Episode 124: Being There & American Plutocracy

Being There is a 1979 political satire/comedy based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Jerzy Kosiński. 

⚠️ Spoilers lie ahead!

➡️ Chance's obsession with the TV looks an awful lot like the modern obsession with apps and social media.

➡️ Ben & Eve Rand see an intelligent, temporarily embarrassed millionaire on hard times because that's what they want to see.

➡️ Plutocracy protects its own. Outsiders are not welcome. It's like George Carlin's comment about one big club that you and I are not a part of.

➡️ tHe OrAnGe MaN iS a MavEriCk! nO oNe CaN PreDicT HiM! Really? 😒 If he didn't serve the needs of the plutocrats, he wouldn't be there. 

Links:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078841/

https://consaracytheories.com/f/of-course-theyre-not-concerned

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My award-winning biography of Dag is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

My forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will be available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats on July 29th! 

Transcript

 Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please excuse any typos!

Sara Causey discusses the 1979 film Being There, based on Jerzy Koszczynski's novel, which satirizes television, mass media, and American plutocracy. The film follows Chance, played by Peter Sellers, a simple-minded gardener who, after the death of his wealthy employer, is mistaken for a wealthy entrepreneur by powerful figures. Chance's literal gardening advice is misinterpreted as political wisdom, leading to his national fame and even presidential influence. The film critiques the power dynamics of wealth and the media's role in shaping public perception, highlighting the absurdity of societal hierarchies and the manipulation of public figures.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Being There, satire, American plutocracy, Peter Sellers, Chauncey Gardner, television, political spin, wealth, race, social media, AI chatbots, economic policy, presidential election, tabula rasa, systemic blindness.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about the 1979 film Being There, which is based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Jerzy Koszczynski. It not only pokes fun at television and mass media and political spin, but it also foretells, and it kind of gives us a little wink and a nudge towards the rise of American plutocracy, that there's this web of folk behind the scenes that are quite wealthy, and they're really the ones pulling the strings, not that we needed any reminders around these here parts, because we already know that, but nevertheless, being there is a clever, funny, amusing film. In order for me to review it and to make the points that I want to make, I will have to spoil it for you. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend that you watch it first. It is well worth your time. I love a good satire. I'm in the process of writing a couple of good satires, as a matter of fact. So, it's a genre that is near and dear to my heart. And satire can sometimes be laugh out loud, funny. Sometimes it can be more like, oh, that's witty, I see what you did there, and then other times it can be a bit terrifying. That's like in the film Bob Roberts. There are times that I was watching that, laughing out loud, and then we get to the end where he's talking about we must die, we must kill, and I'm like, oh, all of a sudden I feel sick to my stomach, and I feel like satire is one of those awesome genres where there's room for all of the above, there's room for laughing, there's room for a wry smile, and then there's room to be mildly horrified, and being there is funny. I would say most of the time, not laugh out loud funny, but it's amusing, and it's like there are so many moments where you find yourself going, "yep, I can, I can. As absurd as this seems to be, I can totally see it happening in some respects. My grandpa loved this movie, but for him he always stayed on the surface. For him, it was like, oh, simpleton man gets dis gets discovered by rich people, and the rich people are idiots because they think the simple man is brilliant. Ha ha ha. He never really went any deeper than that, but when you go deeper than that, when you get to the marrow of the bone, that's where all the juicy good stuff is. So, as I say, if you have not seen it, please go watch it, download this episode, or bookmark it, and come back to it later. After you've seen it, there will be spoilers, so go and watch it first. You may have to pay a few bucks to rent it. I have not found it on streaming, which is always subject to change, but if you spend three or $4 to rent it, well worth your time. So, let's saddle up, get our frosty beverage of choice, and we'll take this ride.

Just a reminder, Sara's award-winning biography of Dag Hammarskjold, Decoding the Unicorn, is available on Amazon. Her next nonfiction project, Simply Dag, will release on July 29th. To learn more about her other works, please visit SaraCausey.com Now, back to the show.

Ostensibly, the film is about this middle-aged man named Chance, who's played by Peter Sellers, and he lives a rather secluded, sheltered life inside this wealthy old man's townhouse in Washington, DC, and his job is to tend the garden, take care of the plants and flowers, and he just never leaves. The wealthy old man is like bed-bound, and you can tell that he's on his last leg, he doesn't have much time left, and there are televisions in every room, like even out in the greenhouse, Chance is surrounded by televisions, and he loves the television, also living in this townhouse with Chance and the old man is an African American maid named Louise, who's played really well by the actress Ruth Attaway. So it's kind of like Chance has the old man, but the old man doesn't do much of anything for him, other than supply the televisions, and the old man has also made some of his old wardrobe and underwear and things available, so that chance will actually have clothes to wear, and this is important to the plot, actually, because the clothing and the underwear, everything is bespoke and expensive, but it's out of date, so it's like this bespoke expensive clothing for. From like the 1930s or 40s, so it's out of date by late 70s standards, but at one time you could tell that it was well made, well crafted, customized garments. Chances life pretty much revolves around taking care of the garden and the flowers, and then watching the television and Louise has spent some time with him and done some things for him, but it's basically like because he never leaves the townhouse, his whole idea of the world of life of society comes from what he has seen on the television, the old man dies, and Louise is basically trying to tell him, "Hey, we don't have jobs anymore, but it's like he can't quite grasp what's going on. Finally, some lawyers come by, and they pretty much tell him, "Like, you're going to have to get out of here. This is not your property anymore. He packs a bag and all of this expensive bespoke clothing and customized monogrammed underwear, and so forth, and leaves, and that's when he finally sees the world for the first time, and we, as the viewers, see a very like crime-ridden, run-down Washington, DC. A boy tries to hold Chance at knife point to rob him, and Chance is taken in a moment that really is quite funny. Chance has taken one of the remote controls for the televisions with him, and so chance just stands there trying to change the channel, like maybe I can get rid of this young boy that's trying to rob me at knife point by pressing the change the channel button on the TV remote, and then he, he's passing by a shop window, and you know, like back in the day, they used to have, like, with TV stores and stuff, they'd sometimes they'd have a video camera pointed at you. The young bloods won't remember this at all, some of us oldies will, but they used to have a video camera pointed at you, where, like, as you walked by, you could wave and you'd be on all the television screens, so it's like that. Chance walks by one of those old school shops and sees himself captured by the video camera in this TV store window, and so he's having this moment because he's like, "Oh my god, you know, this is TV, this is the machine that I have glorified. This has been my window to the outside world, this has been my friend, this has been my source of entertainment. So he's not even paying attention to the rest of the world around him. Now I want to just take a pause here before we ever even get into anything else about the plot or me trying to analyze it. Let's just think about this for a second, because this reminds me so much in modernity of people who were always glued to the cell phone, like you see these horror videos of people falling in manholes, people getting hit by cars, etc. Because they're in a busy city, or they're walking down a street, or a sidewalk, and they are just not paying attention at all to the world around them.

They don't have good situational awareness anymore, and they're glued to the phone, and that's basically what happens to chance, except it's with a TV, so he steps backwards off the sidewalk, off the curb, and there's this limousine that this wealthy woman, named Eve Rand, who's played by Shirley McClain, it's her limousine, the limo accidentally backs into chance, and of course it's like, oh my god, we've hit this man, and he may need to see a doctor, and you know, the so the wealthy woman is trying to think about what can I do for damage control. It's not even really so much like what can I do because this man has been hit by our car, it's what can I do for damage control. We don't want to be sued. We don't want this guy going to the hospital, and then some, some doctor outside of our control start saying, like, well, who hit you? And, oh, they have deep pockets, and don't you think you should do something about this? So she says, like, my husband is quite ill. We have doctors at the house. Why don't you just come with us? So they get back in the back of the limousine, and she gives him a scotch or a bourbon, you know, some some fine type of whiskey to drink, which he chokes on, and she asks him, while he's choking on this whiskey, she's asking him his name, and he says that his name is Chance the Gardener, but she mishears it as Chauncey Gardner, and that was one of the moments in the movie that I think my grandpa could have watched that 500 times and it would never have been unfunny to him, because Peter Sellers is choking on this whiskey, saying Chance the Gardener, and she's like, oh, Chauncey Gardner. Yeah, now even though this may seem super unrelated, I'm also going to put a pin in this and say something else about it. I've been reading here and there as I have time the book Code Name Pale Horse, which was written by Scott Payne, and it's his book about when he was working for the Foxtrot Bravo India, and he's trying to uncover America's neo-Nazis, there are aspects of the book that you know I'm not really sure of, because it's like what I've said before about people that claim to be ex-Charlie India Alpha. To me, it's like, are they ever really ex-agency? Is somebody ever really and truly an ex-spy? I mean, all that stuff that got put into them doesn't just go away, so just because somebody says, "Hey, I'm ex-agency of any kind, I don't necessarily jump to believe that that's true. I'm only to about chapter six in the book, and it makes me want to take a shower every time I read it. I just want to go take a shower, because I'm at the point where he has mostly just been talking about hanging out with biker gangs on the East Coast, and like, oh, some of them fight pit bulls and they fence stolen goods, and they want to get into narcotics, and they screw around, and they call their wife the old lady, and it's like, I just kind of want to go take a shower, like, I don't, you know, it's not, it's not really reading for pleasure by any means, but here's why I'm bringing this up, even though it may seem totally unrelated, it isn't when they're in the back of that limousine and Peter Sellers is like, "Oh, dance the gardener, and he's choking on the whiskey because he hasn't been drinking whiskey, she mishears Chauncey Gardner, because that's what she wants to hear. He's standing there in a nice suit, even though it's old-fashioned. It is a nice, expensive suit, because it came from the old rich man who died, and he's in the back of the limousine, and she doesn't want to hear Chance the Gardener, it's like she wants to hear Chauncey Gardner, so that's what her mind fills in, and that's going to be an important theme in this film, really. It's a crux of the film in some respects, and it reminds me of something that Scott Payne says in this Code Name Pale Horse book, because he talks about there are different things that, if you're working undercover, you can't say or do.

There was one moment when he said, like, I tried to steer these biker gangs away from selling drugs, because, you know, the Foxtrot Bravo India can't supply them with drugs to be sold to Americans, and I laughed. I, that I did laugh out loud. I was like, oh, of course they can't. Of course, I thought immediately of Gary Webb and his exposes, which I will at some point talk about Gary Webb and what happened to him, the film Killed the Messenger, and then also the book that he wrote, and the harrowing circumstances, you know, that he went through to expose what was happening with Iran-Contra and the Charlie India Alpha, and drugs very much being put on the street to the American public, particularly African Americans, so of course, of course, they couldn't. Of course, these agencies would never do anything to the American public anyway. He says that it's about putting forth the seed or the kernel of an idea and then letting the other person's mind or letting the other person's imagination take it from there, you don't actually, as an undercover agent, say all that much. In fact, you have to be really quite careful about what you say and what you don't say, but you put just enough information out there so that the other person's mind or the other person's imagination fills in the blanks for you, so it's not really even about what you've said, it's about what they decided to hear, or how they decided to interpret the words that have come out of your mouth, and that's what I thought of in this scene, is it's like she's hearing Chauncey Gardner, because that's what she wants to hear, so she gets Chance, aka Chauncey, to the estate to be seen by this man named Dr. Robert Allenby, and he's actually like a sort of live-in doctor for Ben Rand, who's played by Melvin Douglas, and he's a, he's significantly older than Eve ran, she's kind of like the, you know, the younger trophy wife type. So, Ben is, it's like he's had this in-house hospital built for himself because he's dying from a blood disease, and he wants to be able to stay in the mansion. I'm calling it a house, but that's not correct. It's a mansion, it's an estate. The doctor checks him out, he doesn't have like serious wounds from the car accident, but it's a bit like, why don't you stay here for just a little while, so we can keep an eye on you, because they're still thinking in terms of this man might have some money and we don't want to piss him. Off, but even if he doesn't, we don't want to get sued. Let's just be nice. Let's, let's play this thing really nice and really polite, so that nobody gets extorted, nobody gets sued. Chauncey goes in to meet Ben Rand, and he's wearing these out of date 1930s clothes, but they're expensive and they're bespoke, and then on top of that, because Chauncey has been living with this old man in the old townhouse and watching TV, his manners and his affectations are different from that which is modern. Everything seems old-fashioned, and he's also a bit taciturn. He tends to listen more than he speaks, and then when he does speak, it's almost like it'll be things like you have to prune the roses, you have to prune the old roses to make sure the new roses will grow, you have to make sure that the garden is properly tended and doesn't have overgrowth, like he'll, he'll make like very flat statements that really are not even germane at all to the conversation, but here we go again, Ben assumes that Chauncey is an upper-class smart entrepreneur, a businessman, but something has happened. He has fallen on hard times, and so Ben is sitting there, like, "Oh, the regulations, they just.. anybody should be an entrepreneur, anybody should be able to start their own business, but my God, these government regulations, they make it so hard on the businessman in this country, and so he assumes that Chauncey has been a business owner, has had some kind of enterprise that he made some good money from, but through government regulations and shitty economic policies, Chauncey has lost this business and just needs the opportunity to get back into entrepreneurship now.

Chauncey has said nothing of the sort, which is very important to the point here. He has said nothing like that, nothing whatsoever. This has been filling all of it in in his mind, because that's what he wants to think. And by the way, before I forget, it's worth mentioning that Melvin Douglas, who plays Ben Rand, won in 1980 He won the Oscar for best supporting actor. He even beat out Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now to win for his role in being there. He is, he is really very good as Ben Rand, and he is totally convincing. He just looks the part of wealthy magnate living on an estate has his own entire hospital built out on one floor of the mansion, and he's sitting there listening to Chauncey, and Chauncey just gives these pithy, weird little one-liners where it's like, well, in order to make sure that the orchid grows, it must have enough sunlight and water, and he's like, oh, yes, quite so, yes, absolutely. I understand exactly what you mean, so it, because Chauncey is staying with Eve and Ben, he gets exposure to the, the US President, and the president in this film is played by Jack Wharton, so it's like basically just because of Chauncey's proximity to these rich people being their house guests, their somewhat injured house guests, and with Ben Rand being a confidant and an advisor of the president, because, of course, of course, some rich motherfucker living in a mansion like that is going to have the ear of the president, of course. Of course, it couldn't be otherwise. So, because Chauncey has proximity to Ben and Eve at their mansion, he now also has proximity to the president, and Ben introduces Chauncey to the president, and they get into a discussion about the economy and they're talking about stimulating economic growth, but Chauncey is thinking about the garden and he starts talking about the changing of the seasons in the garden. Well, in the spring this happens, whereas in the winter everything goes dormant, but the president thinks that Chauncey is giving him political advice, and that it's optimistic political advice, because it's like, well, in the winter everything goes bare and dormant, but then in the spring the garden comes back to life, and the president thinks he's saying, okay, we've been in shitty economic circumstances, but don't worry, spring is coming, and so then he quotes in a speech that he gives, like a televised speech, he quotes Chauncey Gardner as well. Well, like the great Chauncey Gardner says, in the winter everything goes dormant, then in the spring it all comes roaring like that, and it is funny because it's one of those moments, like this is so absurd and. It's so very plausible this could happen, so Chauncey becomes like nationally famous. He starts going to important events, events, and important parties. He even gets budded up with a Soviet ambassador. He goes on a talk show, kind of like The Tonight Show, where he starts talking about what a serious gardener should do. Meanwhile, they're kind of Johnny Carson stand-in thinks that he's criticizing the president, like, "Oh, well, tell me more about this. What should a serious gardener do? They think that he's hedging - pardon the pun - they think that he's hedging and speaking in metaphors, and that he's really trying to make a criticism of current economic policy and the current administration, when really he's, he's quite literally talking about a garden and a serious gardener. Louise, the former maid, is watching this interview on television and is just totally gobsmacked, like, "Oh my god, Chance the gardener is on TV, he's on the fucking Tonight Show, giving political comments, but they're not even political comments, and she talks about, like, how simple he was, all the things that he never learned how to do, all he did was watch the TV, and she makes the comment that all you really need to succeed in America is to be white, like, if you're white and stupid as shit, you can still make it based on skin color, and that's an important point as well. That's what what's being said here about race in America.

I mean, think about the various eugenicists and neo-Nazis, and just flat out Nazis, Nazi Nazis, who have tried to use the excuse, the idea that other races are inferior to the Caucasian race, that Caucasians are somehow automatically imbued with a higher IQ, and that any other race on the planet is automatically imbued with a lower IQ, which isn't true. You have to look at people individually, not, oh, well, you're part of this group or you're part of that group, and so automatically that means something. No, it doesn't. So Chauncey is going all through Washington society, and naturally, with this proximity to the president, the shush service, and even like the KGB and some foreign agencies are starting to investigate him. In fact, the president is also watching this parody of The Tonight Show, and his, the First Lady, is trying to get something going with him, but he can't perform because he's upset that Chauncey is on TV. Be like, well, here's what a serious gardener would do. So, you have the shift service and these various agencies trying to figure out who is this guy. It's like he just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He has no criminal background, no background of any kind. We can't find anything on this guy, it's like he's a phantom, so it's like the Americans are wondering, is he KGB, is he some sort of Soviet plant? The Soviets are wondering, is he, is he someone from the Charlie, India Alpha come to wreak some kind of havoc on us. Who is this guy? And everybody's assuming that he must be some elite tool of espionage, when really he just quite, quite simply is a gardener who got catapulted for bizarre reasons, but Dr. Allenby, Ben Rand's doctor, figures out that Chauncey is not speaking in metaphors, that he isn't some sagacious political expert that he really is just talking quite literally about gardening, and he thinks about going to blow the whistle to Ben, but he decides against it, because Ben has really gotten close with Chauncey, Ben takes him seriously, and so it's a bit like my employer is rich, for one thing, you know, it's a bit like saying the emperor doesn't have any clothes on. Do you really want to tell the emperor the emperor is the one signing your paychecks every week? Do you really want to be the one to tell the emperor you think you're wearing clothes, but you're naked? Do you want to be that guy? There's a reason why we have the idea of don't shoot the messenger, like, do you want to be that guy that does that? Plus, Ben is happy, and Ben has even started talking about, like, well, when I'm gone, Chauncey might be a suitable husband for you. You should think about getting close to him. So Dr. Allenby is like, I don't want to screw this up, it's really not my place to tell Ben, here you are in your final weeks, maybe even final days, and you have been frauded by this guy, probably through no fault of his own. You just totally misinterpreted the situation. Please don't fire me for saying this. He decides not to do that, so. Ben is nudging Eve, like, hey, maybe you should, you know, get something going with him. I'm not going to live forever. He could be a good person for you to hitch your wagon to. I think this also says something about gender roles in America, the idea that, particularly at that time, late 70s, soon to be 1980 that a woman couldn't have just made her own thing. It's like, okay, I'm a widow now, and I have inherited this estate, and it's mine. I want to do what I want to do, and if that means not getting in a hurry to husband hunt, so be it. So, there's also this idea that the widow is going to have to immediately start looking for the next man to come along and lead her and be the head of the household.

Eve, meanwhile, has already started to feel some feelings for Chauncey, so with Ben's sort of weird blessing, it's time for her to make a move, but the thing is, Chauncey, because his mind is in some respects so very childlike, he doesn't really understand what sex is, but he's seen the scene from the 1968 version of the Thomas Crown affair with who was in that, Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, I think he sees the kissing scene from that movie, so he mimics the kissing scene, but then when the scene ends, Chauncey stops because he doesn't really know what else to do. He's just imitating what he's seen, and it's not a genuine feeling. Eve doesn't understand why he was suddenly passionate, and then now he's not, so she asks him what he likes to do, and he says very innocently, I like to watch, and what he means is I like to watch television, but she thinks that what he's saying is I'm a voyeur, I want you to touch yourself while I watch you touching yourself. That's my kink. So, she thinks that he's revealing. Hey, I like, I like to watch you do it, but really saying, I just like to watch television. So, she's, she's taking care of herself and tittering and squealing and having an orgasm, and he's not even paying any attention. He's imitating a yoga television program, and so he's on the bed doing weird yoga poses and sticking his tongue out like a toddler might, and she's over there like hooping and having an out of body orgasm experience, and she genuinely enjoys it. She thinks that, like, oh, wow, I've taken a sexual journey, I've done something kinky, I've done something different with this man. Holy smokes, it was great for me. Meanwhile, in reality, nothing really romantic or, you know, bonding has has happened. Ben passes away, and Chauncey is there when it happens, and seems to genuinely be sad. Dr. Allenby asks him, like, what are you going to do? Like, that Eve cares about you, so what are you prepared to do here? And he says that he loves Eve very much, but of course we, as the viewer, get the sense that he's not saying that in a romantic way, he's not saying that in a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, and wife kind of way, and he also admits to Alan, be like, I'm, I'm just a gardener, like I've always been me, I've always been Chance the Gardener, these other things that they've ascribed to me, like that's on them, I am who I am, and I've never really made any bones about that. So he Chauncey leaves to go and tell Eve that Ben has passed away, and Dr. Allenby says, like, I understand now. Here's where it gets even more interesting, and I think even more prescient in some respects. We're at Ben's funeral, and the president is delivering a speech, and as he's giving his kind of, you know, a great titan of industry speech at the funeral, the pallbearers are already going through their maneuvers and their schemes, they're trying to think about who could be the next president when we have the next election, which would have been coming up because 1980 was an election year. Who, who's going to be the next president? And they agree that Chauncey Gardner should be the successor, he should be the next in line. Meanwhile, Chauncey is oblivious to all of this, and so he just kind of wanders off through the estate, and he walks across the surface of a lake without sinking. It doesn't appear to be frozen. It is winter time when this happens, but the lake does not appear to be frozen, so he's water walking in, I think, in some ways a nod. To the miracle of Jesus walking on top of the water without sinking, he pauses, he sticks his umbrella deep into the water, and then just continues on walking, while the president quotes something that Ben Rand had told him, which is life is a state of mind.

Shirley MacLaine, in an interview, had been quoted as saying that Peter Sellers really got into method acting for this, and, and really assumed the role of Chauncey Gardner, take taking it very seriously, and that there had originally been an ending where Eve goes out and finds, like, Chauncey is hanging out by the lake at the funeral, Eve finds him. They proclaim that they're in love, and then they both walk back to the estate together, but the director, Hal Ashby, just didn't like that ending for the film, so that's when he makes the more enigmatic and, you know, open to interpretation type of scene where Peter Sellers walks across a submerged platform, so that it looks like he's water walking at the end of the film. Now, I mentioned earlier that Melvin Douglas was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and won at the 1980 Academy Awards. Peter Sellers was nominated for Best Actor, but did not win, and he got aggravated because it's like he had been method for this filming and took it very seriously, but over the end credits there's a scene of outtakes, which I will admit to you are funny, because he's talking about you tell Raphael, I can't get it completely right, but it's basically like, you tell Raphael that the next time I see that asshole, I'm going to tell him he better not ever send his honky Western Union man to come, and it's just.. it's funny. It's one of those things where after you've seen the movie and you, you know the scene, and where they're talking about honky this, and it's.. it's too funny. Okay, it's funny, and Peter Sellers was aggravated that they made the decision to show the outtake over the end credits, because even though the movie is over, people are still going to stick around to watch him laughing, because Peter Sellers is breaking character and laughing, because it's a funny scene, and then you know it's like the more that he struggles to get it right the funnier it becomes, but sellers was aggravated that they decided to run that blooper reel over the end credits, because he felt that it took away, like it broke the spell of the movie, it took away from the ambiguous ending, and it took away from people really sitting there, chewing on what did this film mean. It's also been said that Peter Sellers believed that by breaking the spell and having that comedic scene of bloopers going over the end credits, it cost him the Oscar in 1980 Now, obviously, we don't know if that's completely true, because at the 1980 Oscars, Kramer versus Kramer won a lot of awards, it won for best picture, it won for best directing, Dustin Hoffman was the one who took best actor in a leading role, and then best actress in a supporting role was Meryl Streep, also from Kramer versus Kramer. As an aside, the best actress in a leading role that year was Sally Field for Norma Ray. That would be another good one for us to talk about at some point. I remember one time I was working at a job, I'm not going to say where or what the circumstances were, but they were trying to get us to do a lot of stuff that wasn't in our contract, and it really made me mad, and I did the Norma Ray. I even put union on the word union on a sign, and went through the office with it, and I was like, United we bargain, divided we beg, and the minute that ownership got word that I was talking about unionizing, they stopped what they were doing and let us just go back to the things that we were contracted to actually do, so that movie has a soft spot for me. As I mentioned early on, this kind of pokes fun at television and political spin. In some respects, it's like what Chauncey is doing with the television is what we see, so many people doing now with social media, and also AI chat bots, like I'm just in this technology to the point where I need to have it everywhere, like when Chauncey is still Chance the Gardener at the old man's estate, televisions are everywhere, and even after Louise is trying to tell him, like the old man has passed away, our lives are about to radically change.

He's just sitting there watching the television, like I don't want to hear anything else. This is my lifeline, this is my world, and it makes me think about, for example, AI psychosis, you. Hear these stories, and I may do an episode specifically about, like, what's the deal with AI psychosis, because they always seem to be some variation of the same basic person with the same basic story, somebody who doesn't seem to have any other lifeline, they don't seem to have anybody else in their life, whether that's a spouse, a best friend, a parent, a sibling, a cousin, a child, like somebody that they're close with, somebody who could come to them and say, Why are you on this chat bot for 18 hours a day? Do you not understand that that's unhealthy? It's unhealthy for you, and it's also unhealthy for the bot, because the more that the two of you do this together in an uninterrupted stream, it's basically like you're both going to start hallucinating. Like, why is there never a person around who can say that? Like, being on a chat bot like that 18 hours a day for weeks on end, of course, you're going to get insane garbage back out of the bot, so it's like how Chauncey wants to have a television in every room and to be absorbing the television 24 hours a day, like basically the TV, and he's only not absorbing the TV, TV consciously when he's asleep, but I'm sure it's still playing in the background, which is a bad thing to do, by the way. Now, back then, the television was not the way that it is now. There used to be this thing that came on, and my fellow kind of middle-aged and older folks will remember what I'm talking about, you know. They play the anthem, you'd see like Mount Rushmore and a bald eagle, and they play out with the anthem, and then it would just go off for the night, my end might not come back on again until I don't know what time it came on, was it six or seven in the morning, thereabouts. So it's like that's the only time his brain is getting a break. But for those of us in modernity, where it's 24/7 streaming regular networks, etc. I would just humbly ask you, don't lay up in bed with the TV going all night, you don't know what's being put into your brain, and when you're in that suggestible state, you don't want to basically be MK Ultra in yourself with a bunch of crazy shit from the TV going in your, in your head. So nowadays we have social media and AI chat bots that have become this kind of new Chauncey Gardner-esque substitute for the TV, like people who are just glued to the phone and glued to these chat bots all the time, but I want to add to that how it lays out for us the rise of the American plutocracy, a society that is ruled by and thoroughly managed by, and puppeteered by a wealthy ruling class. So it's like we have Chance the Gardener, who becomes Chauncey Gardner, and he never lies. It's not like he ever says, "Oh, yes, I am this wealthy, powerful man. I am a businessman who fell on hard times. Yes, you've read it completely correct. Ben and Eve make up the story on their own, and then it becomes the president, and then the American public making it up, just filling in the blanks. In terms of plutocracy, there are a few things I want to point out. Number one is the privatization of public governance, so in being there we have the traditional structures of democracy, and yes, I want to interject, because I don't want to get well. Actually, we're a republic. Yes, we are. Okay, but I'm just.. I'm going to use the term democracy as a catch-all for assessing the movie. Being there takes the traditional structures of democracy, like elections, policy debates, giving your positions, going on a legitimate interview to state your positions, statesmen, diplomacy, etc. And all of those structures are it's not so much that they're rendered irrelevant, it's that they are put on strictly for a show, because real power is not in Congress. It's really not even in the White House.

It's coming from the palatial estates of the billionaires, people like Ben Rand. So, when the president, who is played by, as I mentioned, Jack Warden in the film, goes to visit Rand, it's not that they're there, like, hey, we're two buddies from college, and we're just going to have a beer, and we're just, we're just going to talk, we're just going to hang out. You, I feel like I can trust you, and I just want to hang out. Let's talk about the last time that we played golf, or let's talk about the last time that we went fishing. It's not casual friendship, it's kissing the brass ring, except it's not Ben who's kissing the brass ring of the President. It's the other way around. It's the President kissing the brass ring of the billionaires. He is there to seek approval. He wants guidance. He wants to know, like, are the Richie riches pleased with what I'm doing, because you're handling me. So there is this prediction that actually accurately says billionaires and corporate entities are going to bypass what we would call the standard democratic process to be the ones that are dictating public policy, the president then is more like a mid level manager, the plutocrat or plutocrats are the true architects of the state, whereas the President of the United States is more like a mid-level manager. I would describe it thusly. There was a company I worked for where I was a branch manager, I had employees underneath me in the hierarchy, and then I had people above me, but my God, I had so many people above me as a branch manager. I had my boss, who was like a regional vice president, and then he had an executive vice president, and then he had the president, but then the president also had to answer to like the board of directors and the shareholders. The President of the United States is really more like that branch manager or regional vice president, if we think about it in company terms. He's nowhere near the top of the food chain. Jim Garrison makes that point in some of his writings, when you reduce the president to a figurehead. Well, yeah, of course, that's exactly what happens if somebody gets in that office and they think, no, god damn it, I was elected by the people, or was I, wink, I don't know, but I was elected, and I'm supposed to be representing the people, so that's what I'm going to do. They're not there for very long. Another point I want to make is the idea of wealth as an automatic validator. This is something that being there does so very well, because whenever Chance, soon to be Chauncey, is evicted from the townhouse into the mean streets of DC, he has on these bespoke tailored suits, and even though they're out of date by like 40 years, that doesn't matter. They still look good, they still convey money, and that detail. So, even though he's got a suitcase, it's a nice suitcase, he's wandering around with a suitcase and a fucking clicker, a channel changer for a TV, being dressed in a certain way, having the nice hat, and walking around, and not saying a lot, like I'm projecting presents, I have these clothes on that really alters his destiny, because think about it, if he had left the townhouse in a sweat suit or an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt, he wouldn't have been perceived the way that he was by walking around in those expensive high-class suits. I mean, even the scene in the limousine, he's choking on the whiskey, because obviously he's not a big drinker. That should have been one indication that he's not swilling single malt scotch on a regular basis, he chokes to get it down, and he says Chance the Gardener, but she hears Chauncey Gardner because she wants to. In the scene where there, well, Eve is trying to get romantic with him, he says, I like to watch. He quite literally means he likes to watch the television, but she takes it as I like to watch, because this is my kink. Oh, oh, you're letting me in on what you like to do sexually. She interprets it that way because that's what she wants to hear.

When he says something like, in the spring the garden grows again, they think, oh, this is a metaphor about the economy, means after the barren winter the American economy will always come roaring back again, but instead he's talking about literal soil and plants and grass and weeds and roses, but in a plutocracy the accumulation of wealth or extreme wealth can be treated as proof of superior intelligence and moral authority. Remember, what I said about race, the idea that eugenicists and Nazis and neo-Nazis have, about inherent to your skin color, you have certain things, superior intelligence or inferior intelligence, plutocracy does something similar with wealth. It's almost like manifest destiny or divine right. You wouldn't have accumulated this much wealth if God Almighty or Satan or whoever didn't will it so. And being there illustrates that when a person is wealthy or appears to be wealthy, believably appears to be wealthy, because that's what they want to believe. Then, even the most vacuous, vapid statements become pearls of wisdom, and it predicts an era where business moguls are automatically okay. Hear me, I'm gonna stop for a second, because. Is really important. It predicts an era where business moguls are automatically assumed to be qualified to run the government. Does that sound familiar to you? Does that maybe seem a little bit orange managed to you? And I see it on these political ads, you know, we have a governor's race coming up, and some congressional seats that need to be filled. We're looking at what's going on in the midterms, and Jesus Christ, every day, every fucking ad block, I'm a businessman. I'm going to stand with the orange man. I ain't like these career politicians. I don't know nothing about your government, but I know how to run me a business, and it's like, oh Jesus, oh please, oh my God. And it's not that there's anything inherently wrong with running a business. I run a business, matter of fact, I run more than one, but I would never, I would never stand up and say I know how to run my own publishing business where I publish myself, and I've run a successful HR business. I know how to run a working farm and ranch. I know animal husbandry. I would never stand up and say, because I know how to deal with cattle, that means I'm qualified to run the entire state or to run the entire country. It's fucking laughable to me, but yet here we go. Being there shows us that the concept of if you are a business mogul, it automatically means that you can do things like running the government, solving a public health crisis, or running the educational system simply because you're rich. Another point I want to make is the idea of the tabula rasa of the billionaire class. What does that mean? Tabula rasa, of course, meaning blank slate plutocrats and their, let's say, mass media puppets, they don't want leaders like Dag. They definitely don't, and they also don't want somebody like JFK. They don't want somebody who is complex, someone with principles, somebody with stubbornness and gumption and a will of their own. They also, by the way, don't want someone who's unpredictable. So, whenever we have folks who say, "Look at the orange man, he's a maverick, love him or hate him, you can't predict his next move. Yeah, you can. Yes, you can. And these billionaires do. I warned you on the Consaracy Theories blog before the election ever happened. I told you that those fuckers at Davos said the orange man was going back in office, and they were fine with it. They tell you the stuff that they're up to, not everything is hidden. And I knew he's working for them, he has to be, because if they really thought that he was going to get in that office and stab the wef in the back, they wouldn't let him anywhere near it, and if he got in there and tried to bull up and do his own thing, bye bye. We saw that happen with JFK, obviously, and then we saw it again with Reagan. I mean, look, fucking Poppy was right there, and we know that Poppy was agency. Now Poppy claimed that whenever he became the DCI, it just.. oh my god, my goodness me, I was an outsider.

We also know from the memo that was located years later that he was involved with the agency before we were told in the public that he was involved with the agency. Now he tried to play it off, oh, that wasn't me as George Bush, that was another George Bush, and the guy was like a low-level analyst or a janitor or some shit, and would have had no bearing whatsoever on the murder of JFK, but sure, that's right, Poppy, of course, of course, you weren't in the agency, of course, you weren't right, but if the orange man was actually unpredictable to them, he wouldn't be there, and if he pulled up and got unpredictable, he would be removed. I firmly believe that that's what happened to Reagan with his pop pop attempt. It was like, well, Poppy's right there, he's one of us, he's friendly with us, we know what he's going to do. I think he was pissed off that he didn't win an 80. It wasn't very likable, and Reagan had the better showing. He was more liked in the public. And then there was that debate, you know, where he's like, "Damn it, I paid for this debate, and I'm going to let people participate, and he looked like the hero cowboy, and then Bush looked like a swollen old toad, but it was kind of like you're either going to cooperate and do what we tell you to fucking do, or you're just not going to be here, and we're going to tell the public some insane old bullshit. We'll get somebody that's probably MK Ultra to do it, because, of course, and then we'll tell the public some insane ol bullshit about this man was in love with Jodie Foster and. He thought that if he popped popped Reagan, it would force Jodie Foster to notice him and marry him and have sex with him, and whatever. And that's the kind of thing that's so sensational that people listen to it, and that's what they remember. They don't stop and think about, well, who was this guy really? And then what would have happened? Like, well, obviously it would have been Poppy's time to ascend the throne, and why would Poppy have benefited from that, and who else would have benefited from that? No, people don't get into those questions because they're like, 'Wow, that crazy fucker was in love with Jodie Foster, ain't that some shit? And that's all they focus on. So, the point that I'm making, in a very tangential way, is that if the Orange Man was actually unpredictable to the plutocrats, he wouldn't be there, and or he would be swiftly and permanently removed. So it tells me that he's not unpredictable to them. The plutocrats want vessels that they can fill with their own agendas and their own ideas, and Chauncey to them is like catnip, not only because he's shown up in these nice suits, and he's, he's more taciturn, he doesn't have verbal diarrhea all the time, but he's also the blank slate, he's tabula rasa, he can be like their robot, their puppet, their toy, he doesn't seem to have any real strong opinions of his own. He just, he just says very overtly agreeable things. After the winter comes the spring. Yeah, no shit. If you don't pull the weeds out of the garden, the weeds will steal the nutrients from the good plants. Yeah, duh. It's like he has no opinions, or no strong opinions of his own, no history, no background, no political ideology. He's blank, so they can project their own will and their own desires onto him. If we thought about it as an equation, it would be chances literal statement then gets filtered by elite self-interest, and then gets repackaged to the public as profound policy. It's funny, it's also laughable, and terribly sad, but it's also funny in this context. So, it's like Benjamin Rand. Here's what Chauncey is saying about gardening, and he thinks, but Chauncey is talking about free market economics. The media hears it, and they think this guy is really quite smart. He could be a sort of populist hero. So, I think being there helps us to predict, and it also, I think, shows us what was going on, even then, behind the curtain, the idea of like highly curated, manicured, focus-grouped, workshopped, but ultimately quite hollow political figure.

I'm thinking of those chocolate bunnies at Easter. Some of them, you know, if you really get the good kind, they're solid chocolate, but some of the cheap crap that you get, it's a hollow bunny, so it looks like you're getting a chocolate bunny, and then you bite into it, and the inside of it is just air. Modern plutocracy thrives on leaders who are esthetically pleasing ciphers, people who look good on TV. They give pablum to the masses, and they will not in any way disrupt the status quo, they will not in any way upset the billionaire class. I think that modern plutocracy also thrives on bread and circus, on giving entertainment to the masses to keep us all very dolled, and I think they survive on occasionally coming up with a maverick, a tough guy, a John Wayne cowboy type, to be like, yeah, see, you can have an outsider, you can have somebody that's not one of the billionaires, but I mean, they always fucking are a billionaire, the guy is rich, but he's different, he's a different kind of rich, he cares about the little guy. Sure, yeah, of course. And I think last but not least, I want to talk about systemic blindness and racial monopolies of power. Being there also talks about who benefits from what we could call, in the case of chance slash slash Chauncey, accidental elevation, being there, being in the right place at the right time, just simply being there. Who benefits from simply being there? Chance is white, and he's wearing the kind of castaway, bespoke clothes of another elderly white man, his meteoric rise to the top is dependent also on a wealthy white power structure that's kind of like, well, you're one of us, we, we instantaneously recognize you as being one of us, but How does. That happen on the surface level, because yeah, after he starts talking, he's talking quite literally about gardening, and they take it as, oh, this is a metaphor for free market politics, free market economics, whatever, whatever, but superficially we can make the argument that it's coming from he's white, so he has the correct skin color, and he's wearing expensive clothing. It's out of date, yeah, but it's still expensive, bespoke, tailored, Saville Row kind of clothing. And when we see probably the most pointed part of this racial disparity coming through Louise, the African American maid who was instrumental in raising chance, and she sees him on TV and realizes he's full of shit, and she says something along the lines of it's a white man's world in America, all you have to do is be white and then you get credit for whatever. So, even though she also says something like that, boy has rice pudding in his brain. Louise knows that chance is not actually saying metaphors about the economy, or he's not actually giving some kind of thinly veiled criticism of the president, he's talking quite literally about soil and trees and the garden and whatever, but she also realizes, like, he's just a white guy that turns up in an old Saville Row suit, and that was enough, so I think also being there shows us that plutocracy is inherently exclusionary. It shows us the way that old money works, and the way that old money networks institutional biases that create this insulated bubble at the top. You have to be one of us, that sort of thing. It reminds me of a Kanye West song. Now, I will - full disclaimer here - I don't know what happened to Kanye going off the rails, praising Hitler and getting into neo-Nazi ideology. I don't know what happened there. I really don't, and I don't support that whatsoever. This broadcast is not a safe place for Nazis, for neo-Nazis, any of that shit. You can take that right on out the door. I don't, I don't cotton to that. I don't want anything to do with it. I don't know what happened to him. I don't know if this is a mental health problem. If he.. I don't. I don't know what happened.

I remember his song from 2004 all falls down before he got into this neo-Nazi sympathy that, again, I just don't know where it came from, but but there's a lyric he says we're trying to buy back our 40 acres, and for that paper, look how low we'll stoop, even if you're in a bins, you're still up a word that I don't say in a coop. Now, there are some people who interpret that as look at what people will do to get money, look, look at the types of things that people will buy once they have money to try to to flash a certain kind of image, but there's another way to interpret that lyric, even if you're in a bins, you're still up. Another way to interpret that lyric is through the lens of plutocracy, meaning no matter what kind of, if you, if you are a certain skin color, when you're talking about hyper elites, it doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't matter, you could have a million dollars in the bank, you could be in a Bentley or a Rolls Royce, they're still only ever going to see your skin color, they're still only ever going to think you don't belong in this room, so if a more marginalized person, let's say, were to wander into high society and had the mental capacity of someone who was a child, they would not be welcomed in. Imagine being there, like it's 1979 This guy is on the mean streets of DC. Imagine if this were an African American or a Latino man, and let's also still assume that he's wearing a business suit. Let's assume that he has on a fine Saville Row suit, but he's a man of color. How would all of that have played out differently? I have to believe that it would have played out way differently, even if Eve and Ben tried to, like, buy him off, which I don't even.. I'm not even sure they would have done that. They probably would have just backed away slowly and been like, "fuck that guy, and left. And then the movie would have been over with. I think the movie, quote unquote, works in part because of Chauncey's whiteness. It's kind of like, "Oh, well, you're not.. Chance the gardener, you're Chauncey Gardner. He's a well-dressed white man, so he gets welcomed into the fold of other well-dressed white people who happen to be plutocrats. And then the next thing you know, he's being considered for the presidency by the end of the film, as these power brokers are carrying Benjamin Rand's casket, they're just casually discussing making Chauncey, not running him, okay? Not let's put him in the election and see what happens with the American public making him the next president of the United States, making him the next president, they are very much king makers. Chauncey wanders off, oblivious to all of their scheming, walks on water, and there are many different ways that we can interpret this ending. It's left ambiguous, I think, on purpose. That was always my grandpa's least favorite part of the film, because to him he thought that they were making fun of Jesus. He thought that it was some kind of anti-Bible statement, and I don't take it that way at all. I think in some respects it's a bit of a warning, it's a bit of a warning to the public to say, like, these people aren't king makers, and this guy who's really a simpleton who's not talking about anything important whatsoever has been turned into the next messiah, so it's not making fun of Jesus, it's saying like this man who's actually nothing like Jesus has been turned into the next messiah, and it has happened because of these plutocrats. You could have somebody like Chauncey Gardner at the helm because he was in the right place at the right time with the right skin color and the right kind of clothes, not because he did anything meritorious, and we know also that he would have been their puppet if he did make it to the White House, he wouldn't come up with any of his own ideas. He would just parrot whatever was told to him, and as long as he was given a steady diet of TV, which is all he cared about anyway, he'd be fine with it. He'd be like, "Okay, well, I have this nice house with nice pajamas, and Eve seems nice, I like her, and I have plenty of television to watch, and so this is fine. Whatever you want me to do, whatever you want me to say, I'll say it. This is fine, as always. Watch and decide for yourself. It's absolutely worth your time. If you have to pay a few bucks to rent the movie on streaming, it is worth it. In the meantime, stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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