8/7/2019 Home Paper

1/2

Pat Speech/T&L

Different uses of the concept of home, how are these uses marshaled to support worldviewBuachanas worldview is obviously one rooted in deeply conservative values, or more

specifically, Reagan era conservative politics. Reagan:Great statesmen of modern times, who

created the greatest peacetime economic recovery of all time. The long way home but wefinally got here. Along this way we see the counterpoints to home: exhibition of cross-

dressing in American political history. Reagan is the concept of home to which we arereturning. The ideals of Democratic candidate Bill Clinton are the antithesis of the Reaganite

concept of home. Unrestricted aborotion on demand, the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay

ticket in history, his lawyer-spouse[who]compared marriage as an institution to slaveryand life on an Indian reservation, radical feminist agenda. Bush has the correct philosophy

and a better character, therefore, we must come home and stand beside him? DNC-prophets

of doom spoke for them.

The party is our home; this party is where we belong, therefore, home is where we belong inthe eyes of Buchanan.

How does the speech deploy diff aesthetic/discursive techniques to develop a pic of domestic

life?

Why is use of images of domestic life/comforts of homeor the refusalpolitically effective?

It plays into the sentimentality many people held for the Reagan years in the US. In listing all the

so-called accomplishments of Reagan, he ties the glory days of his presidency inextricably to the

party, and therefore, this new candidate. He places Reagan in the company of George

Washington and Abraham Lincoln to create even more significance for Reagans place inhistory. It plays on the fear of so-called different identities taking over our country: lesbian,

gay, feminist, etc. He also makes the leap that when these groups take over, all morality will

decay, abortions will occur on every corner, pornography will be seen on billboards, andchildren will sue their parents, all of which, especially the latter, completely challenges the

traditional notion of home that Buchanan idealizes an calls for in this speech. America is home,

and anything that Buchanan deems anti-American, namely Bill Clinton, is the anti-home.

Hillary is explicity mentioned not as a wife, but a partner in crime for Bill. She is specifically

mentioned as a spouse, changing her identity from a woman to a gender neutral lawyer. Her

lack of gender or sex identification is politically useful as it refuses to acknowledge her as afemale, taking away the ability of female voters to identity with her. Her comparison of marriage

to slavery is not seen as something that keeps women down but as something that is anti-

American, and thus, something that threatens the traditional idea of domesticity. Her assertionsthat the patriarchy is bad for women is read not as a way to give more freedoms to women, but

as a threat to the home, and thus to the most American value--freedom itself.

While the concepts that the Replubican party and conservatives generally promote are

individualistic, the idea of home is a communal one. He says we must come home and stand

8/7/2019 Home Paper

2/2

with President Bush, and that the Republican Party is our home. Buchanan presents the homeas public space, a political party, and a nation, rather than a private space where individual

families and people live. His expansion of the notion of home to include the entire home helps to

make the threats against the party personal ones. The opposition, Clinton and Clinton, are a

threat to the party and therefore, to every member of that partys homes as well.

Thelma and Louiseportrays the home as a confining space, not the an all-encompassing notion

Buchanan promotes. Home is a space that at first is defined by femininity and is then flipped and

coded as a male space later in the film. See Sturken.

Home is also a transitional idea in the film. The women leave their traditional homes, find their

home on the road in the car, and aspire to create a new home in Mexico.

PHOTOS/Childhood associated w/ Louises home

Thelma and louise together in photo and throughout film/life/home

movement can only be forward, like their driving. they cannot go back and one cannot go

backwards