( You can watch that interview here.) Trump was exuberant in his love for the film in general and for the character of Charles Foster Kane specifically - a megalomaniac demagogue who builds an empire but ends up empty and alone. In this scenario, Trump’s well-documented love for the film Citizen Kane is instructive, since he expounded on it in a 2002 interview with documentarian Errol Morris. Or maybe he’s never seen it and is just making stuff up.īut it’s also possible he’s seen it, many times, and doesn’t get it. Or perhaps he fell asleep halfway through. (What did Trump mean by “Too easy!” you ask? Who, truly, can say?)Īs Jordan Hoffman writes at Vanity Fair, it’s possible the president confused Mutiny on the Bounty with some other movie involving a mutiny. But it also doesn’t make much sense from a basic story standpoint: The mutineers in Mutiny on the Bounty don’t “need so much from the Captain,” so much as they object to his wanton cruelty and dehumanizing leadership. Such a comparison isn’t very flattering to Trump, and suggests he’s going to get thrown overboard. In that case, the Democratic governors would be the Bounty’s mutinying crew. If you squint, Trump’s tweet could seem to align him with Bligh, the domineering and inhumane captain. The ship’s captain, William Bligh, was reportedly a cruel, hubristic, paranoid commander, and he treated his first mate, a man named Fletcher Christian, so brutally that Christian led a mutiny against him. Mutiny on the Bounty, in brief, is based on an actual mutiny that took place in 1787, when a ship called HMS Bounty was sent to Tahiti to collect breadfruit plants, to grow in the West Indies to feed enslaved people in the colonies. Nonetheless, it seems clear the president doesn’t really grasp the plot. It’s even possible he was talking about the 1984 film The Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson. Or he might have meant the 1962 version starring Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando. But Trump could have been referring to the 1935 Charles Laughton-Clark Gable version, which won Best Picture at the 1936 Oscars. It’s probably also not the second, a 1933 film called In the Wake of the Bounty, which marked Errol Flynn’s screen debut. Trump didn’t say which of the five versions of the story is one of his “all time favorite movies.” It’s probably not the first, a silent film made in 1916, which has been lost to the sands of time. Trump on economic reopening, France extends lockdown: Tuesday’s coronavirus newsĪs others have been quick to point out, Trump’s tweet reveals his understanding of Mutiny on the Bounty to be limited at best. And at a press conference on Monday, he falsely insisted that he has the “ ultimate authority” to override individual states’ protective measures against the pandemic. Trump’s tweet is fairly obviously an attempt to attach the rebellious and conspiratorial concept of a “mutiny” to these governors’ coordinated efforts he insisted the same day in two additional tweets that only the federal government and the president are allowed to “open up the states” (which is not true). Jay Inslee announced a similar pact between himself and the governors of California and Oregon. Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that he and the governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Rhode Island were working together to “ plan a safe and coordinated reopening” of their states’ businesses and systems following weeks of pandemic-related shutdowns. Presumably, Trump was responding to two announcements on Monday from several Democratic governors in the Northeast and on the West Coast. “A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. “Tell the Democrat Governors that Mutiny On The Bounty was one of my all time favorite movies,” the president wrote. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Tell the Democrat Governors that “Mutiny On The Bounty” was one of my all time favorite movies.
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