Ironically, even as George W. Bush has frequently positioned himself in opposition to the Hollywood elite and liberal journalists, he might be considered our first pop culture president.  According to Stephen Humphries of the Christian Science Monitor, the media has shaped his image and legacy to an unprecedented degree — and not to his advantage:

The proliferation of new forms of media – coupled with a democratization of communication that allows anyone with a modem to become a filmmaker, broadcaster, or pundit – has meant that no other sitting president has had quite so many slings and arrows to suffer. Against such a backdrop, Bush may find it exceedingly difficult to control the final narrative of his presidency.

Humphries reminds us of the countless portrayals and parodies of Bush — from songs to comedy shows to films. But the most intriguing element of the story is how Bush himself fed this frenzy by, from the beginning, constructing a “regular guy” persona.  He seemed to know the importance of establishing an easily accessible image, but like so many parts of his presidency, he didn’t realize how easily he could lose control of that image.

If you look closely, you’ll even see a quote from yours truly on this point:

Bush well understood the importance of the popular-culture vote. During his 2000 campaign, he accentuated his image as a regular guy. “I don’t think it’s an accident that, for a number of years, we always heard about [Bush] going back to the ranch to clear brush,” says John Matviko, editor of “The President in Popular Culture,” and professor at West Liberty State College in West Virginia.

But that cowboy persona was turned against him by dozens of YouTube impersonators – most notably Will Ferrell – who lambasted Bush as a country yokel who “misunderestimated” the importance of elocution.

“[Bush’s] entire presidency was about the projection of an image, so the fact that there have been so many pop-culture representations of him is a logical extension of that,” says Bernie Heidkamp, a contributor to PopPolitics, an online magazine about the convergence of politics and pop culture.

You don’t believe it?  Well, as Keillor himself points out, it’s not any more of a leap of logic than what the Republicans are trying to do:

It is a bold move on the Republicans’ part — forget about the past, it’s only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be — and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to. Paste a new face on my Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louie the Thirty-Second, the rightful heir to the Throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the royal fleur-de-lis. They will cure neuralgia and gout and restore marital vigor.

The following is a personal reflection on the meaning of George Carlin by David Masciotra, published in the “impressions” section of PopPolitics magazine:

How does one make a 14-year-old who hates high school excited about language, learning and politics? One way guaranteed to be effective is to make the entire process painfully funny.

At one point I was that kid, awkwardly stumbling through adolescence, bored by conventional classroom tactics, attempting to determine what interested me as a student and what spoke to me as a human being. Somewhere in the midst of that exploration of self-discovery, I was introduced to counter-cultural comedian George Carlin.

Continue reading “Remembering George Carlin.”

Greg Braxton writes in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times:

There’s a somewhat surprising consensus that admirable black fictional figures may have subtly conditioned the electorate to be receptive to a candidate like Obama, the presumptive Democratic standard-bearer.

“One wonders to what degree a scenario played out in a safe, contained, fictionalized context might have prepared people for the real thing,” said Darnell Hunt, a professor of sociology and director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. “Popular culture is more than mere entertainment. It gives us a dress rehearsal for the real thing. We can imagine who we are and who we would like to be.”

Make-believe black presidents occupy an odd little corner of pop culture, a territory that a few notable films and television programs have staked out.

The piece makes some unsubstantiated psychological leaps, but it is worth it simply for the history it provides of black presidents on the big and small screen. It sent me on a search, for example, to find more info about a short film, “Rufus Jones for President” (1933), starring a very young Sammy Davis Jr. as a black 7-year-old elected president (see it here) and about a a full-length film “The Man” (1972), starring James Earl Jones “that is largely credited with being the first serious treatment of a black man becoming president”:

Based on an Irving Wallace novel, the movie starred James Earl Jones as the Senate president pro tem who suddenly ascends to the Oval Office after the untimely deaths of the president and speaker of the House and the illness of the vice president.

In the poster for the film, Jones is pictured taking the oath of office at a ceremony populated by white politicians. The tag line for the movie reads “The first black president of the United States. First they swore him in. Then they swore to get him.”

Braxton interviews at length the minds behind two more recent representations of black presidents: the satirical film “Head of State,” in which Chris Rock plays May Gilliam, an ordinary man who ascends to the presidency, and the television series “24,” which began, maybe more radically, in the middle of the presidency of David Palmer (portrayed by Dennis Haysbert)., in which the qualifications of David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) for the highest office were never questioned.

Worthwhile photo galleries accompany the article.

The only issue I have with the article — and this is true for much coverage of pop culture in the mainstream media — is it focuses too heavily on how “life imitates art,” how pop culture is a progressive, forward-thinking force.

While I wouldn’t deny the power of pop culture to change minds, I think it is equally important that we put pop culture in its own historical context — and see it reflecting the anxieties and prejudices of its day, even as it imagines such a “progressive” scenario as a black presidency.

With the exception of David Palmer on “24″ — where a black presidency was accepted as matter-of-fact — all the other representations that Braxton notes can be seen as actually regressive.

It’s telling that on the DVD commentary to “Head of State” Chris Rock says, “I don’t know if I’ll see a black president in my lifetime.” While Braxton sees this as a laughable “misunderstanding,” he ignores that fact that the intention of the Rock’s film was not to lay the groundwork for a future black presidency — it was to express how much racism is an almost impenetrable obstacle to black leadership.

Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times wonders at — rather than analyzes — the sea change that has made “Pop TV” the new favorite venue for politicians. With all the recent appearances by the President, candidates and their spouses on everything from “Deal or No Deal” to the “Colbert Report,” Stanley notes, “It’s hard to recall how unusual it was to see Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas playing the sax on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992.”

Her pop explanation: “Elitism is to the 2008 campaign as communism was to 1950s politics: a career-breaker. And pop TV is the antidote, a free platform to rub shoulders with viewers who only glancingly pay attention to the news.”

The return of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to the airwaves tonight is bittersweet — but pretty much just sweeeet.

Yes, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA), who are on strike, will be picketing both shows — and they are certainly justified. The WGA’s grievances with the media industry are clear and undeniable.

But we really need some quality satire these days. To cite just one example, someone has got to start mocking all this rhetoric of change.

We’ve got a couple of new articles up today. The first is a new poetry review, “The Whitman (Walt not Slim) of Popular Culture” by Richard C. Crepeau, who is also a regular blog contributor.

Poetry and pop culture often seem diametrically opposed in modern American culture. Crepeau’s review, however, reveals a potentially much more intimate relationship:

Poetry is not generally thought of as a vehicle for posing the eternal question, ?Ginger or Maryann?? or to contemplate the centrality of “Hawaii Five-O” within the cultural milieu of our postmodern existence.

For David McGimpsey, however, these are just the sort of subjects that are most suitable to poetry.

Read the full article here.

A Virtual Moral and Spiritual Crisis: Mitt Romney’s latest campaign ad identifies video games as part of “a cesspool of violence and sex and drugs and indolence and perversions” in which “our children now swim.” Matt Peckham of PC World (yes, PC World) correctly tags Romney as just the latest in a long line of politicians that have fomented a “climate of fear” to create a more malleable populus.

By the way, is gambling “indolence” or a “perversion”? In either case, Romney will probably be happy to know that the producers of Second Life have outlawed gambling in their virtual world — which is beginning to feel like a “ghost town,” according to ValleyWag.

On the other hand, evangelizing is making a much smoother move into that same world — at least for the Jesuits. Father Antonio Spadaro tells the Financial Times: “This virtual Second Life is becoming populated with churches, mosques, temples, cathedrals. synagogues, places of prayer of all kinds. And behind an avatar there is a man or a woman, perhaps searching for God and faith, perhaps with very strong spiritual needs.” (Thanks, Lede, for the lead)

And whether it’s Second Life, MySpace or Facebook, Henry Jenkins, building off of Danah Boyd’s research, wants us to consider the “participation gap” among online users.

Drawing Well: Tim Cavanaugh of the Los Angeles Times is surprised to learn that sales of comic books have been increasingly steadily for the last five years. He’s been used to hearing only of the impending death of the genre:

If it’s striking how many movies are based on comic book properties these days, it’s even more striking how few of those properties were minted within the last decade or so … A favorite sport of industry watchers is figuring out just how the form went from being something youthful and dynamic to becoming something fearful, risk-averse and cramped.

He sees some hope in — you guessed it — the web, where sites like PvP and Modern Tales are pushing the envelope and turning a profit.

Comic books, of course, have always been a strange mixture of regressive and forward-looking ideologies. Lyle Masaki at AfterElton is sure to spark a conversation with his list of “ten of the coolest gay superheroes you (probably) haven’t heard of.”

Adhir Kalyan as Raja in “Aliens in America”

Aliens in Hollywood: Lisa de Moreas, whose laugh-out-loud columns make me feel like she’s a stand-up comedian in a television critic’s body, is having her usual fun at the summer press tour in Beverly Hills. But the story she tells in the second part of this column is both funny and revealing.

De Moreas loves the upcoming CW sitcom “Aliens in America” — in which a Pakistani exchange student finds both friendship and prejudice in America. She sees it as the next coming of “Freaks and Geeks” (and from the hilarious trailer, I’m probably going to agree).

Other critics, though, took great offense at its portrayal of a bigoted Middle America. De Moreas’ transcription of the critics’ confrontation with “Aliens in America” producers could be the basis for a sitcom itself.

Black is Intellectual: African American public intellectuals are not a rare breed — the incestuous mainstream media just make it feel that way, according to David A. Love’s insightful analysis in The Black Commentator.

Mark Anthony Neal’s defense of Michael Eric Dyson in PopMatters makes a similar point from another direction. Dyson, according to Neal, has been the source of scorn both for his popularity and for presenting too reductive and celebratory a picture black life: “This widely circulated and decidedly worn ‘poverty pimp’ thesis has been applied to figures as diverse as Reverend Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, and the current cadre of hip-hop generation intellectuals, who supposedly, as the critique goes, wallow in victimization and refuse to hold the black rank-and-file, particularly black youth, accountable for bad behavior.”

But Neal says we should show praise Dyson and others who have “leveraged the appeal of popular culture” — whether that’s television, hip hop, etc — to fight the good fight. Neal brings up BlackProf.com and Professor Kim’s News Notes — which we have been long fans of here at PopPolitics — as examples of how black intellectuals have harnessed the blogosphere.

Finally, Cornel West himself reinforces both Love’s and Neal’s perspective in a recent interview with the Washington Post, where he defends Dyson and his own forays into music and other modes of cultural expression.

I Want My Culture Back: David Browne and Alan Riding, from two very different perspectives, are lamenting the demise of serious culture — art that challenges us, both intellectually and politically.

Browne, in his “Anti-Cheese Manifesto” for the Huffington Post, admits his own obsessions with low-brow pop culture but refuses to celebrate them: “The danger in perpetually embracing the awful is the way it trivializes sincerity and makes earnestness seem mawkish and old-fashioned. It says: Don’t take it all so seriously, since nothing matters … Perhaps it is simpler to chuckle than invest genuine feeling in anything, since that can be too chancy, too uncool, and too emotionally risky.”

And Riding, in a column for the International Herald Tribune, writes from a more nostalgic perspective, recalling the way the arts in the past have directly challenged corrupt and repressive governments. He sees recent spectacles like Live Earth as symptomatic of a culture that values performance over action.

Viva Ruth Frankenburg: Speaking of intellectuals, culture and political engagement, it’s worth reading some of the homages to the recently deceased Ruth Frankenberg, a ground-breaking British-born sociologist. Donna Haraway, an exemplary intellectual in her own right, wrote the obituary for the Guardian, in which she praised her feminism and anti-racism — and her nuanced exploration of the complicated intersection between the two. Dana Goldstein has a more personal response to Frankenburg’s work on her blog, Une flâneuse.

As “I Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” premiered this past weekend, critics panned it — arguing almost universally that it cynically exploited homophobia while superficially emphasizing a message of tolerance. Despite its dream-team pairing of comedic powerhouses Adam Sandler and Kevin James, that mixed message apparently wasn’t very funny at all.

So, amidst this critical deluge, who was there to defend the film? Well, gay activists, of course. “Chuck and Larry” received a seal of approval from GLAAD — the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation — and it got a positive review for its ideology, if not its comedy, by Alonso Duralde at After Elton.

Huh?

Just call it another strange chapter in Hollywood’s hypocritical history of representing gay life.

Stephen Garrett of Time Out Chicago provides a concise synopsis of what bothers most critics — and admittedly, many other gay activists — about the film:

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When HBO’s “Entourage” made a transgender character the punchline on last week’s episode, I cringed.

Now, to be fair, “Entourage” could be described as a equal-opportunity mocker, as it leaves few characters unscathed. Even the privileged lifestyle of the white heterosexual male protagonists in the story comes across at best, as silly and frivolous, and at worst, as woefully out of touch with reality. Christine has discussed its refreshing self-awareness as well as its shortcomings before.

But when the show is clearly not going to present us with a fully developed transgendered character — let alone a diversity of representations — there’s really little excuse for giving this character such a dismissive role.

The Cliks

Fortunately, if you’re paying attention, transgender lives are becoming visible and vibrant parts of popular culture. Our own Mark Blankenship has discussed the work of performance artist Scott Turner Schofield, who in his one-person show rails again a “system that says we can’t be all of ourselves.”

And both Rebecca Louie of AP and Shauna Swartz of AfterEllen have excellent profiles of Lucas Silveira, the frontman for the rock band The Cliks.

Silveira’s transition to a male identity forced the band to abandon their all-girl identity. But, in the spirit of their rollicking rock and roll sound, it hasn’t lessened the band’s power: “When you give off that kind of energy, and you’re open to the world in that way, the world also opens itself up to you,” guitarist Nina Martinez. “And fans become more open to being attracted to everything that queer is about.”

While performance art and music have long been spaces of openness, the sports world has not.

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Andrew Wallenstein of The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that at least two advertisers are pulling out of the a new BET series, “Hot Ghetto Mess,” set to premiere July 25.

The logo of BET’s “Hot Ghetto Mess“

Inspired by the Hot Ghetto Mess website and hosted by “Chappelle Show” veteran Charlie Murphy, the show plans to walk a very loaded line between viewer-driven reality TV and over-the-top satire.

BET has not released a copy of the pilot for review, but the description on the BET website is certainly provocative:

“Hot Ghetto Mess” is an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek examination of the good, the bad and the ugly of Black popular culture.

Utilizing comedy, man-on-the-street interviews, video clips, pictures and music, “Hot Ghetto Mess” aims to shine a spotlight on prevalent images in pop culture and examine what role they play in American lifestyle. “Hot Ghetto Mess” goes where most shows fear to tread.

As host Charlie Murphy guides viewers through shaking booties, thug life, baby-mama drama and pimped-out high schoolers, “Hot Ghetto Mess” will explore what these images really mean to all of us.

Cutting edge, original, relevant and irreverent, “Hot Ghetto Mess” is like the traffic accident you can’t look away from. Viewers will laugh. They’ll cry. They’ll think. They’ll learn, and hopefully they’ll recognize they’ve GOT to do better.

If the text, images and video on the original website are any indication, be ready for a variety of classic stereotypes — of both African American men and women.

The show’s MySpace page, though, asserts that those stereotypical representations have a lofty purpose. The show is “a call-to-arms of sorts to all of us to re-examine how we are looking and acting but more importantly how we are living. Consider this show constructive criticism. We’re holding up a mirror, dont be mad if you dont like what you see.” For what it’s worth, Mos Def and Chuck D, among others, have signed up as “friends” of the show.

Of course, for the show to achieve this purported goal it will have to do more that simply say it’s a satire.

Read on for more about the show’s satirical dilemma, a funeral for the N-word and putting civil rights on the big screen …

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Tony Soprano opened “The Sopranos” with this lament: “It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, I know. But lately I am getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”

If you decide to check in on “The Sopranos” for the first time tonight, you will probably have a similar complaint. But to get even the late-comers in the mood, let me suggest a couple of ways to look back while looking ahead.

First, Alessandra Stanley has a review of both the show itself and its role in changing television — and pop culture as a whole. Although she attempts to temper some of the critical enthusiasm that has greeted the show over the years (pointing out its many predecessors, for example), she does give it high praise:

The series lowered the bar on permissible violence, sex and profanity at the same time that it elevated viewers’ taste, cultivating an appetite for complexity, wit and cinematic stylishness on a serial drama in which psychological themes flickered and built and faded and reappeared. The best episodes had equal amounts of high and low appeal, an alchemy of artistry and gutter-level blood and gore, all of it leavened with humor.

To me, though, the wonder of the show in its early years was the way it put its sense of irony at the service of a very poignant social commentary on, above all, the trappings of masculinity in modern American culture.

In one of the inaugural pieces for PopPolitics — “Just When Men Thought They Were Out …” — Bernie looked at how “The Sopranos,” along with many other texts (remember the 2000 election!), uses “the spectacle of violence” to displace a growing insecurity over increasingly contradictory definition of manhood: “One of the chief preoccupations of ‘The Sopranos’ will be men’s feelings of inadequacy, and those feelings are considered a reflection of a long-standing national struggle.”

Once you start feeling bogged down in all that weighty, analytical stuff, though, check out the “Seven Minute Sopranos” video (see below) — which provides one of the quickest and funniest recaps of a television series you will ever see. Virginia Heffernan has the back story behind the creators.

I regret not posting on the occasion of Adrienne Shelly’s untimely death last Fall. I am familiar with her work chiefly as the unassuming but devastatingly complex actor in the Hal Hartley cinematic masterpieces “Trust” and “The Unbelievable Truth.”

These films are difficult to preview — they need to be experienced (preferably, over repeated viewing). Their minimalism, black humor, and somewhat fantastical situations and coincidences would make you think they only tangentially touched upon the actual human condition. But somehow, with the help of Shelly, they go deeper and provoke more thought about what it means to be human — and negotiate an often very impersonal world — than almost any other films I’ve seen.

Shelly, though, has a much larger resume than these early acting stints. She wrote, directed and acted in three feature films, including “Waitress,” which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and is set to be released in early May.

Fortunately, I have been given another opportunity to pay Shelly homage, as The Adrienne Shelly Foundation has just announced its first set of educational initiatives to fulfill part of its mission “to aid in the advancement of talented women filmmakers.” The American Film Institute, New York Women in Film and Television, Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television as well as Columbia University and New York University have all announced awards, grants and scholarships in Shelly’s name.

Black Women Changing and Making Change: After surviving Eddie Murphy’s “Norbit,” it’s nice to see some recognition of the complexity of African American women. Whether it is Jennifer Hudson helping to redefine beauty or Tasha on “The L Word” breaking the silence of black butch lesbians in pop culture, stereotypes are so last … month?

How Low Can You Go?: A little lower, it seems, if you are a girl. Meta Wagner of PopMatters dissects the gender gap between media representations of celebrity “bad girls” and “bad boys”: “Nothing short of truly bizarre behavior, a la Tom Cruise or Michael Richards, will garner anything remotely like the harsh treatment that befalls female celebrities for behaviors that should, in some cases, draw compassion rather than moralizing judgment.”

Check out Wagner’s revealing comparisons of the way gender bias has influenced portrayals of drug abusers, “Whitney Houston vs. Keith Richards,” rehabbers, “Britney Spears vs. Ben Affleck,” and others.

America, the Allegory: Captain America died earlier this month (for a second time), but Neely Tucker of The Washington Post argues that he left a vacuum of symbolic nostalgia in his wake:

Recalls a character in Captain America #25, yesterday’s landmark edition: “Even though he was a soldier, you could almost feel the kindness behind those eyes hardened by war. He’d fought through the worst days of the 20th century, and he was still the most decent man you could ever meet.”

Ah, yes, dreamy-eyed dames liked their Real Men like that back in the day, and it was, of course, a metaphor for America’s romantic view of itself: tough but fair, honest and undeniably studly

America sees itself a little differently now, however, and even the Captain doesn’t always stay the course:

In comics, things got edgier, meaner, grimmer. Violence became more realistic, with more consequences. Superman died, Batman broke his back, Spider-Man took off his mask. The good guys were flawed.

And so was Captain America, much like his country. He started out a true-blue patriotic icon, but in recent years grew more complex. He had gone from always fighting for the government to sometimes fighting against it. The battle for American ideals had changed, and so, we learned yesterday, had the means of menace and treachery.

In Abe Aamidor’s recent article in the Indianapolis Star, Robert Thompson, the you-got-a-pop-culture-article-I’ve-got-a-quote-for-you professor from Syracuse University, makes this statement about how “Ugly Betty” isn’t really such a radical show:

I’ll believe this when someone makes a TV show or movie about someone who is really ugly …. Yes, she (Ferrera as Betty Suarez in ‘Ugly Betty’) is not as beautiful as Charlie’s Angels, but she’s not ugly. I think she’s kind of cute. She’s also engaging and articulate.

Another local woman agrees: “They make her look dorky, not ugly.”

I would respectfully disagree. I think the show goes to great lengths to make Betty look rather ridiculous at times. Yes, she’s endearing — but that doesn’t change how different she looks from anyone else on television.

A legitimate criticism might be that the show still needs to place her amongst beautiful people at a fashion magazine — and that her appearance is more a source of comedy than critique.

But that criticism is muted by the fact that much of the show takes place in her exceedingly ordinary (if you can say a working class Latino family on primetime television is ordinary) home.