It happens with every new president – the sort of social change that prompts an evolution of the cultural zeitgeist, and a reappraisal of how we approach our entertainment. Tracking it backwards, you can see these shifts across presidencies develop, often quite starkly – most obvious is perhaps 24 during the Bush years, a programme directly influenced by both 9/11 and that administration’s response to it.
Trump the man has always lived his life flitting around the edges of the silver screen; guest appearances as himself on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Home Alone 2, and most notably his years as host of The Apprentice, are all demonstrative of a man who’s largely been defined by his media presence. But as Trump the president prepares to take to the big stage, it’ll be interesting to see just how the world of media begins to treat him; certainly, it’s clear enough that opinion is far from favourable, with satirists John Oliver, Trevor Noah & Samantha Bee regularly criticising Trump, while Meryl Streep recently gave an impassioned speech denouncing him. The question posed, then, is this: how will this affect the media we consume, and the art that we view?
A longer article, and one I’m quite pleased with. I suspect I might return to it at varying intervals, actually; certainly, it’ll be worth another look in four years time to consider how the arts have responded to 6 months of Trump and 3 and a half years of Mike Pence.
(That joke aged poorly, evidently. I did just give the article a brief skim-read; it’s a little superficial, in all the ways you’d expect, but it’s not bad either. Very clearly shaped by the discourse of late 2016, but it could’ve been worse. Came close to predicting Roseanne, or at least the logic that lead to it. Well, maybe not predicting.)
Facebook | Twitter | Blog Index | General TV Index
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
