{"id":37554,"date":"2024-08-13T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-13T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=37554"},"modified":"2024-09-26T05:49:18","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T05:49:18","slug":"even-fictional-presidents-dont-look-like-kamala-harris-%e2%88%92-although-black-men-and-white-women-have-been-represented-in-the-oval-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/even-fictional-presidents-dont-look-like-kamala-harris-%e2%88%92-although-black-men-and-white-women-have-been-represented-in-the-oval-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Even fictional presidents don\u2019t look like Kamala Harris \u2212 although Black men and white women have been represented in the Oval Office"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Peter Kastor<\/a>, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States had its first Black president and its first female president over a half-century ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were fictional, they were on screen, their names were Douglass Dilman and Leslie McCloud, and in the decades that followed there have been many others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet none quite lines up with Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee in the 2024 election who is a biracial woman<\/a>. Even after the United States elected a biracial president \u2013 Barack Obama \u2013 who has been the subject of two biopics<\/a>, filmmakers have not created fictional equivalents. Nor have the presidents on screen been of South Asian descent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, almost all the presidents of color on American screens have been Black and they have been men, while almost all the female presidents have been white. While the representation on screen of most Black presidents avoided any discussion of race, the representation of women has uniformly focused on gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So as people engage in the inevitable discussion of the meaning of Harris\u2019 candidacy, it\u2019s high time to revisit those fictional presidents<\/a>. Together they reveal how the presidency, in this case the fictional presidency, struggles with race and gender \u2013 just like the country at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And along the way, this may help create a watch list for people when they need a break from what promises to be a bruising presidential campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The doubting \u2212 and doubted \u2212 president<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first Black president was Douglass Dilman, played by James Earl Jones in the 1972 film \u201cThe Man<\/a>.\u201d \u201cThe Man\u201d situated racial politics front and center. Dilman is a reserved academic-turned-senator serving as president pro tem of the Senate before a series of freak accidents brings him to the presidency. He finds himself thrown into office facing doubts from Black activists and vicious opposition from white politicians who will not accept his legitimacy. In the Oval Office, he tells his daughter: \u201cI\u2019m the wrong one. \u2026 They were expecting a Black messiah.\u201d https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TeINMIJaaXA?wmode=transparent&start=780 James Earl Jones plays Douglass Dilman, a Black U.S. president, in the 1972 film \u2018The Man.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Strong, caring family men\u2019 \u2212 and some comedians<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But for every doubting Douglass Dilman, there are far more like Tom Beck, the president who must guide the United States through the risk of comet apocalypse in 1998\u2019s \u201cDeep Impact<\/a>.\u201d Played with cerebral gravitas by Morgan Freeman, Beck leads without a single reference to Blackness in particular or to race in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s President Thomas Wilson in \u201c2012<\/a>,\u201d played by Danny Glover, in another tale of global annihilation. And President David Palmer in the TV series 24<\/a>, a candidate turned president, played by Dennis Haysbert, who faces both assassination attempts and nuclear terrorism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all three of these representations, the president is usually the same: a strong, resolute, caring family man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leave it to the comedians to be the few who approached things differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Rock drew on all his routines about black culture and white culture to construct Mays Gilliam, the D.C. councilman turned Hail Mary Democratic nominee in 2003\u2019s \u201cHead of State<\/a>.\u201d Jamie Foxx threw in a few oblique racial jokes in 2013\u2019s \u201cWhite House Down<\/a>,\u201d a movie which otherwise exists alongside 1997\u2019s \u201cAir Force One<\/a>\u201d in the president-as-action-hero genre<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All about gender<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

These family men and action heroes are a far cry from the various female presidents on screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first \u2013 Leslie McCloud \u2013 predated Douglass Dilman by over a decade in the fictional timeline of presidents on screen. In 1964, \u201cKisses for My President<\/a>\u201d established the template that the story of female presidents was all about gender. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this film, the focus is not on McCloud herself but rather the way her husband, played by Fred MacMurray, struggles with the confusion and humiliations of being a man in the role of first lady. One poster for the film has him stuck wearing a woman\u2019s hat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether comedy or drama, the fictional female presidents come to the White House with the same set of challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They struggle to be both president and mother. Their husbands resent being in a woman\u2019s role. And above all else, the male politicians around them are disrespectful and distrustful. These movies not only predicted Hillary Clinton\u2019s candidacy but reflected the broader national conversation about women in the workplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps that is why one of the first made-for-TV movies on Lifetime \u2013 the self-proclaimed \u201cNetwork for Women\u201d \u2013 was \u201cMajority Rule<\/a>,\u201d in which Blair Brown played Gen. Catherine Taylor, a war hero turned president who must contend with the egocentric and condescending politicians who all want her job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Mackenzie Allen, \u2013 played by Geena Davis, faced the same challenges from 2005 through 2006 in the TV series \u201cCommander in Chief<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breaking the mold<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Most recently, Kamala Harris\u2019 moment has also become Selina Meyer\u2019s moment, with people rediscovering<\/a> \u201cVeep<\/a>,\u201d the 2012-19 TV series in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays a vice president who ascends to the Oval Office after the president resigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also another reason to watch \u201cVeep\u201d \u2013 as if there were not enough already: Laura Montez, who defeats Meyer in a chaotic election. Montez is among the few fictional presidents to break the mold of Black men and white women. Yet Montez remains a secondary character in \u201cVeep,\u201d with only a few glancing jokes calling attention to the fact that she\u2019s Latina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the series finale \u2013 spoiler alert \u2013 \u201cVeep\u201d returns to the familiar. Fast-forward several decades: At the funeral for Selina Meyer, a white female president whose story has always been told though gender and sexuality, the guests include Richard Splett, the former Meyer staffer who years later became president in his own right. As a Black president, Splett achieves the trifecta of bringing peace to the Middle East before enjoying an idyllic retirement with his beautiful wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meyer and Splett together have all the ingredients of a half-century of fictional presidents, with Montez, the Latina president, cast to the periphery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only one<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Constance Payton holds the distinction of being the only on-screen Black female president. You can be forgiven if you\u2019ve never heard of her, because her administration was brief. Alfre Woodard played Payton in the series \u201cState of Affairs<\/a>,\u201d which lasted for only 13 episodes in 2014-15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In interviews, Woodard herself emphasized the dynamics of gender rather than race in playing this character. \u201cConstance is, of course, a woman,\u201d Woodard said<\/a>, \u201cand Charleston (the CIA analyst who delivers her daily briefing) is a woman so we have these two women in a very powerful position. So we watch the work that they do so that the American homeland can stay as safe as possible.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these fictional presidents did share something in common. They all sought to normalize the notion of a female president and a Black president. They are usually thoughtful, serious, globally minded and ready to tackle any tough challenge head-on in the interest of the nation. Selina Meyer is a selfish narcisist, but that is exactly one of the features that made her such a distinctive character in the list of fictional female presidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, over the past half-century, American media has usually proclaimed that Black men and white women can fit the model of great presidents. But they have usually been just one or the other: a Black man or a white woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Kastor<\/a>, Professor of History & American Culture Studies, Associate Vice Dean of Research, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Kastor, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis The United States had its first Black president and its first female president over a half-century ago. They were fictional, they were on screen, their names were Douglass Dilman and Leslie McCloud, and in the decades that followed there have been many others. Yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":37555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[115,7,39,36,4,41],"tags":[529,7319,885,891,886,860,536],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37556,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37554\/revisions\/37556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}