Was Jon Voight's Role As the Fascist Principal in Bratz a Warning About Trump?

There is not a day that goes by where I don’t think about the most chaotic and important film of the millennium so far, 2007’s Bratz.

I watched it for the first time last year after a friend assured me that it was the most psychotic fever dream of a movie ever made, and it did not disappoint. This movie has everything; a food fight that defies the laws of physics, teen girls catering their nemesis’s party while dressed as clowns, a violin-playing contortionist rejected from the talent show for not being original enough, and Jon Voight as a dim-witted fascist high school principal. But was Voight’s role as Principal Dimly a warning about 10 years in the future, when Donald Trump would somehow become President of the United States? I think yes.

When we first see Principal Dimly in Bratz, he is standing next to a bust of himself, reading a book called, How To Run A Prison (For Dumb People). He runs over to commend his blonde Ivanka-esque daughter, Meredith and her suspicious white dog for the great job she is doing separating kids into assigned lunch tables, as the book has taught him that the first step to controlling any population is to “separate the inmates into groups.” By now, we are well acquainted with the Trump Administration’s commitment to sowing division and separating families at the border.

During a school-wide food fight, Dimly’s bust is an unfortunate casualty. When he sees the haphazard attempts at repair, Dimly tries to adjust the nose on the bust himself and only ends up making it look even worse. Of course, we all know that President Trump is just as vain as Dimly, if not moreso, from his penchant for talking about himself, putting his name on absolutely everything, staying at his own hotels, and wearing an ill-advised orange shade of makeup.

The only time we ever see Dimly express anything close to joy is when he dances to Meredith’s mediocre talent show performance of “It’s All About Me.” Trump’s borderline-creepy obsession with his own daughter is well-documented.

So was 2007 Jon Voight trying to warn us about what political travesties lay ahead? Probably not, especially considering Voight is an ardent supporter of President Trump and apparently also God, who I’m sure would like to be excluded from this narrative. But would we even be in this position if Bratz had received the Best Picture Academy Award it deserved? No, I don’t think we would.