If only "The West Wing" were back on the air.

I would have been very open to voting for Martin Sheen for president, had he been running in 2016.

Or Allison Janney.

Martin Sheen as Jed Bartlet

Allison Janney as CJ Craig

Martin Sheen played President Jeb Bartlett in the TV show The West Wing.  Allison Janney played the fast talking, whip-smart press secretary and then chief of staff. I would not have to imagine that they could be a wise and effective Oval Office team. I had seen them in action. 

Guest Post authors Sandford Borins and wife Beth Herst wrote Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, which examines how narratives shape our understanding of current politics and government. It is timely. Volodymyr Zelenskyy played an accidental good-guy uncorrupted Ukrainian president in a popular Ukrainian TV show. 

"Servant of the People"

He got elected to that job in real life. 

Donald Trump played a decisive, confident, competent real estate tycoon in the TV show The Apprentice. Americans could visualize the real Donald Trump making decisive, confident, competent decisions. He saw he could fire people who didn't measure up in some way. It was plausible that he could drain the swamp of cronies and lobbiests.

How might history have been different had the Netflix show The Diplomat, staring Keri Russell as a very competent diplomat in a troubled marriage with a high-powered husband been available and popular in the years prior to the 2016 presidential election?

The Borins-Herst book is for sale. It is also offered "open source." It is free to download, either as a book or chapter-by-chapter. Borins explains that this is the fair way to price the book. The research and analysis that made the book possible took place while he was a professor and professor emeritus at Canada's top public university. The public therefore underwrote the book and invested in its authors. In return, the authors work is available free to the public.  They consider their work to be a public good, like clean air, safe streets, or an insight that people are free to use or not use.

Borins is Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto. Originally an economist, he began to study and teach political narrative. Herst has a doctorate in English literature from the University of London, and a published thesis about Charles Dickens. Public Representations is the ultimate product of two decades of their intellectual collaboration.

Here is a link to the publication:  https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9781487503871

Guest Post by Beth Herst and Sandford Borins

It's not "Just a Movie"

When young children are frightened by a story they’re watching on screen, we comfort them by reminding “It’s just a movie.” An expanding body of research is telling us that’s not actually true.

Like our kids, we know that screen stories affect our emotions. Scholars are demonstrating that they work powerfully on our public memories and private belief systems too. Laboratory studies show that viewing a screen story produces physiological changes that cue our emotional reactions. It also triggers forms of cognition. The narrative “facts” we unconsciously absorb as we watch take up residence in our minds as information, particularly vivid and therefore easily recalled. And the more distant we are from the viewing experience, the more likely we are to forget the source of that knowledge. It isn’t a question of temporarily suspending disbelief to enjoy the on-screen story. The challenge is to resist the belief that the story embeds.

The past two decades have seen a boom in large and small screen productions exploring political leadership, electoral politics, and government past and present. Many of them have drawn wide viewership and generated significant cultural conversation. As shared knowledge of civics and history declines, and skepticism regarding accredited sources grows, more of us appear to be defining who we were and who we are as citizens and as nations through screen media depictions. And that means we need to look carefully at what these screen stories are telling us.

Our new book Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, set out to do just that for a selection of recent American, British, and Canadian cinematic, broadcast, cable, and streaming productions. It is now available by open access on the website of University of Toronto Press, the publisher. You can download the book in its entirety as a pdf or ePub, or chapter by chapter.

We discovered that many of these productions quickly crossed over from the domain of entertainment to that of politics. In some cases, politicians co-opted them for talking points, for cultural credibility, and/or for political branding. In others, they served as substitutes for, or direct occasions of, cultural conversations around urgent current issues, regardless of their period or setting.

Three examples from many we analyze: In 2002, during an expensive promotional campaign for the CBC’s docudrama miniseries Trudeau, members of the cast and creative team were introduced in the House of Commons after Question Period. They were loudly booed and heckled by Bloc Québecois MPs. The action, likely concerted, operated as an expression of their political brand. Québecois actor Raymond Cloutier, who played Gérard Pelletier in the series, took it as such. He was quoted in an interview furiously demanding “This is what the sovereigntist movement is about now?” Trudeau attracted one of the largest audiences ever for a CBC drama production. It also reopened debate regarding Pierre Trudeau’s legend and legacy and his relation to Québec’s past and present political culture and aspirations. It was a debate which lasted well beyond the two-part series’ airing.

Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, her tenure as Secretary of State (2009-2013), and her failed 2016 presidential campaign coincided with a suite of long-running and very popular American broadcast and premium cable productions featuring female presidents or presidential aspirants. These included Fox’s 24 Hours, CBS’s Madam Secretary/President, NBC’s Scandal and Parks and Recreation, HBO’s Veep, and Netflix’s House of Cards. On the eve of Clinton’s 2016 presidential announcement, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the star of Veep, commented to a reporter that should Hillary choose to run, it would be good for the show. But, she added, “I’m not sure we’re good for her.” Louis-Dreyfus wasn’t alone. Professional critics, political columnists, bloggers, and online communities all debated how this sorority of “alt-Hillaries” and “Hillary avatars” would affect public perceptions of Clinton. All were convinced they would influence her electoral fortunes. These fictional female presidents also became a feature of the larger cultural conversation regarding women, political leadership, and political ambition that Clinton galvanized.

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster IMAX epic Dunkirk was released in Britain during the protracted domestic political stalemate over the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU (“Brexit”). The leading anti-EU politician Nigel Farage, a vocal advocate of a “hard Brexit,” posed beside a poster for the film and tweeted his encouragement for all “Leave” supporters to see it and take its message of British exceptionalism to heart. The film’s usefulness for Farage’s brand of nostalgia politics was clear. But, as numerous critics noted, Dunkirk erased the presence of the non-White colonial soldiers, who were central to the story, providing essential support for the British on the beaches of Occupied France. More than one commentator analyzed the film as “superb Brexit propaganda” and used its reception, including by Farage and other public figures, as a lens to examine the differing visions of England and Englishness informing both sides of the bitter Brexit divide.

As these examples indicate, the lines between popular culture, screen entertainment, and politics are becoming increasingly blurred. Screen stories have long influenced our collective, public memory. They increasingly appear to be filling a void in our civic education too. They even seem to be shaping the way political figures understand, and play, their public roles. For all these reasons, it’s more important than ever to realize that the screen entertainment we’re consuming is never “just a movie” and to look more closely at what our movies are telling us about ourselves.

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