And White House has become a shadowy mansion of crime

The Presidential institution and the White House have been around since the beginning of cinema. So why is this happening now is beginning to mystify Presidential historians and political scientists. After all, there have been Presidents worse than Clinton and escapades and peccadilloes of greater severity.

One explanation, provided by former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulous in a recent Newsweek article, suggests that these movies are partly a legacy of the Cold War. The villains are not Soviets they are power-hungry National Security Advisers (Murder at 1600) or corrupt presidents (Absolute Power). “With no central foreign foe, we can fantasise about the enemy within,” says Stephanopoulous.

Other political scientists look at a wider domestic canvas and argue that American politics itself has become besmirched and devalued over the past few decades. Thus, while reporting FDR’s polio or JFK’s peccadilloes was taboo for the US media, they began to break the shackles in the 1970s when the Watergate expose gave them the self-confidence and verve to explore the presidency even deeper and more inrusively. Ford’s ineptness and Carter’s incompetency were harshly chronicled. And by the time Reagan’s Iran Contra scandal unfurled, the White House and its occupants were bathed in the harsh glare of the media light as television became more widespread and intrusive. In the ’90s, the contant media drumbeat about Clinton’s (lack of) character and integrity much of it based on rumour and innuendo has amplified the suspicion about the White House and the chief executive. Thus rumours about the White House being a house of libertine inmates has translated itself on screen in Mars Attacks! in which Martin Short plays the sex-crazed presidential aide who invites a female alien into the White House’s secret Kennedy Room’. In Murder at 1600, the opening scene shows a shadowy figure making love to a blonde in the Oval Office on a carpet emblazoned with a Presidential seal underneath portraits of Washington and Jefferson.

In the film Independence Day, a flying saucer hovers over the White House and shoots a laser beam which destroys the Presidential mansion. In many movie theatres across America, some of the audience cheered and laughed at the scene, suggesting a complete lack of respect for the seat of the Government. Says Robert Kolker, a University of Maryland social scientist who writes on the sociology of cinema: “The President is now able to be represented as a creep, a villain…it is a leap in cynicism that does not bode too well.”

The White House itself appears not too concerned about this tarring of the institution of the President. Bill Clinton is a fairly regular movie buff and the First Family catches a movie every weekend at the White House auditorium. The Motion Picture Association routinely sends its new releases to the White House. But Clinton reportedly prefers slapstick releases like the Naked Gun series. If he saw the real thing, he would be a worried man. White House Blueso Primary Colours: Based on Joe Klein’s controversial roman-e-clef. The President as a smooth womaniser.

Air Force One: Harrison Ford as the President a hero who trumps the villains hijacking his plane in mid-air.

Murder at 1600: A murder in the White House and finger of suspicion at the President and his wayward son.

The Shadow Conspiracy: Another murder leads a staffer to a White House conspiracy.

Independence Day: Aliens blow up the White House to the applause of audience. President leads the fight back.

Mars Attacks!: Aliens successfully kill the President.

Escape from LA: President tries to have his own daughter killed.

Absolute Power: President’s mistress is murdered by the Secret Service and he leads the cover up.

My Fellow Americans: Vice-President sends assassins after two ex-Presidents.

Dave: President is a bumbling, incompetent fool.

The American President: President as a romantic widower.