Hollywood's White House, the American Presidency in Film and History, and: The West Wing, the American Presidency as Television Drama (review)

Abstract

Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor, editors. Hollywood's White House, the American Presidency in and History. University Press Kentucky, 2003 441 pages; $32.OO hardcover Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor, editors. The West Wing, the American Presidency as Television Drama. Syracuse University Press, 2OO3 272 pages; $45.OO hardcover; $19.95 paperback Timely Works Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor's newest collaborative works are an excellent addition to film and television studies. In Hollywood's White House: The American Presidency in and History and The West Wing: The American Presidency as Television Drama the editors have painstakingly assembled the work of scholars and journalists who examine Hollywood and television's portrayals of the American Presidency. Over the years, the editors have worked on numerous projects including Hollywood's World War I: Motion Picture Images ( 1999) ; Hollywood's Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in (2nd ed, 2003)and the thirty-three-year-old journal Film, & History, An Interdisciplinary Journal of & Television Studies. Rollins' interest in historical film analysis began with a presentation at the first Popular Culture Association meeting in 1971 analyzing the television series Victory at Sea. (Later published as chapter 5 of Television Histories, Eds. Peter C. Rollins and Gary Edgerton, 2001.) Within a year of the popular culture gathering, Rollins met John E. O'Connor, editor of the fledgling & History journal, forging a lifetime of collaboration and friendship. (See About Us on the journal's web site, www.filmandhistory.org). Hollywood's White House, declares the editors, is dedicated to the American Presidents and the glorious office of the presidency. Their contributors begin by examining the film presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Part two examines fictional presidential heroes, presidential imagery found in the films of Frank Capra, and Hollywood's creation of an hero president in Air Force One (1997). Concluding chapters discuss presidential character, a hot button political issue emerging with Oliver Stone's film Nixon ( 1995), and reaching a crescendo during the presidency of Bill Clinton (1992-2000). More recently the issue of character consumes 24/7 cable news media outlets which daily dissect every action and word of George W. Bush. The supporting bibliographic essay written by Myron A. Levine examines the literature surrounding the changing functions of the presidency as the office has evolved over time. John Shelton Lawrence's A Filmography for Images of American Presidents in Film provides a comprehensive start for future studies of the presidency in media. Many of the essays are compelling, especially Deborah Carmichael's Gabriel Over the White House (1933): William Randolph Hearst's Fascist Solution for the Great Depression and Loren P. Quiring's A Man of His Word: Aaron Sorkin's American Presidents. Carmichael examines the dark themes generated by Gabriel...and how a mild-mannered, even- tempered president became transformed after a car accident and subsequent coma into a human dynamo of governmental (often unconstitutional) activism, vanquishing America's foreign enemies and restoring economic and social justice to a country ravaged by the Great Depression. In relation to more recent productions, Quiring describes the art of passionate presidential vocabulary used by writer Aaron Sorkin as a metaphor for presidential values/action. Quiring writes that Sorkin wants a president who can embody the rational discourse governing our society, faithful not to the random seductions of image but to oaths that the Constitution represents. …