Death of a President: Assassination Porn or Political Propaganda?

Death of a President is a pseudo documentary or “mockumentary” that has as its premise that President George W. Bush is assassinated on October 19th, 2007, after making an economic address in Chicago. Naturally a film depicting the murder of an actual living political leader has caused a bit of controversy. Some have suggested that Death of a President represents the latest example of “assassination porn,” in which people with Bush Derangement Syndrome (i.e. people who hate George W. Bush so much that they have lost all capacity for reason) get to vicariously experience an event that they so fervently wish for.

Gabriel Range, the director of the film which premised at the Toronto Film Festival and is due to be broadcasted on Britain’s Channel 4 TV network, has denied this accusation. He points out that the fictional death of President Bush is just the jumping off point for a scenario in which the newly sworn in President Cheney calls for an expansion of the Patriot Act which damages civil liberties in the United States.

Death of a President also uses a staple of political conspiracy films in which, initially, the wrong man is charged and convicted of the assassination. A Syrian born immigrant is fingered with the crime. However, taking in mind the cinematic rule that no Arab can ever be guilty of terrorism, the real killer turns out to be an African American Gulf War veteran who, in a Cindy Sheehan-like rage over the death of his son in the current Iraq Campaign, murders the President.

There are, of course, quite a few problems with this movie. First of all, the film makers pat themselves on the back for being “bold enough” to depict a real President being assassinated. But one wonders why they wimped out and didn’t depict a real person as the assassin. Why not depict Cindy Sheehan as the actual killer? She actually did lose a son in Iraq.

After all, in her latest book, Peace Mom, on page 29 in fact, Sheehan admits that she “has fantasies” about going back in time and slaughtering George W. Bush as an infant. Talk about preemption. She is a public figure, so imagining her doing a Lee Harvey Oswald on the current President would not be a stretch nor would it be actionable for a libel suit. She already has admitted that she wants to do it. Truth is a defense in court. The only difference is that she would be depicted as having the courage to go after the President as a full grown adult rather than a helpless infant.

This brings to mind an idea for a film in which Mother Sheehan gets her wish and finds herself in Midland, Texas in 1946 or 47. There are two ways to approach the scenario. One is that she succeeds, but with much unintended consequences. The other way is to imagine that she fails and gets thrown into a mental hospital, which in the 1940s would be a very nasty place where they cut peoples’ brains and hooked them up to electric shock machines.

But, of course, we can only make films imagining the death or torture of right wing, religious white men, not a liberal icon like Sheehan.

The other problem is the instant assumption that the reaction to an event like a Presidential assassination must automatically be a reign of terror against all dissidents. This is particularly true when the assumption is being made about conservatives. Yet there has been no such reign in the wake of 9/11. For all the hyperventilation about the Patriot Act, it is actually mild compared to measures undertaken in previous wars. Franklin Roosevelt stole the property of hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans and locked them up in prison camps. Woodward Wilson jailed war protestors for sedition. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus.

Death of a President may be shown in American theaters. One hopes it happens before the mid term elections, because it will be a good example of how far Bush haters are willing to go in feeding their own insanity.