Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan

Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan is a short work by dystopian English author J.G. Ballard, first published as a pamphlet by the Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton, in 1968.^[1] It was later collected in The Atrocity Exhibition.

It is written in the style of a scientific paper and catalogues an apocryphal series of bizarre experiments intended to measure the psychosexual appeal of Ronald Reagan, who was then the Governor of California and candidate for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.

History

Ballard himself was inspired by the then-new phenomenon of "media politicians" and in his preface to the 1990 edition of The Atrocity Exhibition, explained:

In his commercials Reagan used the smooth, teleprompter-perfect tones of the TV auto-salesman to project a political message that was absolutely the reverse of bland and reassuring. A complete discontinuity existed between Reagan's manner and body language, on the one hand, and his scarily simplistic far-right message on the other. Above all, it struck me that Reagan was the first politician to exploit the fact that his TV audience would not be listening too closely, if at all, to what he was saying, and indeed might well assume from his manner and presentation that he was saying the exact opposite of the words actually emerging from his mouth.^[2]

A bookseller who sold the pamphlet was charged with obscenity.^[3] In 1970, the pamphlet was added as an appendix to Doubleday's first American edition of The Atrocity Exhibition, which was destroyed prior to release.^[4]

At the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, a copy furnished with the seal of the Republican Party was distributed by ex-Situationists to the RNC delegates. According to Ballard, it was accepted for what it resembled: a psychological position paper on the candidate's subliminal appeal, commissioned by a think-tank.^[1]

Quotes

• "Slow-motion film of Reagan's speeches produced a marked erotic effect in an audience of spastic children"
• "Faces were seen as either circumcised (JFK, Khrushchev) or uncircumcised (LBJ, Adenauer). In assembly-kit tests Reagan’s face was uniformly perceived as a penile erection. Patients were encouraged to devise the optimum sex-death of Ronald Reagan."

See also

• Crash, a Ballard novel which focuses on similar themes
• Ronald Reagan in music

References

1. Kauffman, Linda (1998). Bad Girls and Sick Boys. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 169–171. ISBN 0-520-21032-8.
2. V. Vale, ed. (1984). RE/Search #8/9: J.G. Ballard. RE/Search.
3. "The Times obituary: J. G. Ballard". The Times. April 20, 2009.
4. Sheidlower, Jesse; Black, Lewis (2009). The F-Word. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-539311-8.