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Review
| Hollywood's White House: the American Presidency in Film and History, edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Conner with forward by Richard Shenkman. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2003. 441 pages. $32.00, cloth.
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| The twenty-three essays comprising Hollywood's White House: the American Presidency in Film and History are linked thematically by their consensus that American motion pictures have failed "to depict adequately the presidents of the United States." (x) The book is broken into three separate sections that broadly address 1) cinematic depictions of actual presidents, 2) the presidency in fiction films, and 3) issues surrounding Hollywood and the White House in the recent past. Most of these essays would be appropriate for undergraduates, especially history majors in introductory theory or methodology courses. The frequent disconnect between the cinematic and actual presidency consistently identified in this collection offers educators an opportunity to engage students in an extended discussion of the ways in which historical memory is refashioned through time for America's mass entertainment audience. |
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Although a number of the essays in Hollywood's White House address the ability of cinema to shape expectations about the nation's highest office, the majority implicitly or explicitly assert that motion pictures about the presidency reflect the dominant ideological consensus of the period in which the films were produced. Such films, these essays argue, are afflicted by a presentism that subordinates historical accuracy to the moods and machinations of the day. Jim Welsh, for instance, posits that Ishmael Merchant and James Ivory's 1995 film Jefferson In Paris tells us far more about the trials and tribulations of William Jefferson Clinton than it does regarding the Sage of Monticello. While it is certainly true that cinematic presentism, which in the above case aims to titillate rather than educate, can mislead motion picture audiences about the lives of our former leaders it can also, when examined critically, lend useful insights into the problematic nature of all historical representation. |
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History is unavoidably informed to some degree by contemporary preoccupations, and educators can utilize the obvious distortions of a film like Jefferson In Paris ("biography as scatology," pronounces Welsh) to raise students' critical awareness of how the past is reconstructed—whether such reconstruction occurs in a motion picture, the television news, or a textbook. In other words, of course Hollywood is going to get it wrong most of the time. However, rather than bemoaning the usual flaws to be found in each new production depicting the presidency, educators should recognize the teaching opportunities such films afford. For instance, screening The Adams Chronicles in conjunction with Scott F. Stoddart's perceptive analysis of this mid-1970s miniseries can facilitate students' recognition that the decisions authors and filmmakers must make regarding their particular version of the past are often influenced by considerations far distant from their historical subject. Such choices ultimately determine both what appears in the narrative as well as (perhaps even more importantly) those moments that will be left on the cutting room floor. For, as Linda Alkana keenly notes (in "The Absent President"), issues of absence—what gets left out—must be addressed by those who are attempting to didactically utilize motion pictures in the classroom. |
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Motion pictures lend themselves to critical examination in the classroom because most students are already intimately familiar with them, having enjoyed film uncritically as audience members (whether in the theater or, increasingly, at home) since childhood. This assumption regarding students as viewers, however, underlines the primary shortcoming of Hollywood's White House. While this collection offers an abundance of valuable and informed scholarship on both cinematic history and the presidency, it largely overlooks an increasingly important facet of cinema scholarship: reception theory. We learn very little about how actual audiences experienced particular films and the occasional assertions made regarding their responses are based on very general premises, such as overall box office returns. Ironically, the most successful attempt to analyze an audience in Hollywood's White House is found in an essay concerned neither with motion pictures nor a president. Japp Kooijman's "A Juxtaposition of Conflicting Images" argues that the tele-visual montage created by the networks' live coverage of the 1968 Democratic Presidential Convention, when juxtaposed with recently taped footage of the violence in the streets outside, provoked overwhelmingly negative reactions from viewers and generated unintended meanings which ultimately debilitated Hubert Humphrey's bid for the presidency. Kooijman's provocative and largely persuasive thesis is supported by evidence drawn from hundreds of letters written by viewers to Candidate Humphrey in the aftermath of the convention. This essay, in attempting to analyze real viewers rather than relying on an assumed ideal spectator, signals the possibility for even more fruitful future examinations of the relationship between Hollywood, the presidency, and their audiences. |
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