Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Sarah Palin and political action figures

This blog is slowly becoming 'All Palin, all the time". Forgive me, but just like in wrestling you need to give audiences what they want and there's no denying she is getting a monster push at the moment.

This isn't the first time I've posted about about the nexus between action figures and and politics. Action figures are merely toy representations of the larger-than-life personas of our favorite heroes and villains. Movies, comics and wrestling are usually mined but we've come to see the our politicians cast in the same light, look no further than the George W Bush 'Flight suit doll'.

sarah palin, action figure, toyaction figure, obama, mccain











The Hollywood Presidency continues with the introduction of the new Sarah Palin dolls, to go with the McCain and Obama action figures.

The best use of a doll in politics goes to Conservative talker Michael Reagan, for presenting a Jesse Ventura action doll during a panel discussion with the former statesman.

Relevant segment from the 7m 12s mark

The moment was incredibly 'meta':
The doll was made for the action movie 'Predator (1987)'. Jesse Ventura played the role of a soldier years after being a real 'Navy Seal'. In the movie, Jesse starred alongside Arnold Swarchenegger. Interestingly both moved on to serve office as Governor, Jesse for Minnesota and Arnold for California. Arnold would have appeared as countless dolls for his many action roles. Jesse as a Hall of Fame wrestler also features as countless dolls.

As absurd as it is to have esteemed politicians become immortalized as dolls. What's arguably more bizarre, are finding people who originally built there careers as action figures becoming esteemed politicians.

Find the new Sarah Palin, Obama and Mccain action figure here
Find Presidential action figures - G.W Bush, Reagan and Bill Clinton dolls.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And I still hoped it's another rumor, as this woman has a lot of them going around her... Yes, I understand that McCain people uses her for media attention, and they are doing it quite well, but this doll stroke me off completely. What's it for? Children - no, they are not voting. Men - partly maybe, the doll is wearing short skirt after all... More attention - probably. Majority of people agree, that it's a commercial trick - http://www.votetheday.com/polls/sarah-palin-action-doll-219/ I hope Sarah understands, that she's been exploited a lot. And that she knows the price of it, and was/is ready to pay it...