TY - BOOK AU - Gregory Frame PY - 2018 CY - Oxford, United Kingdom PB - Peter Lang Verlag SN - 9781788742634 TI - The American President in Film and Television T2 - Myth, Politics and Representation DO - 10.3726/b13206 UR - https://www.peterlang.com/document/1056733 N2 - As evidenced by the election of celebrity and reality television star Donald Trump, popular culture has played a vital role in the conceptualisation of political leadership. This revised edition of The American President in Film and Television explores the complex relationship between the construction of fictional presidents on screen and the political cultures from which they emerged. How have our popular cultural fantasies of presidential leadership contributed to the current political reality? Combining textual analysis with close attention to political and historical contexts, the book addresses the reasons behind the proliferation of images of the president in the past twenty-five years, from the archetype in American genre cinema (Air Force One, Independence Day and Deep Impact) to the idealised fantasy figure in network television (The West Wing, 24 and Commander in Chief). With the election of a president whose worldview appears to have been formed entirely by the aesthetics and rhetoric of popular culture, where does the presidency – either on screen or in the White House – go from here? KW - nation, political leadership, society LA - English ER -