capraesque is his “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” from 1939 – James Stewart plays as Jefferson Smith, a simple man from the West whom a governor who believes Smith can be manipulated sends to Washington to replace a deceased senator . Where the idealist Smith then reacts aghast at the intrigue and corruption around him and messes everything up.

Seen in this light, a scene before the United States Congress this week was capricious through and through: the committee investigating the January 6 storming of the Capitol is dividing the political camps, like so many other things. The Republicans withdrew their representatives after the House Speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, turned down two MPs who were probably just looking for a spectacle – but the hearings are, of course, a spectacle anyway.

James Stewart is appalled by the corruption in Washington in Frank Capra’s “Mr Smith Goes to Washington”.

(Photo: imago / Everett Collection)

The appearance of Seargent Aquilino Gonell from the Capitol Police went particularly to the heart. In a broken voice, he recounted what the oath he swore on the Constitution meant to him, and of a whole professional life devoted to defending American ideals – to face a mob on January 6th who sprayed him with pepper spray, with lasers blinded and kicked after him. A mob, said Seargent Aquilino Gonell, ironically made up of the very citizens whom he is committed to protecting.

Then, towards the end, he reports how he finally managed to notify his family that he was still alive, how he arrived home at four in the morning and pushed his wife away from him because of the chemical toxins on his clothes, who was trying to hug him ; and then he breaks off, says “excuse me” and wipes the tears from his face. Gonell did not make his statement like a professional, but like an idealistic underdog who was not even made for the public.

The hearings in the cinema are aimed at emotions, effects, not content

In American politics, staging has become the norm: Gonell’s statement went around the world because of tears, not because he said something that was previously unknown. The real scenes in front of the commissions in the Capitol are more and more similar to the cinema that they used over and over again – Francis Ford Coppola had Al Pacino give a speech in “The Godfather II”, John Frankenheimer took over for “Ambassador of Fear” (1962 ) Moments from the McCarthy Communist Hunter hearings.

The hearings in the cinema are aimed at emotions and effects, coping with the content is secondary. “Mr. Smith” also remembers his passionate speech to the Senate, and not the corrupt machinations he tries to prevent. The recent lead roles the Capitol has played on screen include that in John Madden’s “The Invention of Truth” (2016). Jessica Chastain plays lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane, summoned for her role in gun legislation. She sits in front of her microphone like Gonell, she hesitates, is silent, seems to have talked a lot. In the end, everything that has been seen has a false bottom: It was a maneuver that Elizabeth Sloane had planned for a long time, with which she lured a bribed senator into the trap, knowing full well that she would go to jail for it.

Theatrical release - 'The Invention of Truth'

Does what a woman has to do: Jessica Chastain in a scene from the film “The Invention of Truth”.

(Photo: Universum Film / dpa)

It is of no use to the credibility of political Washington, but for Hollywood integrity in politics was a special case even in Capra’s time. And when things go well for the citizens, the stories take off into the fairy tale realm: The refined lobbyist deliberately goes to jail because a woman has to do what a woman has to do, and in the end Mr. Smith collapses – and his corrupt opponent , overwhelmed with guilt, becomes a new person.

The Democrats are perhaps hoping for a purifying effect from Gonell’s appearance – and in an environment in which everything looks like theater, a sober statement would probably not penetrate either. But the big bang that changes the fate of the country only happens in the cinema. The people of earthly America who need to be persuaded even claim that the whole storming of the Capitol was a staging of the left – a false bottom that even the fairy tale character Elizabeth Sloane would not have thought of.

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