A new play makes more than a metaphor of politics as theatre, with a certain “Hillary” its star
By V.v.B. | CHICAGO
WHEN Lucas Hnath wrote his new play “Hillary and Clinton”, he could not have been sure that the former secretary of state would be by far the most likely candidate to win the presidency. Yet as Donald Trump has ousted all of his Republican rivals in the primary elections—and the scenario of a Trump-Clinton contest (as well as a defeat of Napoleonic proportions for the Republicans in November) becomes more likely—Mr Hnath’s contemplation on gender and power is now highly topical.
“Hillary and Clinton” is imagined to take place in a universe not so different from our own. A woman named Hillary is trying to become president of a country called the United States of America. She is married to a man called Bill, who used to be a popular president of the same country. He repeatedly betrayed her with extramarital affairs, including a scandalous incident with an intern. She sits in a hotel room in New Hampshire in 2008, contemplating her likely defeat in the next primary election. Her campaign is running out of money.
Against her aide’s advice, she summons Bill, whom she has hitherto banned from the campaign trail, to join her. He immediately starts to meddle in her campaign, first trying to convince her to abandon the whole thing and come home, then telling her that she must expose her softer, more vulnerable side to voters. Hillary disagrees—the moment you break, they will say you are weak, and the moment you are weak, you will lose.
One of the most revelatory scenes of the play taps into the irreconcilable demands made of female political figures: that they must seem tough and resilient as well as feminine and sensitive. Back in 1992, when fictional Bill was himself campaigning for the presidency, Hillary learnt not to show her feelings:
“Some reporter comes to me for an interview. It’s supposed to be a fluff piece, meet the wife, that type of thing, and in the middle of this interview this reporter, she asks me how I felt about that girl. And I said, ‘What girl?’ And she said, ‘That girl that your husband had an affair with.’ And this was the first I’d ever heard about it…And I cried. Right there, in the middle of that interview, I just started crying. Because I knew that they were right…the reporter started laughing. She said, ‘Oh come on. That’s the best you can do?’ as though, as though my crying wasn’t real and it was just a show. So I decided from that day on that I would never let on. I would never show what was really going on inside.”
Of course, the real Ms Clinton has plenty of experience in how a show of emotion—or a lack thereof—can be seized upon by the media. In the past, she has criticised the double-standard wherein “a man can cry…lots of our leaders have cried. But [for] a woman, it’s a different kind of dynamic”. Indeed, she was both lauded and ridiculed on her campaign trail in 2008, no more so than when she welled up in response to the seemingly-innocuous question “who does your hair?” Some thought the tears humanised her; Maureen Dowd at the New York Times penned a sarcastic op-ed piece titled “Can Hillary cry her way back to the White House?” She went on to win that New Hampshire primary; many still credit the tears for her victory.
But shows of nerve have been criticised too; in March, she laughed off a reference to Bill’s serial infidelities and the conservative media claimed that it was symbolic of her endorsement of extramarital affairs. Mr Trump called Ms Clinton an “unbelievably nasty, mean enabler”, all the while gleefully ignoring his own sexual indiscretions.
On the whole, Mr Hnath's play is a Machiavellian meditation on the sacrifices politicians will make to reach office. Yet “Hillary and Clinton” is most interesting in the additional reminders it provides of all the challenges the real Ms Clinton faces in convincing America that she is both a woman with a heart and as tough as they come—a balance the bullying, misogynist Mr Trump does not even have to pretend to strike. He has said that she wouldn’t reach “5% of the vote” if she were a man, and that all her campaign has in its favour is “the woman’s card”. Ms Clinton has refused to engage with such ad feminem attacks, a response that speaks as well to her poise as the attacks do to Mr Trump's volatility. It is often said that politics is theatre, but the Republican has got as far as he had on his appalling but apparently genuine bluster. Unlike him but very much like “Hillary”, the real Ms Clinton will have to spend the next six months continuing to perform a complicated act.
