A number of years back I was a consultant on a murder case in Bakersfield. It involved a defendant who was accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend. The prosecution wanted to use against him the Gangsta rap lyrics he co-authored with his cousin and which they sang around the Bakersfield area, at his high school, and at local teenage parties. They had even sent audition tapes to record companies.
The prosecution was canny but not fair minded. She intended to imply a murderous state of mind capacity in any defendant who would write and perform gangsta rap. She knew that the jury in Bakersfield, rather white and lower middle class, when viewing and having read aloud the lyrics would probably share her presumption.
The lyrics were typical gangsta' rap lyrics, violent, angry, misanthropic, and misogynistic, in other words offensive to just about everyone who had not grown up with the music and/or was over 30, but especially to women, what with hoes, bitches, and pussies galore lyrics sprinkled about the musical evidence like parmesan on spaghetti at a Corleone mob war council.
The defense hired me to argue the case about the admissibility of such evidence into the trial as such evidence would be more inflammatory and prejudicial than probative. Eventually we were able to get most of the most egregious lyrics deemed inadmissible for exactly those reasons.
Among the arguments I made to the judge during pre-trial was that the lyrics were written for public consumption of a music genre that was expected to show such braggadocio, expected to use these buzz words and images, and that the lyrics penned by these two high school students were totally derivative. The fact that the defendant had no priors, was a class president, state track champ and member of his church youth group also suggested little relation between the mind of the defendant and the poseur pretenses of the lyrics. Further, they could not be used as a projective test, a Rorschach, because they were performance art pieces, unoriginal, co-authored. It would be like convicting Wes Craven of a crime of murder in large measure because of his filmography as a horror film director.
Which brings me to Entertainment Weekly's latest journey into the silly season of presidential politics: asking Barack Obama and John McCain about their popular culture chops and appetites. Among other things, they answered questions about what are their favorite movies, who are their favorite film presidents, favorite movies, the first film they can remember seeing, whether they cried at it, and the last film seen.
Let's get things straight here. These answers, these film choices, mean absolutely nothing. Repeat: THESE FILM CHOICES MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. They tell us little if anything about the candidate, except possibly age and gender, and are in no way construable as footprints on the royal road to their respective unconscious minds. Nor do they serve as metaphoric chicken entrails illuminating presidential worthiness. Like the Bakersfield murder defendant's rap lyrics, they are "performed" to impress an audience, not as a moment of autobiographic truth, not as a pop culture, bite size roman a clef. They are answered in anticipation of a nation poring over their meaning and divining their implications for a candidate's vote worthiness.
The truth is, any candidate who answered them in any way that would make them look bad or weird (Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer is my all-time favorite film) would be too dumb for office. "Truth" is not always the gold standard. The gold standard, when it comes to question areas like popular culture preferences, is to recognize the context of what you are doing and how the real "truth" may, for no good or valid reason, be later used against you because people think that everything in popular culture is a potential moment of real "truth." Telling the real truth about you positions on policy issues are another matter entirely. I mean, if every politician lied as readily on substantive issues as our Supreme Court nominees do now, where would this country be, I ask you? Good question.
But, you persist, what did they say, what did they answer, what do all these answers mean, psychologically, you know?
Okay, okay. You are insistent, aren't you. I'll tell you. But only a taste.
First Movie Remembered. Obama answers earliest movie recalled is Born Free. McCain answered Bambi. Both animal movies. They're both senators. Both with higher aspirations. Coincidence? I think not.
Born Free is about African lions raised by Whites and eventually released into freedom. Barack's father was Black, African. His mother is White, American. His father's left them. His mother raised him, not as White, not as Black, but as a young man of two important cultures. She gave him the incentive, the freedom, the desire pursue an education. This enabled him to stand on his own; to go into the jungle of politics where he understands the White and the Black worlds and offer the people of his nation his vision. Clearly, Born Free has deep autobiographic resonance.
McCain saw Bambi when it was first released (he's older), he wept when Bambi's mother was killed by hunters (oh, yeah, Barack teared up upon the release of the lions. Both candidates were sensitive kids.), McCain sometimes hunts (but he hated the hunters who killed Bambi's mother. Hmm, well... ) McCain is a warrior, a maverick, but he's also a compassionate conservative, like Bambi, perhaps, like all animals that obey natural law, the jungle law, but are not unfeeling. McCain, is a hero (we're told), who cares for his fellow Americans. They're all his friends. I know that's true because he always says so.
Bambi, when he grows up wants to save the forest from social and political fires. He wants to save his friends. McCain too. Bambi helps all the other animals flee the fires of war and actions of foolish men --McCain too -- and ultimately finds love and purpose in a relationship with a doe named..., well, wait; let's not push this parallelism too far. I've heard McCain has had quite a few does in his time.
Favorite movie: McCain's favorite movie is Viva Zapata, a Brando film about a Mexican revolutionary. A hero to his people. A war hero and a politician. A mirror image of McCain, yes?
Obama's favorite movie: Godfather. He admires criminals?
No. That's not it. Rumor had it that Obama always wanted to be Italian, always longed for a close knit family, something he felt, in many ways, he missed out on. It's not the crimes of the Corleones he envies, it is the family which, like his country, he would never take sides against. Barack is no terrorist. Like McCain, he is one of us.
Need I go on! Real answers? Not too likely. Real meaning of these answers, if they were true? Bias renders interpretation. I expose my own "guilty as charged sir," in this blog. Pop culture questions as personality tests? Balderdash! Some even call them hidden truths, like Who would you rather have a beer with? I call their answers chicken entrails with scrawny political legs that promise nourishment and deliver delusion. Let's move on to the real issues to know where these candidates stand... or did stand...and may even stand again.
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A number of years back I was a consultant on a murder case in Bakersfield. It involved a defendant who was accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend. The prosecution wanted to use against him the Gangsta rap lyrics he co-authored with his cousin and which they sang around the Bakersfield area, at his high school, and at local teenage parties. They had even sent audition tapes to record companies. 
