The HRC Campaign: As Formalized and Predictable as Kabuki Theater

Now they run Tim Kaine up the media flagpole.

Yawn.

Kaine rises to top of Clinton’s veep list

The HRC campaign is as formalized and predictable as is kabuki theater.

Understanding Kabuki theater depends on the understanding of minute gestures and movements throughout a performance.

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The play itself takes second place to the performance; so important is the actor and his virtuosic display of skill, that early kabuki was not based on scripts but rather on short scenarios.

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The actor’s skill is comprised of a set of performance conventions in movement, voice, gesture, and dance. Kabuki consists of a finite repertoire of known movements and gestures as well as a repertoire of elocution, or the manner in which one speaks one’s lines. These well-known and traditional conventions are called in Japanese kata, which means “pattern,” “model,” or “form.”

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Each gesture, each movement, each way of inflecting or speaking lines, is highly formal and traditional. As a member of the audience, you know exactly what to expect, what kinds of movements will come where, and all the excitement of the play lies not in anticipation of the dramatic elements of the play, bu the expectation of the actor’s execution of these movements, gestures, or speeches.

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Have you ever read a better description of the presidential elections of the past 30 years or so? From the primaries right on up to the expected denouement? It’s all pose, all the time.

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The election itself takes second place to the performance; so important is the actor’s virtuosic display of skill, national elections are not based on issues but rather on short sound bites.

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The candidates’ (and their organizations’) skill is comprised of a set of performance conventions in movement, voice, gesture, and the dispersion of same through the media. Modern national U.S. politics consists of a finite repertoire of known movements and gestures as well as a repertoire of elocution, or the manner in which one speaks one’s lines. These well-known and traditional conventions are similar to Japanese kabuki kata, which means “pattern,” “model,” or “form.”

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Each gesture, each movement, each way of inflecting or speaking lines, is highly formal and traditional. As a member of the audience, you know exactly what to expect, what kinds of movements will come where, and all the excitement of the play lies not in anticipation of the dramatic elements of the play, but the expectation of the actor’s execution of these movements, gestures, or speeches.

And there we have it in a nutshell. The only real “competition” has to do with how well the individual actors act out their parts.

Read on.
Now…HRC is running a very, very traditional campaign. Thousands of assistants strewn across a sprawling bureaucracy, money flowing like water from the traditional sources. etc. Trump, on the other hand, has literally invented a new set of kabuki katas to fit the new theater form in which they are being performed…the theater of instant news. (The instanet, to coin a phrase.) Instant visual news, instant video news where the participants’ acting skills can be viewed again and again and again by their audience. This style is much simpler and more direct than the previous styles, which consisted mostly of elision and the avoidance of saying…or acting…anything that could be considered less than what we laughingly call “presidential.” JFK and Barack Obama were the most successful predecessors of this simplification and development of what have become tiresome old acting cliches, but Trump has taken this to absolutely new heights. And in doing so he beat the pants off over 15 more or less “traditional” political kabuki actors during the RatPublican primaries. He took ’em all down.

How?

Why?

Because his act is much more clearly and easily understandable to a much broader set of people than are the traditional acts. From his hairdo to his outfit and on to his various gestures and poses, there is absolutely no question about it being an “act.” He has embraced that idea and made it his own.

More from the link above:

Each of these styles conveys a particular type of meaning. For instance, the most crowd-pleasing and universal of the movement kata is the mie. In mie , the actor, in an emotional high point of the play, winds up with a couple movements and freezes in a certain position for a length of time, often for a very long time. He distorts his face and may even cross his eyes, and holds this dramatic pose while the tsuke player slowly pounds out three beats (a musical kata called battari). This is the pose that wood-block prints (ukiyo-e) of famous actors most frequently portray, and mie represents that moment in the play in which the character’s inner passion, anger, despair, or madness is about to break through the surface. The mie pose represents that point where the conflict between inner passions and outward behavior can no longer be maintained and the character is about to explode with passion, anger, madness, or violence.

Sound familiar?

It oughta.