Arnold Schwarzenegger’s viral video politics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12690074 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Odin O’sullivan (0000-0002-4138-9898, University College Dublin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 493-498 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-04 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Media Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-0777 • E-ISSN: 1471-5902 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14680777.2021.1894467 |
| OpenAlex | W3135170305 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
At the beginning of the first COVID-19 lock-down in the U.S., Arnold Schwarzenegger posted a video to Twitter, featuring his miniature horse and donkey, informing the public to stay at home. This was the first of a number of uploads throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in which Schwarzenegger employed the cuteness of his animals, the authenticity of ruralism and nature, and the iconicity of his past cinematic roles to disseminate his form of viral video politics. This short article aims to provide an insight into these Twitter videos and analyze how the selective deployment of cuteness, ruralism, and cinema-inflected rhetoric they contain both shield him from the critique a number of his wealthy contemporaries faced and position him as a public-health focused elder statesman in opposition to Donald Trump. His viral video denouncing the Capitol Riots as fascistic builds on the residual positives of his previous videos and is an attempt to create an authentic, “straight-talking,” non-partisan Republicanism in opposition to Trump, while also conveying his worthiness for the position of national patriarch
Art history · Media studies · Miami · Movie theater · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Law · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
|---|