After watching the inauguration of George W. Bush this past Thursday I couldn't help, but realize the theatrical spectacle of it all. Everything was planned and everything went according to plan.


The symbolic idea of the inauguration was to re-emphasize the power of the president. We saw George Bush address hundreds of thousands of people at Capitol Hill, but more importantly the millions of people who were watching on television. The whole spectacle of the inauguration was to give viewers at home visually symbolic representation of Bush’s power over the masses by showing him address hundreds of thousands of people in attendance. This visual style of spectacle is by no means a new technique used by those in political power. It has been present since the Roman Empire when Emperors would address the masses. The main difference today is the role of the media and television in particular. In the Roman era the hundreds of thousands physically present while in the 21rst Century we see hundreds of thousands of people addressed while millions watch on television. Watching the inauguration on TV was like watching the Emperor introduction in the film Gladiator. We see the visual parallels of hundreds of thousands of people in attendance, political cabinet representatives and buildings supported by Roman style columns directly in the foreground.


The speech Bush delivered is used to create the illusion of democracy. Bush abuses political rhetoric in order to sustain this illusion. The speech seems to be trying to convince Americans that his ideas are democratic as opposed to discuss what democratic ideals have achieved. For every word Bush emphasized we saw a camera shot of a political representative of that word. For example, when Bush referred to “firmness