Gaslit and Watergate: The enduring draw of a 1972 conspiracy
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the United States' most notorious political scandal: Watergate. To mark the jubilee, a new TV series and an art exhibition reveal a resurgence of creative takes on the national disgrace, which started with a June 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC's Watergate office building. Police caught the burglars in the act, leading to an investigation that uncovered major abuses of power in Republican President Richard Nixon's administration.
Shakespearean in scope, the scandal, which included wire-tapping, "hush" money and secretly recorded White House tapes, led to the worst US constitutional crisis since the Civil War. Nixon's resignation two years later forever altered US politics and the nation's standing in the world.
Since then, Nixon's downfall has inspired artworks from a range of creators, from Alan J Pakula's 1976 All the President's Men, the earliest film in the genre, to Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995), and Robbie Pickering's Gaslit, a new TV series premiering on StarzPlay on 24 April.
"It's been an endlessly fertile ground for television, movies, visual art, humour, even music," says David Greenberg, cultural historian and author of Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image. "There's something about Nixon's dark qualities that still provokes the imagination."
Gaslit also coincides with an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, Watergate: Portraiture and Intrigue, on view until 5 September. And this autumn, HBO is expected to air The White House Plumbers from the producers of Veep, starring Woody Harrelson as E Howard Hunt and Justin Theroux as G Gordon Liddy, the two masterminds behind the DNC burglary.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220421-gaslit-and-watergate-the-enduring-draw-of-a-1972-conspiracy
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A British take. And dammit, I won't get to see Gaslit for awhile yet because we don't have Starz!