European Journal of American Culture - Donald Trump: The Presidency and the Media, Jun 2022

The development of the miniseries as a TV genre during the 1970s became central to American television’s dramatization of the nation’s history through stories that combined fact and fiction to relate the past to contemporary US culture. Rarely considered, however, is the ways in which increasing slippages between the screen and real-world events might work to presage the culture and politics of the future, illuminating historical connections that move beyond a television drama’s moment of production. This article explores the 1977 ABC miniseries Washington Behind Closed Doors, an adaptation of John Ehrlichman’s novel The Company and its fictional tale of a Nixon-like president, drawing on the author’s experiences as part of the Nixon administration. Emerging in the contexts of the historical miniseries and various screen depictions of Watergate, the show became part of a blurring of the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction in the re-telling of Richard Nixon’s doomed tenure as president. At the same time, the article contends, the explicit fictionalization of the nation’s recent political history in Washington Behind Closed Doors provides a space in which to read the show as a prescient imagining of the United States’ political future later realized in the presidency of Donald Trump.

Library music (also known as ‘stock’ or ‘production’ music) plays an important role in the depiction of Donald Trump in media productions, be it to cast him as a bold political hero, a glamorous millionaire, an authoritarian ruler or a clownish character. The various facets of Trump’s public brand are reflected in library music catalogues: tracks tagged with the keyword ‘Trump’ highlight, for example, his notoriety as business tycoon and host of reality show The Apprentice, or his candidacy and mandate as the 45th US president. In this article, we draw together original qualitative library music data with a close reading of specific television case studies to examine two main research areas. Firstly, how is Trump represented in library music catalogues, and what does this reveal about popular perceptions of him? Secondly, which library music tracks are used in media content about Trump? Where are the ‘Trump’-tagged tracks used in television, and what other kinds of library music are used in series about this president? This article explores the musical strategies which were deployed to depict Trump’s mandate and its political upheavals, and, more broadly, reappraises library music as a vital – yet underexplored – element in the construction of audio-visual meaning.

This article explores the ways in which US graphic novels have responded to, narrated and politically framed the Trump presidency. Analysing a generically diverse range of texts from non-fiction to science fiction, I argue that comics artists were quick to mobilize the medium’s unique qualities in the service of ideological critique. The article offers a detailed account of how publications such as Sabrina (2018), The Hard Tomorrow (2019), LaGuardia (2019) and Welcome to theNew World (2020) were developed, shaped and reshaped against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s election victory and presidential term. Through an assortment of formal and stylistic devices – spatial and temporal jumps and juxtapositions afforded by panel arrangement, a weaving together of historical and contemporaneous iconography, the interplay of various textual cues and registers – these graphic novels offered complex portrayals of the impact of Trump and ‘Trumpism’ on various individuals, groups and communities. In different ways, they evidence the medium’s ability to intervene in wider political discourse, construct challenging historical and speculative narratives and offer fresh, resonant engagements with pressing issues of the day.

Though in production before Trump’s election, streaming service Hulu’s serial adaption of The Handmaid’s Tale premiered to acclaim in April 2017. Audiences denoted parallels between ultra-conservative, fictional Gilead and the United States’ own political climate. In response to women’s issues in particular, international groups utilized the central Handmaid’s Tale image as their costume – a crimson robe, a white ‘wing’ bonnet – then occupied public spaces to protest silently. WIRED dubbed the garb the ‘Viral Protest Uniform of 2019’, while online lifestyle/culture magazine Quartz named it the ‘ultimate symbol of women’s rights’. The activists’ presence is critical to their work. Mirroring their fictional handmaid counterparts, cosplay activists employ a bowed head, a slow steady gait and equidistant spacing to evoke the harrowing restrictions Gilead’s women face – what ideologically fervent aunts call Gilead’s ‘new normal’. Activists’ physicality generates a doubleness: as they perform submissiveness and literally fall into line, they also craft solidarity via resistance. Likewise, the fiction hints at revolution, which may be why, in the #MeToo and Time’s Up era, the emancipatory potential of cosplay choreographies steeped in popular culture offer their own ‘new normal’, disrupting patriarchal paradigms modelled by the Trump administration while offering feminist fan activism as strategies that promote creative, inclusive political action.

Review of: Swedish-American Borderlands: New Histories of Transatlantic Relations, Dag Blanck and Adam Hjorthén (eds) (2021)

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 363 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-51790-751-8, h/bk, $120

ISBN 978-1-51790-858-4, p/bk, $30

Review of: Contingent Figure: Chronic Pain and Queer Embodiment, M. D. Snediker (2021)

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 259 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-81669-190-6, p/bk, $27.00