Frame, Gregory (2012) The American president in film and television. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the representation of the American president in
fictional films and television programmes, as well as documentary film and
photography. It engages broadly with the subject’s entire history, but focuses
particularly on the past two decades (1992-2012). Its primary method is close
textual analysis, departing from pre-existing studies that are largely preoccupied
with questions of verisimilitude and historical accuracy. The construction of the
cinematic and televisual presidencies requires a simultaneous negotiation of the
‘real’ political/historical record, and the desire to reproduce and reinforce the
representational genealogies inherited from cinema and television’s own histories
(not necessarily all explicitly ‘political’).
My research has found the presidency to be overwhelmingly reliant upon
mythological discourses about American national identity, and traditional
conceptions of masculinity. How these constructions impact upon the
representation of the president in relation to the contexts from which the films
and programmes emerge is of crucial importance. The conception of the
presidency has undergone enormous change since the early 1990s. The end of the
Cold War, the increased scrutiny of the mass media, 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’,
and the economic crisis, have either challenged or reinforced the notion that the
president is an omnipotent force, able to bend the world to his will. The strategies
cinema and television have employed to address these changes is of crucial
significance to this thesis.
This thesis will establish the manner in which techniques of mainstream
film and television production – genre, visual style, iconography, and narrative –
have impacted upon the reinforcement or critique of the presidential myth. As the
presidency has suffered relative decline in a more diffuse geopolitical
environment, this thesis demonstrates the extent to which the myth of the
presidency has required the intervention of mainstream cinema and television to
ensure its preservation.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Presidents -- United States -- In motion pictures, Presidents -- United States -- In mass media, National characteristics, American, in motion pictures
Official Date:	September 2012
Dates:	Date Event September 2012 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Film and Television Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Bruzzi, Stella, 1962-
Extent:	vii, 424 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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