Download or read book The Representation of the American Presidency in Recent Hollywood Movies written by Marie Axland and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 1998 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, LMU Munich, language: English, abstract: In Hollywood film history, the U.S. president has had many images - a brave leader, an incompetent fool, a lovable hero. One thing is for certain: No matter what era, Presidents, whether fictional or real, are frequent fodder for filmmakers. After Vietnam and the revelations of Watergate, however, the number of films with presidential portrayals steadily decreased, and the depictions that did appear generally cast a corrupt or inept Chief Executive. It is therefore more than surprising why filmmakers today have decided to produce such an incredibly large number of films as compared to the last two decades. Presidents have been portrayed as minor characters in dozens of Hollywood films, either for inspirational purposes or simply to keep the plot moving. Lately, not only the number of President films has increased significantly, but there is also a clear tendency to let the Presidents move towards center stage, and they are now often pictured as the protagonists. This phenomenon opens up a whole range of questions: How are the Presidents depicted? Is there a certain trend in the portrayals? Or are those portrayed all different from each other? Are there differences or similarities to older characterizations? What does this tell us about Hollywood's view of the Presidency? Has it suddenly changed? And what are the reasons for such a sudden boost in the number of films? By taking a closer look at a selection of Hollywood productions, this paper provides an attempt to find answers to these questions. Of the string of fictional Presidents that American filmmakers have recently created, some are more loathsome than their real-life counterparts, others more heroic. Both types seem designed to connect with audiences' hopes and fears - what the Hollywood dream factory does best. Interestingly, the portrayals have been all over

Download or read book Presidents in the Movies written by I. Morgan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-05-09 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinematic depictions of real U.S. presidents from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush explore how Hollywood movies represent American history and politics on screen. Morgan and his contributors show how films blend myth and reality to present a positive message about presidents as the epitome of America's values and idealism until unpopular foreign wars in Vietnam and Iraq led to a darker portrayal of the imperial presidency, operated by Richard Nixon and Bush 43. This exciting new collection further considers how Hollywood has continually reinterpreted historically significant presidents, notably Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, to fit the times in which movies about them were made.

Download or read book Hollywood s White House written by Peter C. Rollins and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-09-12 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " Winner of the 2003 Ray and Pat Browne Book Award, given by the Popular Culture Association The contributors to Hollywood's White House examine the historical accuracy of these presidential depictions, illuminate their influence, and uncover how they reflect the concerns of their times and the social and political visions of the filmmakers. The volume, which includes a comprehensive filmography and a bibliography, is ideal for historians and film enthusiasts.

Download or read book The Representation of the American Presidency in Recent Hollywood Movies written by Marie Axland and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-01-20 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 1998 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, LMU Munich, 300 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In Hollywood film history, the U.S. president has had many images - a brave leader, an incompetent fool, a lovable hero. One thing is for certain: No matter what era, Presidents, whether fictional or real, are frequent fodder for filmmakers. After Vietnam and the revelations of Watergate, however, the number of films with presidential portrayals steadily decreased, and the depictions that did appear generally cast a corrupt or inept Chief Executive. It is therefore more than surprising why filmmakers today have decided to produce such an incredibly large number of films as compared to the last two decades. Presidents have been portrayed as minor characters in dozens of Hollywood films, either for inspirational purposes or simply to keep the plot moving. Lately, not only the number of President films has increased significantly, but there is also a clear tendency to let the Presidents move towards center stage, and they are now often pictured as the protagonists. This phenomenon opens up a whole range of questions: How are the Presidents depicted? Is there a certain trend in the portrayals? Or are those portrayed all different from each other? Are there differences or similarities to older characterizations? What does this tell us about Hollywood’s view of the Presidency? Has it suddenly changed? And what are the reasons for such a sudden boost in the number of films? By taking a closer look at a selection of Hollywood productions, this paper provides an attempt to find answers to these questions. Of the string of fictional Presidents that American filmmakers have recently created, some are more loathsome than their real-life counterparts, others more heroic. Both types seem designed to connect with audiences’ hopes and fears - what the Hollywood dream factory does best. Interestingly, the portrayals have been all over the map: genial, kind-hearted impostor (Dave); reluctant, alien-fighting hero (Independence Day); pompous, delusional incompetent (Mars Attacks!); sympathetic, romantic widower (The American President); distracted, workaholic father (First Kid); promiscuous, murderous hypocrite (Absolute Power); tough defender of family and country (Air Force One), to name only a few. By discussing a selection of presidential films, this thesis examines Hollywood’s portrayal of the American Presidency.

Download or read book Presidents Under Pressure or how fictional presidents handle situations of extreme crisis in the movies Deep Impact Independence Day and Mars Attacks written by Uwe Sperlich and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2003-06-16 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 1999 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0 (B), LMU Munich (Amerika-Institut), course: Proseminar: The Representation of the American Presidency in Contemporary Hollywood Movies, 6 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The President of the United States has been a subject of many movies in Hollywood history. From the earliest days of cinema, in films such as The Birth of a Nation (1915), The Fighting Roosevelts (1919) or Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), to the present day, in films such as Nixon (1990) and Dick (1999), many real-life U.S. presidents have been portrayed in the most different ways. In the years before crises like Watergate, Vietnam and the growing media coverage have demystified the presidency, most of these reallife portrayals have shown the President as a wise heroic man, almost like a saint (Edelman 323). In the years after these events, Hollywood lost its respect for the presidency discovering that the man in charge was human and that he also makes mistakes (323). Since Hollywood likes to adapt politics, it is no surprise that politics adapted Hollywood, too. The simple fact that Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 was subject for several jokes in one of the most successful movies of 1985, Back To The Future. In this time-travel film, Marty McFly (Michael J.Fox) accidentally travels to the year 1955 where he tries to find the inventor of the time machine, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), to help him get back to 1985. After having found him, Doc Brown does not believe Marty’s story. In order to find out, if Marty’s story is true, Doc asks him the following question: Doc Brown: Then tell me, Future Boy, who’s President of the United States in 1985? Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan. Doc Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor? Ha! Then, who’s Vice President? Jerry Lewis? I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady and Jack Bennetty is Secretary of Treasury ! Marty McFly: Doc, you gotta listen to me ! Doc Brown: I got enough practical jokes for one evening. Good night, Future Boy. And later in the film, when Marty shows Doc Brown the recording of his camcorder, Doc Brown is amazed about this technological invention and cries out: “No wonder your president has to be an actor, he’s gotta look good on television.“ [...]

Download or read book Film and the American Presidency written by Jeff Menne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-20 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contention of Film and the American Presidency is that over the twentieth century the cinema has been a silent partner in setting the parameters of what we might call the presidential imaginary. This volume surveys the partnership in its longevity, placing stress on especially iconic presidents such as Lincoln and FDR. The contributions to this collection probe the rich interactions between these high institutions of culture and politics—Hollywood and the presidency—and argue that not only did Hollywood acting become an idiom for presidential style, but that Hollywood early on understood its own identity through the presidency’s peculiar mix of national epic and unified protagonist. Additionally, they contend that studios often made their films to sway political outcomes; that the performance of presidential personae has been constrained by the kinds of bodies (for so long, white and male) that have occupied the office, such that presidential embodiment obscures the body politic; and that Hollywood and the presidency may finally be nothing more than two privileged figures of media-age power.

Download or read book The American President in Film and Television written by Gregory Frame and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Presidents in the Movies written by I. Morgan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-05-09 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinematic depictions of real U.S. presidents from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush explore how Hollywood movies represent American history and politics on screen. Morgan and his contributors show how films blend myth and reality to present a positive message about presidents as the epitome of America's values and idealism until unpopular foreign wars in Vietnam and Iraq led to a darker portrayal of the imperial presidency, operated by Richard Nixon and Bush 43. This exciting new collection further considers how Hollywood has continually reinterpreted historically significant presidents, notably Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, to fit the times in which movies about them were made.

Download or read book Make My Day written by J. Hoberman and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of the Year by Financial Times "Singular, stylish and slightly intoxicating in its scope." —Rolling Stone Acclaimed media critic J. Hoberman's masterful and majestic exploration of the Reagan years as seen through the unforgettable movies of the era The third book in a brilliant and ambitious trilogy, celebrated cultural and film critic J. Hoberman's Make My Day is a major new work of film and pop culture history. In it he chronicles the Reagan years, from the waning days of the Watergate scandal when disaster films like Earthquake ruled the box office to the nostalgia of feel-good movies like Rocky and Star Wars, and the delirium of the 1984 presidential campaign and beyond. Bookended by the Bicentennial celebrations and the Iran-Contra affair, the period of Reagan's ascendance brought such movie events as Jaws, Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, Ghostbusters, Blue Velvet, and Back to the Future, as well as the birth of MTV, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the Second Cold War. An exploration of the synergy between American politics and popular culture, Make My Day is the concluding volume of Hoberman's Found Illusions trilogy; the first volume, The Dream Life, was described by Slate's David Edelstein as "one of the most vital cultural histories I've ever read"; Film Comment called the second, An Army of Phantoms, "utterly compulsive reading." Reagan, a supporting player in Hoberman's previous volumes, here takes center stage as the peer of Indiana Jones and John Rambo, the embodiment of a Hollywood that, even then, no longer existed.

Download or read book Film and the American Presidency written by Jeff Menne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-20 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contention of Film and the American Presidency is that over the twentieth century the cinema has been a silent partner in setting the parameters of what we might call the presidential imaginary. This volume surveys the partnership in its longevity, placing stress on especially iconic presidents such as Lincoln and FDR. The contributions to this collection probe the rich interactions between these high institutions of culture and politics—Hollywood and the presidency—and argue that not only did Hollywood acting become an idiom for presidential style, but that Hollywood early on understood its own identity through the presidency’s peculiar mix of national epic and unified protagonist. Additionally, they contend that studios often made their films to sway political outcomes; that the performance of presidential personae has been constrained by the kinds of bodies (for so long, white and male) that have occupied the office, such that presidential embodiment obscures the body politic; and that Hollywood and the presidency may finally be nothing more than two privileged figures of media-age power.

Download or read book Hollywood and the American Historical Film written by J.E. Smyth and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do Hollywood filmmakers construct and interpret American history? Is film's visual historical language inherently different from the traditions of written history? This definitive collection of essays by leading scholars probes the theoretical and historical contexts of films made about the American past - from the silent era to the present. Exploring issues deeply connected with historical filmmaking, from historiography to censorship, to race, gender, and sexuality, the book discusses a wide range of films and genres- including classics such as The Virginian, Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane. This collection is essential reading for anyone interested in studying, or researching American history and film. Includes essays by Susan Courtney, David Culbert, Nicholas J. Cull, Vera Dika, David Eldridge, Vittorio Hösle, Marcia Landy, Mark W. Roche, Robert Rosenstone, Ian Scott, Robert Sklar, J.E. Smyth, and Warren I. Susman.

Download or read book American History through Hollywood Film written by Melvyn Stokes and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American History through Hollywood Film offers a new perspective on major issues in American history from the 1770s to the end of the twentieth century and explores how they have been represented in film. Melvyn Stokes examines how and why representation has changed over time, looking at the origins, underlying assumptions, production, and reception of an important cross-section of historical films. Chapters deal with key events in American history including the American Revolution, the Civil War and its legacy, the Great Depression, and the anti-communism of the Cold War era. Major themes such as ethnicity, slavery, Native Americans and Jewish immigrants are covered and a final chapter looks at the way the 1960s and 70s have been dealt with by Hollywood. This book is essential reading for anyone studying American history and the relationship between history and film.

Download or read book The Films of the Nineties written by W. Palmer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-03-02 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By breaking down classic films from the nineteen-nineties such as Forest Gump and Titanic, this book offers a reel-to-reel cultural analysis, chronicling the concept of 'spin' as a major sociopolitical persuasion strategy.

Download or read book Jimi Hendrix and the Cultural Politics of Popular Music written by Aaron Lefkovitz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, on Jimi Hendrix’s life, times, visual-cultural prominence, and popular music, with a particular emphasis on Hendrix’s relationships to the cultural politics of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and nation. Hendrix, an itinerant “Gypsy” and “Voodoo child” whose racialized “freak” visual image continues to internationally circulate, exploited the exoticism of his race, gender, and sexuality and Gypsy and Voodoo transnational political cultures and religion. Aaron E. Lefkovitz argues that Hendrix can be located in a legacy of black-transnational popular musicians, from Chuck Berry to the hip hop duo Outkast, confirming while subverting established white supremacist and hetero-normative codes and conventions. Focusing on Hendrix’s transnational biography and centrality to US and international visual cultural and popular music histories, this book links Hendrix to traditions of blackface minstrelsy, international freak show spectacles, black popular music’s global circulation, and visual-cultural racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes, while noting Hendrix’s place in 1960s countercultural, US-exceptionalist, cultural Cold War, and rock histories.

Download or read book E Pluribus Unum written by David Schnicke and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fictional Presidential Films written by Sarah Miles Bolam & Thomas J. Bolam and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fictional Presidential Films Hollywood’s manner of making films, its conventions, applies especially to fictional presidential films, allowing filmmakers to express their ideas that could not be done in traditional historical films. Fictional Presidential Films offers a complete filmography of these two-hundred-plus films decade by decade since 1930. The main body of the work provides a brief summary of each decade along with a summary on the overall nature of films in which a fictional President appeared. Each relevant film is then discussed with credits, plot summary, description of the presidential appearance, and, when possible, an assessment of the presidential portrayal included.

Download or read book History on Film Film on History written by Robert A. Rosenstone and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History on Film/Film on History has established itself as a classic treatise on the historical film and its role in bringing the past to life. In the fourth edition of this widely acclaimed text, Robert A. Rosenstone argues that to leave history films out of the discussion of the meaning of the past is to ignore a major means of understanding historical events. This book examines what history films convey about the past and how they convey it, demonstrating the need to learn how to read and understand this new visual world and integrating detailed analysis of films such as Schindler’s List, Glory, October, and Reds. Advocating for the dramatic feature as a legitimate way of doing history, this edition includes a new Preface and a new chapter that focuses on films produced in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, India, and East Asia. Examining the codes and conventions of how these films tell us about the past and providing guidance on how to effectively analyse films as historical interpretations, this book is an essential introduction to the field for students of history and film.