By Trevor Parry-Giles
Contrasting powerful girls and multiculturalism with portrayals of a heroic white male best the kingdom into conflict, The Prime-Time Presidency explores the NBC drama The West Wing, paying specific consciousness to its function in selling cultural that means concerning the presidency and U.S. nationalism. dependent in a cautious, specific research of the "first time period" of The West Wing's President Josiah Bartlett, this feedback highlights the methods the textual content negotiates robust tensions and complicated ambiguities on the base of U.S. nationwide identification - rather the position of gender, race, and militarism within the development of U.S. nationalism. in contrast to scattered and disparate collections of essays, Trevor Parry-Giles and Shawn J. Parry-Giles supply a sustained, ideologically pushed feedback of The West Wing. The Prime-time Presidency provides a close critique of this system rooted in presidential historical past, an appreciation of television's energy as a resource of political which means, and television's contribution to the articulation of U.S. nationwide id.
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Additional resources for The Prime-Time Presidency: The West Wing and U.S. Nationalism
Sample text
The episode ends with Leo mobilizing the senior staff, who all assert loyalty to President Bartlet as they each proudly declare, “I serve at the pleasure of the president” (“Let Bartlet Be Bartlet”). In the concluding episodes of the first season a more decisively heroic president of the familiar archetypal romance emerges. At the end of episode twenty, “Mandatory Minimums,” Bartlet is in bed as the entire senior staff, anxious over the events of the day, comes into his bedroom, one by one, seeking sage advice, solace, or forgiveness.
As John B. 21-53_Parry-Giles 12/12/05 4:43 PM Page 38 38 . the prime-time presidency directly addresses such questions, highlighting the general cultural anxiety about political reputation and trust emergent from the Clinton presidency. Moreover, TWW’s resolution to the plotline reconstructs presidential heroism, affirming again the persistent TWW theme of letting Bartlet be Bartlet. Bartlet’s MS is a largely dormant plotline until midway through the second season. Occasionally mentioned, the plot does not dominate or control the action of TWW, and the characters rarely discuss the affliction.
Ultimately, the diatribe morphs into a confessional as the president admits, “Yes, I lied, it was a sin. ” He recites some Latin phrases, translated as “am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments. 21-53_Parry-Giles 12/12/05 4:43 PM Page 41 the west wing as political romance . 41 I was your servant here on Earth. And I spread your word and I did your work. To hell with your punishments. ” Part confessional, part attack, and part concession, the monologue is fascinating for its manifestation of TWW’s presidential vision as it opposes long-standing images of presidents as arbiters and manifestations of America’s spiritual and civil religions.