Abstract
The article deals with the depiction of national (socio)political crises fictional(ized) US-American presidents are faced with in exemplary TV series of the 1980s and 1990s. Based on the premise that the audiovisual depiction of crises serves an exemplary function for the systems of the narrative‘s diegesis, the article attempts to analyse the effects of personification and representation in the fictionalized and the fictional handling of (socio)political crises. As a sample it refers to the form of the presidential biopic as depicted in Kennedy (1983) and The West Wing (1999-2006; both NBC). The little-known and even lesser-analysed TV miniseries Kennedy is used as an example for fictionalized crises handled by fictionalized leaders John and Robert Kennedy whereas the much more widely-known prime-time series The West Wing will be used as an exemplary point of reference how these fictionalized ways of handling (socio)political crises find their way into larger-scale narratives and entirely fictional formats. Finally, the results of the analysis of the discourse will lead to a reflection about how good or bad leadership are (re)imagined in these particular works of fiction and how (much) they are tied to particular characters acting as good (or bad) examples for the system they represent. Following this set of ideas, the article‘s hypothesis is that popular discourse often metonymically ties the (un)successful handling of a crisis to the responsible person and the outcome serves to teach the spectator how the representative of a given norm system (i. e. the democracy of the United States of America) goes about protecting the norms he comes to represent to serve as an example for the way history and collective identity are shaped through crises.
Highlights
The article deals with the depiction of nationalpolitical crises fictional(ized) USAmerican presidents are faced with in exemplary TV series of the 1980s and 1990s
The Bartlets have to treat their dates like scheduled meetings, argue in between work commitments, yet their conflict is only private in occasion, yet public in scope. This difference informs most of the conflicts in The West Wing, showing that in certain positions public work and private life have to converge
If the head of state metonymically represents the state with all possible consequences, he has to be diplomatically and politically as well as socially and morally competent to be likable
Summary
The Direct Cinema movement originated around 1960 and was made possible by the technical innovation of synchronizing portable sound recorders with the portable 16mm camera (Noll Brinckmann, 2010, p. 198). A few minutes of runtime later, the narration turns its attention to Alabama again, showing the police explicitly allowing a violent mob to attack and injure the freedom riders, setting their Greyhound bus on fire This structural principle of cross–cuts remains constitutive for the remainder of the episode: something happens ‘out there’– riots, cases of violence, later the reaction of the state and strategies are discussed ‘inside’, in Washington D.C. Martin Luther King (Charles Brown) is introduced as the advocate for the freedom riders and as an extension to the moral conscience of the White House, constantly reminding the representatives of their failures in supporting the civil rights movement. In 1983, the same year as Kennedy, he played the demagogic antagonist Greg Stillson who would blow up the world as president in David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, an early Stephen King adaptation, further complicating his already multi-faceted image as a typecast world leader
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
