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Did Trump’s Art Film Help Avert Real War? by Doniphan Blair
American President Donald J. Trump and North Korean Premier Kim Jong Un in the National Security Agency's 'faux film trailer' shown in Singapore. image: courtesy NSA
THE RECENT SINGAPORE SUMMIT
featured a four-minute film, with English and Korean versions, which the American President Donald J. Trump premiered—proudly and ostentatiously, as is his want—to much controversy. While not “Rite of Spring” riot levels, there was enough incredulity, ridicule and misunderstanding to go around.
The film, which doesn’t have a title—so let’s go with “Trump’s Gambit” (see it here), was called “a fake action movie trailer” by The SF Chronicle, “schlock” by Vanity Fair, and “corny, clichéd” by The New York Times, which also deemed to add “strategic.”
“Reporters thought this video was North Korea propaganda,” noted The Washington Post on June 12th. “But as the president explained it, the video [seemed] more like an elevator pitch. It was the type of glitzy production that Trump might have once used to persuade investors to finance his hotels.”
Evidently the 2,000 plus political reporters in attendance—not to mention Trump or the North Korean Premier Kim Jong Un, the sole intended audience—had ever been to film school.
Hence it was hard for them to see that “Trump’s Gambit” was a full blown art film, a distillation of dozens of film school tropes, notably Bruce Conner’s “A MOVIE” (1964) or the end of Dusan Makavejev’s “Mystery of the Organism: WR” (1971), which cuts from Stalin to a missile launcher to an erect penis (see trailer).
Thankfully, the National Security Agency kids who whipped up “Gambit”, probably using iMovie on their phones, spared us that cinematic quote. What they did include however was enumerable other art film references, which become especially apparent when you view it with the sound off, eliminating the bombastic narration.
“Gambit” has missiles going back into their silos (using that classic effect: backwards-running film), the film itself getting stuck in the gate and burning (a popular visual among socialist cineastes, see “The 49 Springs of Ho Chi Minh”, 1972, albeit with some lost significance in the digital age), and Conner-esque cutting. This included putting titles and start-of-film countdowns in the middle of the film, a basketball player sailing skyward for a dunk and horses galloping through water, great visuals for channeling a thrilling cinema sensation.
The actual film frame burning, a classic socialist cinema trick, in the National Security Agency's faux film trailer. image: courtesy NSA
The basketball-horses cut was so egregious, it was singled out by The New York Times in its withering critique of “Gambit” as “a fake movie trailer to deal with an actual nuclear threat.” So incensed was the paper, it re-cut and published not just one BUT two versions of the film.
The first (see it here) has Peter Baker explaining, in academic voice over, that virtually every cut consists of the cornball clichés or putrifying kitsch which fascists and totalitarians have long used to conjure a phony past or absurd future.
But The Times, the very next day (June 13th), evidently suspecting their tone might not have been sophisticated enough to fully belittle the over-the-top Trumpian fantasy, went one better. Visual producers Taige Jenso and Japhet Weeks re-edited the elevator-pitch into a Strangelovian satire, which they proceeded to play straight (see film here), EXCEPT for the one faux review quote they couldn’t resist: “Holy shit I can’t believe this is real.”
Amidst all the farce, counter-farce and irony, a very earnest young woman—for good reason, she had escaped famine, torture and imprisonment in North Korea—weighed in with a fourth short. In a completely sincere three minutes, delivered two days earlier, Yeonmi Park compared Kim to Hitler and ridiculed any attempts to dodge, satirize or sanitize anything, see “I Escaped North Korea. Here’s My Message for President Trump”.
I sympathize with Ms. Park. It is definitely disconcerting to see art of any kind coming from a dictator or dictator wanna be, while art warriors take them seriously, flinging barbs and bombs the other way. This seems to dumb down the grand spectacle of the arts and civilization, which have become incredibly advanced in South Korea, with its fantastic K-pop music scene—see cineSOURCE article "Behind S. Korea’s Biggest Hit Songs"—made even more amazing by its inverse in North Korea.
Saddam Hussein wrote four romantic novels which are insufferable, not just because he was a terrible writer but because he was enshrining himself as his society’s alpha-omega, the brutal murderer and tender artist. The first book, “Zabibah and the King” (2000), concerns a medieval Iraqi ruler, a beautiful common woman and her abusive husband, whom the ruler, the Saddam standin, stops.
The big problem in Trump’s case is not that he’s claiming “Gambit” is a great art film but that grifters often have enough emotional intelligence to game the rubes and to use art. The tragedy of America is not so much that Trump succeeded on a trifecta of backlash, tribalism and greed but that his New York neighbors, all those academics and critics, were too busy ridiculing him to notice what he was doing, despite the fact he was spewing out various bits of art, statements, full page ads and of course the notorious reality TV show, "The Apprentice" (2004-17).
Yeonmi Park, a North Korean survivor and activist, spoke out passionately in her heartfelt but ultimately misguided piece. image: courtesy Y. Park
On election day, November 8, 2016, The New York Times poll showed 80% in favor of a Hillary Clinton win until about 7pm that evening, where upon it flipped 180 degrees to 80% Trump.
“If you know your enemies and know yourself,” notes Sun Tzu, the great 6th century BCE Chinese military strategist, “you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles."
In this time of trigger warnings, sex-abusive artists and tribal circling of the wagons, why is watching Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary about Hitler, “Triumph of the Will” (1937), so important? Art provides a direct link into a subject, a person’s psyche, no matter how distasteful, which can then be studied and understood.
And what does “Gambit” tell us? We all want to be loved and take the hero’s journey; and two of the most eggrigious candidates in this quest are Trump and Kim. Just as the morally-dubious Oscar Schindler could hustle the Nazis, or Henry Kissinger could negotiate with Mao Zedong, who but the shallow and narcissistic Trump to crack the code of Kim?
Unfortunately for Ms. Park, whose dreamy, waif-like appeal could inspire to action enormous men covered in medals, prescribing Pyongyang a massive injection of Vitamin B-52 is tactically absurd. Seoul sits only 35 miles from the border, North Korean nuclear and missile tech is both set on mobile launchers and hardened in caves, meaning there could be 100,000s of dead with days. There is no military solution; hence the 25-year stand off.
“Engage the enemy with the straight move,” advises Sun Tsu, “and beat them with the freak move.” Not that Trump has any idea about strategic sophistication, let alone Sun Tsu, but a life time of grifting has given him some insights. Certainly, this film can be considered an example of "art war," if not the art of war.
“I hope you liked it,” Trump gushed about his "art film" to the assembled reporters in Singapore. “I thought it was good. I thought it was interesting enough to show. ... And I think [Kim] loved it.”
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jun 15, 2018 - 07:03 AM