Reagan's mediated image

'Michael Rogin, in his book Ronald Reagan, the Movie, describes how this B-movie actor (and McCarthy-era proponent of the blacklist) who became president was scheduled to speak to the Academy at the 1981 Oscars. The video playback of his speech about how the movies inspire America was delayed by a day due to the inconvenience of his being shot by John Hinckley, in an assassination attempt inspired by Taxi Driver. As Rogin describes it: "The television audience watching a screen saw a Hollywood audience watching another screen. One audience saw another applaud a taped image of a healthy Reagan, while the literal president lay in a hospital bed. Reagan was president because of film, hospitalized because of film, and present as an undamaged image because of film." '

-- Darrell Varga, "The Bones of Reagan" from Cineaction magazine issue 75, 2008.