There are two pieces of art on Hillary Clinton, in time for the November election. She deserves them and we need them. One is seemingly true, the other just feels true; or, rather, I want it to be.
The first is Sky’s four-part documentary, Hillary, on her life and 2016 run for the presidency. It is a sad affair, with villainous Hillary sitting in a chair, a victim of everyone, especially herself. She is over-dyed and over-tidied, like a woman trying not to make Donald Trump throw up, though she doesn’t know why. She has been shouted at so long she is shriven.
Does camera-ready mean sex-ready? The way American women dress for television cameras is heavy with self-disgust and shame. Why isn’t she wild-haired and in rags, like the brittle intellectual she is? Here I impose my own narrative on how Hillary should look but this story is full of women who internalise their own misogyny and talk about not trusting Hillary Clinton because they don’t trust themselves.
“I’ll try not to move so much,” is her first apologetic line to camera. She is angry too – that an imbecile beat her in a competitive exam without answering any of the questions; without actually entering the examination hall. She is shouting at the interviewer, but I doubt she is aware of it: “People feel, ‘that you are not authentic’. What is this about? When people say I’m not authentic. I’m sorry if I’m not brilliantly charismatic on TV,” – she isn’t sorry, and why should she be? — “But I’m the same person I’ve always been.” She isn’t. How could she be? What woman is the same at 72 as at 22? Why must a woman apologise for seeking power?
She knows the answer. The young Hillary is doughty; and needs must. Girls, she says, “didn’t want to get better grades than their boyfriends”. She ran for the presidency of the student council, lost to a man, and did all the work anyway, because he asked her, and “because I was interested”. I wondered if her marriage was no different.
She describes the entrance exam for Yale law school. She sat down and, “These guys started harassing us. ‘What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. You can’t go to law school’. Or my favourite: ‘If you get into law school and take my place and I get sent to Vietnam and die it’s your fault’.” He thinks she is a witch: a witch with a pen. If she succeeds, he will die.
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