When Nixon himself does appear in movies, as Feeney notes, it's usually as a sight gag (a poster of Nixon bowling in The Big Lebowski) or a punch line ("Whenever he used to leave the White House, the Secret Service counted the silverware," says Woody Allen in Sleeper)—or, alternatively, as a stock symbol for political corruption (as in Shampoo), criminality (robbers wear Nixon masks in Best Seller and Point Break), or the crimes of the American system (in Missing). The instant associations that Nixon triggers are so numerous and rich that an intelligent and subtle film like The Ice Storm can use him to invite a range of readings—to betoken debased authority in a universe where parents have affairs while moralizing to their children; to emphasize the characters' inability to be intimate; to underscore the pervasive inauthenticity of the lives of its anomic suburbanites, who have become estranged from their political environment, their families, and even themselves.