"The Real Al Gore"
For my hermeneut readers, I have to start with this: It's impossible to see "the real Al Gore." When you look at Gore, you can't help but see the layers of meaning, the glosses of the past--the "loss" in 2000, the incredibly harsh media narratives, the years as Clinton's #2, the Senate years, and so on. It's even hard to listen to him, because almost everything he says resonates with something else, some remembered statement from the past. If Al Gore were a text, it would be mostly commentary.
With that said, it's interesting that that's how An Inconvenient Truth tackles its subject, which is either Al Gore's personal journey through an eventful life or global warming/climate change. The story weaves together, pretty seamlessly, Gore's story, from his childhood on the farm, at least one-third of the year, through the 2000 election, with melting glaciers, rising sea level, and environmental crises to come. It's a well-edited, well-composed piece of political advocacy, making the case for Gore and for taking steps to minimize the coming apocalypse.
But when I say, "making the case for Gore," I mean that this film is more about rehabilitating Gore's reputation than about advancing his candidacy in 2008. I won't speculate about Gore '08, because I don't have any special insight into that. I've been watching the Sunday shows, and there's a lot of speculation about what the film means for 2008. But it seems to me that, if Gore wanted to run, he would be running. He knows how to do that, right? And he's really not, at least not yet.
One theory (OK, I'll speculate a little) is that Gore doesn't want to run, but he wants to be asked. "Drafted," the term is.
But it's hard for me to believe that Gore thinks this way. Just in practical terms, how does this work? The party organization can't do this, because the party organization is "neutral" in the selection process. The netroots and grassroots can't really draft a candidate, the candidate has to put together the organization, the campaign, raise funds, and so on. Get on primary ballots. So it seems to me that this is pure speculation.
In the end, my guess is that Gore's main goal here, besides raising public consciousness, is rehabilitating his personal (and political) reputation. He wants to make a record, for the ages, that he would have been a better president than the alternative. The film is more about completing the story of his previous life than about defining his future career.
To return to the hermeneutics thing, An Inconvenient Truth is an attempt at a final gloss on the text of Al Gore.
posted by Number Three @ 10:24 AM
4 Comments:
You must recognize, of course, that your gloss on the "real Al Gore" (in scare quotes) perfectly feeds the GOP spin on his lack of authenticity. By suggesting that there's no core Gore, just layers of "commentary" and "text," you imply that he's a man without substance or character, just a floating signifier in search of a narrative, which could be behind curtain A, or maybe curtain B.
Instead of buying that pig in a poke, why not simply say that Gore is a man of character and complexity? He's been tested by the storm and stress of his own political history, and, while remaining fixed on the same core issues that have motivated him for decades (Earth in the Balance, etc.), he's also developed a more compelling narrative to explain the public importance of his compulsions. Experience does not replace one's "core self" or "essence" with something radically different (that idea anchors the GOP fear that any exotic thought or experience makes you a freakish, America-hating, hippie fake), it builds upon the past, cultivates judgment, and deepens one's character. Narrative is NOT just the way you fake an essence (although it can be that--see George Allen), it is how you integrate experience and reveal your essence to the world.
Think about this in relation to Bush, who is a pretty good example of a guy who has spent his entire life merely faking an essence rather than cultivating a character. One of his failures as a leader is that he's so insecure about his identity that he clings to a simplistic narrative ("I'm the decider," "I'm a war president," "I'm a Texas rancher") such that he's deathly afraid of integrating any new experience that might change his outlook on issues like Iraq or taxes. Dems need to explain this as a failure of character. And they need to recognize that narratives are not exclusive of essence or even "soul." Those who honestly integrate the two are far better than those who dig in for fear of getting lost.
Well, that's a great comment, which probably should have been a post in response to my post.
My post was intended in a slightly different sense than how TMcD took it, although he's right that I was referencing the media narrative about Gore (I'll call it the media narrative, although it is more of a GOP invention, perhaps) in entitling the post "The Real Al Gore."
But I did not intend to be critical of Gore. I have a great deal of respect for Gore. Instead, I wanted to point to how complex dealing with "Gore" (as a text, if you will) is because of all the meanings and experiences that I associate with the "signifier" Gore. I didn't mean to imply that there's no "real" Gore, although, for people like TMcD and me, the "real person" Al Gore is much less important an issue than the Gore-as-text that we have spent a great deal of our professional and personal lives "reading," if you will. So I was more interested in how, as a film viewer as well as an avid observer of the political scene, I was unable to just watch the film. Instead, I was watching the film through all the previous glosses, through all the past experiences. That may be just another way of saying that Gore is a complex figure--but not "in-himself," which is certainly (?) true. Instead, he's complex because of all that past, a past in which I have been an active participant.
Actually, the TMcD comment nicely illustrates that the "author" cannot control his/her text. (If posting on a blog is a form of "authorship," then I am more worried about "the death of the author" than I used to be.) TMcD takes me for task for something that I didn't intend but that, on a second or third reading of what I wrote, is in there.
To reference an old thread in these parts, I would add, finally, that Gore's "core issues" is a construct--which is not to say that it's false. But it is to say that the environment is at the center of the story of Gore's life today. I think that, had Gore been president on 9-11, the narrative would be very different today, and not because Gore hasn't always been concerned with the environment.
Rereading the last comment, I realized that "active participant" is vague and potentially misleading. What I meant to say is not that I was an active participant in any key political events--I mean, I vote and read the papers, but I've never met Gore or anything--but an active participant in the construction of my own sense of "the real Al Gore." That may not clarify matters, but I didn't want anyone to think that I was padding the resume, so to speak.
Yeah, I wanted to push your post where I knew you didn't want it to go, a very Derridean move against your Derridean argument. I'm trying to become more self-conscious about buying into the GOP memes. Your post looked like a good opportunity to bust a cap in that.
Whether or not Gore ignored environmentalism in the 2000 campaign, I still think you'd have to say that this is a "core issue" for him, one he's been associated with for a long time. He really didn't need to campaign on it last time, it was part of his "brand," much as music labelling was for his wife. Gore had written the book, he spent years in Congress working on issues others thought quirky, and Daddy Bush slagged him as "Ozone Man" in 1992. Is there any other major politician today so closely associated with the environmental movement?
I know what you mean about feeling "actively involved" in Gore's narrative despite having no personal contact with the man. I've met him once for a handshake. My only takeaway was: "man, that guy's got a huge head."
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