‘Weird’ Tales
Donald Trump, so far from a cultural outlier, is the last champion of the middlebrow.
The post ‘Weird’ Tales appeared first on The American Conservative.
‘Weird’ Tales
Donald Trump, so far from a cultural outlier, is the last champion of the middlebrow.
In the wake of their hasty substitution of Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as their presumptive nominee for president, the Democrats have cooked up a fresh line of attack against former President Donald Trump.
In a respite from their endless hysterical warnings over the fate of democracy, the Democrats now insist that Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, are merely “weird”—a rather random, confusing, and, indeed, weird formulation. With its strong suggestion of the absurd or uncanny, the adjective inadvertently calls to mind the comedy musician “Weird Al” Yankovic or the old pulp magazine Weird Tales.
Yet the designation is not only unartful but unbelievable. In fact, in one very meaningful way, Donald Trump is an aggressively conventional, defiantly middle-of-the-road figure: In his cultural and aesthetic tastes, Trump is arguably one of the last tribunes of American middlebrow culture, which peaked sometime in the last century and which is arguably extinct in the current.
Indeed, part of what makes the Democrats’ “weird” stamp so pathetic is the context in which the charge arises: Virtually every day, mainstream culture grows more bizarre, off-putting, and outlandish. Modern art is intentionally incomprehensible, many contemporary movies and TV shows are soaked in wokeism, much of pop music is noisy and profane, and even the Olympic Games are an occasion for blasphemy.
By contrast, the middlebrow culture of 50 or 60 years ago aimed to induce intense but relatively uncomplicated emotions as clearly as possible and to as wide a swath of the public as possible. Think of the middlebrow novels of Herman Wouk, James Michener, or Ayn Rand, the middlebrow musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Loewe, or any number of middlebrow Best Picture Oscar winners: West Side Story, A Man for All Seasons, The Sound of Music, Rocky, or Chariots of Fire. These works may or may not have been examples of great art, but they were made with the noble goal of passing the reader’s or viewer’s time in entertainment and edification—in fact, a conception of art fully in keeping with Emily Dickinson’s famous poetic observation that “there is no Frigate like a book / To take us Lands away.”
Where does Trump fit into the picture?
Although his sense of aesthetics often seems to run no deeper than the décor at Mar-a-Lago or Trump Tower, he has, over the years, revealed a definite preference for what I would consider to be middlebrow music—lush, grand, melodic, sometimes quasi-operatic, sometimes legitimately operatic, and always very, very easy to listen to.
Viewers who watched Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention last month were treated to perhaps the definitive illustration of his idea of good music: After he finished speaking, and the giant red, white, and blue (and gold) balloons were being tossed about, a recording of Puccini’s aria “Nessun dorma” was heard. Trump was in his element. True, Trump seemed appreciative of the live performance of Kid Rock, but this sort of thing—in all of its ostentatious schmaltziness—was far more in keeping with his personality. Longtime Trump watchers will note that his appreciation of pop-opera, or opera-ish, artists is nothing new: During his inauguration in 2017, Jackie Evancho sang the national anthem.
Also last month, in a widely viewed video on the YouTube channel of golfer Bryson DeChambeau, Trump was asked for his “top five songs of all-time.” Without missing a beat, Trump cued up the “playlist” on his golf cart, which began—predictably, even inevitably—with Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman’s “Time to Say Goodbye”—a piece that, along with the concerts and recordings of The Three Tenors, exemplifies that moment in the 1990s when pop opera seemed to be everywhere. For Trump, it still is. “Nice and soothing, right?” Trump said, smiling, to DeChambeau.
As it happens, Sarah Brightman—the former wife of Andrew Lloyd Webber—has a cameo appearance in the 2023 book Letters to Trump: While they were married, Webber and Brightman were residents of Trump Tower, and included in the book is a letter in which Webber invites Trump to the Broadway premiere of a certain blockbuster musical. “It was such an honor to go to opening night of The Phantom of the Opera because it turned out to be one of my all-time favorites,” Trump writes. “The writing and music is that of genius.”
Letters to Trump is a remarkable record of the former president’s tastes when he was still the future president. Above and beyond Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lloyd Webber, Trump reveals himself to be a fan of many key middlebrow entertainers: Bob Hope, Tony Bennett, Jackie Mason (“His comedy made people happy”), Paul Anka (“He is also aging well and still entertaining the crowds!”), and “The Great Michael Jackson!”
Similarly, anyone who has ever watched the pregame or postgame of a Trump rally will be familiar with the sort of pop music usually piped in: Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” And who can forget the scoring of Trump’s exit from Washington, D.C., on the day of Biden’s inauguration, to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”? Nothing weird here!
In a world under siege by Lady Gaga, Swifties, and “brat summer,” the fact that Trump is fond of such openly emotive, melodic, and altogether enjoyable music speaks well of him—something that, in a far graver and more profound register, Melania Trump expressed in her letter to the American people following the assassination attempt against her husband: At one point in the letter, the former First Lady referred to Trump’s “laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration.”
That “love of music” surely represents one of Trump’s most sincere links to the average American.
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