Last semester, despite being a supporter of Barack Obama and fearful of four years of John McCain and Sarah Palin, I could not help but worry what would become of popular culture in the wake of a capable president.
The last eight years were a delightful mix of jokes about an incompetent president and an evil vice president in the humor realm and thinly veiled allegories of a government that had overstepped its boundaries in the dramatic field. Now change has come, so indulge me, if you will, as I try to foretell what we'll be getting with this new administration.
Let's start off in the comedic sector. Bush was an easy target, a veritable buffet of jokes from his manners of speaking to horrible decisions to absurd ideas of how terrorists ultimately thought. Obama is not. However, on Inauguration Day, the Onion released an article, "Obama Inauguration Speech Ruined By Incessant Jackhammering." Suddenly we had our answer. Obama would be a horrible village idiot, but he's going to make the perfect straight man for all presidential humor. With his calm demeanor, his difficulty to excite and his general adherence to reason, the president is the perfect character to be thrown into the middle of chaotic nonsense, wacky assistants and aggravations of all shapes and sizes. Every sketch and article will be a test of how far we can push the fictionalized version of our commander-in-chief before he cracks. I personally will not be satisfied till I see a faux-Obama channel Carl Winslow and shout to our former president, "George! Go home! Go home! Go home!"
Now, dramatic storytelling is a bit trickier. At first, some people were predicting another early sixties: i.e. the Kennedys and Camelot, and maybe even that Marilyn Monroe would come back to life so that Obama could do the nasty with her. Essentially, bright, cheerful visions of a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow. But for all of the times that Obama has talked about the message of hope, his words are anything but blindly idealistic or optimistic. In his inauguration speech he acknowledged how deep our country is in the muck at the moment, how it is our own responsibility to lift ourselves back up and even how we have to curtail our excess consumption of resources.
So what will the quintessential Obama administration drama be? One of redemption, I feel. Or, should our country sink even deeper, failed redemption. "The Wrestler" (2008) could be the prototype of what may become this quintessential Obama-era story. It tells of someone whose life has gone to the crapper, and he has no one to blame but himself. He must own up to his past mistakes and try to improve what he can.
That the mistakes were his (or ours) is the key difference. The film "V for Vendetta" (2005) changed the original comic book's message. In the comic book, people are to blame for the government they have. The film invented conspiracies and fake terrorist attacks to put the fault completely on a select few in charge. The film is a Bush administration movie through and through. Were "V for Vendetta" to enter production now rather than four years ago, we might see a bit more faithfulness to the graphic novel.
Of course, only time will truly tell in what ways pop culture will reflect our new president. Till then, I'll be keeping just as anxious of an eye on that as I do on his executive actions.
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Devin Toohey is a senior majoring in classics. He can be reached at Devin.Toohey@tufts.edu.
