No Oscar buzz . . . yet.
The release of the documentary Melania, which is about what the wife of Donald Trump was busy doing during the lead-up to his second inauguration, has been met with a predictable chorus of critical carping. Most if not all of which I’m sure is well deserved. Yes, the film itself was a $40 million bribe that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was making to the Trump family in order to curry favour. And I’m sure it’s every bit as bad and soul destroying a movie as reviewers have been saying. Here’s Mark Kermode, a reliably level-headed Everyman: “It’s horrible. It’s the most depressing experience I’ve ever had in the cinema and I’ve seen A Serbian Film, I’ve seen Cannibal Holocaust. I’ve never felt this depressed in my life in the cinema.”
That may be a fair take, but Melania is not a unique phenomenon. The way celebrities use their money and power to shape the public presentation of their lives is a subject I’ve been banging on about for years. Most recently I talked about how the tennis player Naomi Osaka was being lionized by the media for her attempt to assert “narrative control” of her public image, and related it to other sports figures like Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, and Venus and Serena Williams who had all been the subject of documentary and autobiographical films they had also been involved in the production of. As I put it then:
Everyone wants that kind of control. But who has that privilege? Only the most powerful. Billionaires. Those with “massive social-media followings.” Celebrities who own their own media companies.
Melania Trump is another figure in the exact same mold, and served as a producer on Melania. As I said over ten years ago in a post on celebrity biographies:
Whatever or whoever the subject, the same rules of the dance apply and the “sausage-making process” does its job. There’s nothing sinister or even wrong with that, but you have to always keep it in mind any time you’re getting access to a source that has a clear interest in spinning a story a particular way. Which is to say, any source. The story you’re hearing is the one they want you to hear. It may be true, but that’s beside the point.
I find the way people try to draft celebrities or billionaires onto different political teams ridiculous. Some rich and powerful people may be slightly better than others, but none of them are the friends or (shudder) “allies” of the common people, and their program when it comes to trying to “control the narrative” of how they are presented in the media is always exactly the same. To call it whitewashing or propaganda or advertising for their personal brand should go without saying. No one should be surprised at what Melania is like, not because of the kind of person Melania Trump is but because they’ve already seen this movie and read this book countless times already. If you’re not seeing or reading something that someone doesn’t want you to see or read then it’s just an ad.
Alex Good 
Exclusively in theatres? I didn’t think people went to the pics much anymore, let alone to see a ‘documentary’. I’d be surprised if it makes much money over here, though USA people might like to see it.
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It’s apparently done some business, for a documentary. But that’s mainly been critics and it’s come nowhere near making back what they paid for it. Which was probably never expected anyway.
I doubt it’s playing much on your side of the pond!
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It’s on at our Cineworld, and all the others across the country so it is out there, but I’d be surprised if the screenings are well attended.
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Huh. That does surprise me a bit. Must be the slow season for new releases.
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6 new horror movies, 4 actions, 2 dramas, an animation and a comedy, plus Melania, though you could include her in any of those except actions if you were wicked, (which I’m not🤣).
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No sign of it playing here. And I did see a bunch of movies I’d never heard of. Haven’t checked listings in a while!
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Hate to say it, but if you live in a country that isn’t playing it (when it seems other countries are), that might be something to worry about.
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Probably more the result of there only being two cinemas in town . . .
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In the grand scheme of things, which is worse: this forgettable whitewash, or the propagandist reviews, more than one of which compare the director with Leni Riefenstahl?
(And to be honest I’m merely assuming this is a “forgettable whitewash” because I haven’t seen it and never will. It just stands to reason.)
Still, I don’t understand what you mean when you talk about celebrities not being part of political teams. I absolutely agree they aren’t friends of the common people, but you aren’t trying to tell us that Robert DeNiro isn’t part of the Democrat team, are you? Or Katy Perry, or George Clooney, or Jimmy Kimmel, or…the list goes on and on and on. I mean, that would be insane. : -)
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I think we disagree a bit. I see most celebs and billionaires and such as being on the same side: their own. By all accounts Rupert Murdoch despises Trump. During Trump’s first administration Bezos got a lot of credit for standing up to him. They both fell into line because they know where their interests lie. Same as Zuckerberg and others. But if any of these people have teams now it’s the team of oligarchs.
Trump himself is someone with no clear political team. As even the Republicans running against him in the last cycle (I think rightly) claimed, the only reason he wanted to be president again was to make money and stay out of jail.
I was struck when he was elected back in 2024 by something that was said by one political commentator:
What do Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. all have in common?
Ten years ago they were all Democrats.
So yeah, my line is that the only side these people are on is their own, and all their image-building is just brand management. If I saw the Melania doc I’m sure I’d hate it as much as I hated Hillary Clinton’s book on the 2016 election, and for much the same reason. When it comes to this kind of stuff they’re all the same.
People do call me excessively cynical though.
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And what happened 10 years ago? That’s right about when Me Too and the overt takeover of progressive ideology began. Overt, because it was coming long before that. But it’s perfectly reasonable that attitudes changed at that time — as demonstrated by all the many many expressions of people talking about how they didn’t leave the democrat party, it left them. Which is true. Old-school liberals who support the new progressive liberalism are nothing but suicidal, whether they realize it or not. (Though they really ought to get a clue from the fact that they are now against many ideas and policies they formerly supported simply because progressivism has branded Trump as Hitler.)
As for the celebs, “Hollywood” has always been wildly egotistical, and rapidly liberal. They look out for themselves, but they also believe this stuff. Saying otherwise seems to me just a convenient way to ignore their part in the democat machine. Shall we also separate the “scientists” (who also look out for themselves) and the news media (who also look out for themselves) and the businesspeople (who also look out for themselves) — if you do that, to use the obvious metaphor, you fail to see the forest for the trees. This is such a problem because the progressives did their work well and they’ve got all of it working together.
Now, billionaires…whatever. But even they have their own ideas. It’d be kind of crazy to say Elon is only against woke because he’s looking out for himself, given the status of his son. I know you hate the guy, but come on, that’s gotta suck. And it’s going to alter your thinking.
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I think I’m more cynical than that. I think a lot of what you call the new progressive liberalism was just a grift. I’m more of an old-school lefty (“liberal” I think has different shades of meaning in Canada and the U.S.) and I frankly found the latest round of identity politics or PC or call it what you will to be full of posturing and phoniness. By the same token, I think a lot of the anti-woke stuff is something similar. It feeds the algorithm. As for Elon, I don’t hate him as much as I think he’s a very damaged person and he’s gone off the rails. I really think the Internet ate his brain. Which is weird given that what it did to him was exactly what he warned people was going to happen to them if they spent too much time online. The amount of time he and Trump spend just shitposting and trolling is shocking, especially given how you’d think they’d have a lot more important things to do.
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