"All will be well in the garden:" the premonitory populism of Being There
Being There is director Hal Ashby’s 1979 black comedy about a mild-mannered shut-in, Chance (played by Peter Sellers), who has quite literally never set foot outside the house in which he was raised. All he knows of the greater world is what he’s seen on television, which he watches constantly — at least, any time he’s not gardening. When the owner of the house passes away, Chance is forced out into the streets, with nothing but an umbrella and attaché case in tow. But it’s not long before he finds a new house with a new garden to tend to — only this time, the “garden” in question may constitute the entire voting population of the United States.
Watching this film now, at a time when biological and political viruses remain mortal threats to public well-being, I was struck by the ominous political atmosphere that pervades Being There. Set during winter, the film is beset with seasonal analogies, framing America’s socioeconomic malaise beside the drab, brown buildings and raw, hard light of January. When Chance first exits the only four walls he’s ever known, he’s immediately confronted with poverty, destitution and decay. A policeman eyes him with suspicion. A defensive teenager flashes a knife in front of Chance’s throat.
Spring is due, to be sure, and where should Chance wander to plant his seeds? A public housing project? An encampment of unhoused people? No, surely not — the sprawling mansion of a billionaire.
Being There locates a dormant conservatism in the American consciousness, positioning right-wingers as, on the one hand, hapless fools who fall for anything that flatters or accommodates their prejudices, and yet, on the other hand, savvy opportunists who will exploit the idiosyncrasies of any old crackpot if it means better airtime or poll numbers. Chance’s deliciously rapid ascension into the highest ranks of Washington society reads as clairvoyant, anticipating not only the Reagan era but beyond. Ashby, working from a screenplay and novel by Jerzy Kosiński, grasps how an unconventional yet distinct figure could be swallowed by a mammoth political institution and regurgitated under the auspices of populism.
Where then, though, one is left to ask, does the character of Chance fit into all of this? It is facile and, frankly, inaccurate to compare this soft little man to Donald Trump, or even George W. Bush; he isn’t merely unqualified, or unsuited for public office. (Though Chance’s former maid, Louise, played with seething indignation by Ruth Attaway, does call out, from deep in the nosebleed section, how unsuitable it is that he should be given the opportunities he is.) Chance is a true innocent, a singular paradox of not simply the modern world but the entire human species. He both represents a kind of untapped potential in the American body politic, and subverts it.
His innocence, then, is what makes him a savior. The Washington, D.C. of Being There comes across as a city and, by extension, a nation on the verge of apocalypse, or like a world that has already witnessed and acclimated to the death of God. Chance has to be a mystical presence, because his goodness — his sheer, uncomplicated sensitivity — places him on a different plane.
Insulation has shielded him from the cruelty of a godless world; ironically, the idiot box, so often scapegoated as a major cause of social decay, has only contributed to his docility, as well as his social facility.
Of course, it can be argued that TV has made Chance acquiescent, subservient to the whims of showbiz and advertisers, and therefore a perfect zombie — a sheep. But then again, what other character in the movie has Chance’s conviction? He is sure of himself in a way that no one else is, precisely because he has never formulated an idea of himself. He is merely a receptor, and a tender. A gardener. He lives to serve, whereas everyone else is out to serve themselves.
Being There is dark for insinuating just how easily the American people may be duped into accepting a cipher for their messiah, and is therefore also premonitory in its recognition that the Republican Party’s imminent cultural and political rebound would spell, not “chance,” but “Armageddon.” The film’s fundamental tragedy is in its recognition that America could witness the second coming of Christ, and still never understand him.
Chance is inevitable. He is destined for immortality, yet doomed to obscurity.
