This election season has been a fireplace hose of stranger-than-fiction moments—cats and canine and bears, oh my! However there have been some moments which can be identical to fiction, too, of their uncanny conjuring of plotlines and dialogue from motion pictures, novels, and TV reveals: JD Vance demonstrating what one would possibly be taught on the “soup Nazi” college of meals ordering, or Chris Christie successfully making an attempt to make “fetch” occur together with his “Donald Duck” nickname. As Oscar Wilde as soon as wrote, “Life imitates artwork.”
In Wilde’s essay, a Platonic dialogue titled “The Decay of Mendacity,” he’s arguing for aestheticism over realism in literature. “If one thing can’t be finished to verify, or no less than to switch, our monstrous worship of info,” he writes, “Artwork will turn out to be sterile and wonder will move away from the land.” For our legislators, in language Donald Trump will perceive, some free recommendation from a lover of novels and reality: Worship the info; make mendacity fiction once more.
Herewith, seven occasions life has imitated artwork.
Selina Meyer: “I’m Gonna Run!”
Actuality: President Joe Biden stepping down from the race, and his vp, Kamala Harris, stepping up.
Fiction: HBO’s Veep presaged the plotline, when VP Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) gleefully tells her aide that “POTUS…isn’t gonna run for a second time period. I’m gonna run!” Veep’s showrunner David Mandel instructed VF that whereas he didn’t see many similarities between Harris and the megalomaniacal Selina, different features of this election cycle appeared as if they might have been ripped from the present: “There’s nothing extra Selina than making an attempt to disown one thing that’s a hundred percent yours,” Mandel stated of Trump’s (failed) try and distance himself from Challenge 2025 (extra on that under).
It’s a Human-Eat-Canine-Meals World Out There
Actuality: Laura Loomer consuming pet food.
Fiction: In Paddington 2, Hugh Grant performs an egotistical actor who takes industrial work whereas dreaming of a time during which his “pet food days are finished.” He dons a floppy-eared canine costume and recommends “Harley’s Connoisseur Din Dins” earlier than scooping a wholesome spoonful into his mouth. Woof, Loomer, woof.
Challenge 2025
Actuality: Terrifyingly draconian coverage concepts.
Fiction: With slightly assist from its mates, the Heritage Basis put collectively Project 2025, a recreation plan for a dystopian future that features (even additional) gutted reproductive rights, widespread deportations, and expanded presidential powers. As any scholar of AP English Lit would agree, it’s like an eerie rip-off of 1984 and The Handmaid’s Story—although on condition that most of the Challenge 2025 backers are additionally big on book bans, possibly future generations won’t ever know.
Lisa Simpson for President
Actuality: Trump’s presidency and Harris’s outfits.
Fiction: The Simpsons is well-known for its “predictions.” (A tuned-in writers room and greater than 770 episodes will try this.) A March 2000 episode of the present, “Bart to the Future,” joined that canon when newly elected president Lisa Simpson famous from the Oval Workplace that, “As you understand, we’ve inherited fairly a funds crunch from President Trump.” This summer time, the present’s writer-producer Al Jean identified an missed matchy-matchy second from Lisa’s presidency: When Harris took the oath of workplace as VP in 2021, she wore a purple jacket and a pair of pearl earrings and necklace.
