One of my current academic interests is how this current election cycle was premediated over the last two years. In various films and television series, the concept of an African American or minority president has been explored from a myriad of perspectives. I am in the process of researching this because I do not watch most of these shows on a regular basis. A few years ago, the inference that a minority would/could be in the White House was often only a backdrop to the rest of the action in the film or show. Even with the origin of series such as 24, the presidential character was second to the hero figure. Additionally, the minority (woman, Hispanic or black) leader often rises to power by default due to death, scandal or other incapacitating circumstance.

How has the representation of race, specifically African-American, changed in film and television? How does that representation relate to both premediation and the idea of an African American president?

The following are some of the preliminary searches I conducted and interesting finds within them (of course, Prof. Grusin appears in most of the searches):

premediation racial representation
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=premediation+racial+representation

This search produced weak results because most of them dealt with legal issues and how race was handled. Upon discovering the limited focus of these results, I expanded my search by narrowing it through adding the word “film” to it.

premediation racial representation film
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=premediation+racial+representation+film

Through this search I discovered a link to the Washington State University website on Popular Culture focused on Race and Ethnicity. This site will be a great resource for not only this present study/interest, but will help gather additional information from people such as Manthia Diawara who are critical to African American film studies and how those works relate to others. This link also lists several online resources that can be accessed from anywhere and also deal with the representation of blacks and other minority groups in film. Specific correlations to the topic of premediation, however, are probably not very strong in this area because these articles and books appear to be more focused on cultural issues and their representation in the media than how media shapes representation. Within the results, however, as particular writers unpack the issues of race and representation in film, these discussions will offer correlations that will enhance future study of premediation in this area.

premediation African American president
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&fkt=79502&fsdt=90352&q=premediating+african+american+president&aq=o&oq=

The first result in this search was an article discussing JA Rogers’ book, The Five Negro Presidents as it relates to President Obama’s campaign. When returning to the link to access the article, I encountered issues but was able to find it. This article and the book it discusses was one of the most interesting of all my searches. One issue about Barack Obama and how he conducted his presidential run that interested me was his mixed heritage and how it did or did not factor in his election. Apparently, based on the review of Roger’s book, there may be valuable information in it that speaks to how other presidents of mixed heritage conducted their campaigns and presidencies. Could Obama’s methods and messages have been outlined in a book from the 1960s that discusses these issues as it relates to previous presidents? This is a resource I will use in some form as I continue to explore this topic.

Additional related thoughts:

In Grusin’s article on “Premediation,” he discusses the coverage of the events of 9/11 and how although they were covered live on television, they were not premediated in the same way other perilous incidents such as the anthrax scare or sniper attacks were premediated. He indicates that the media “multiphy or proliferate their own premeditations of potential terror attacks, or war in Iraq, as a way to try to prevent the occurrence of another media 9/11.” (26) His observation was driven primarily from a catastrophic perception, although further in his article, he works into the logic behind the concept which is to try to premediate as many possible futures as could be imagined. (28).

While observing many of the inaugural and commemorative events of last week that celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King and welcomed Barack Obama into the White House, I observed a repetitive form of premediation, much of which pulled on types of remediation. During the concert televised by HBO on Sunday evening and the coverage by CNN of MLK Day activities, the media group used the knowledge of historical events both presidential (recaps of Kennedy’s and FDR’s inauguration speeches) and civil rights (Marian Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and King’s “I Have a Dream”) to premediate President Obama’s inauguration speech. By examining all the potential models on which he could base his speech, they tried to hone in on whether Obama would continue his popular rhetorical style or borrow from presidents based on the type of economic and social climate they were facing when they took office. Remediating past speeches and events that occurred on the Washington mall appeared to be an attempt at setting an expectation of the future president’s performance based on how his predecessors handled similar situations.

I believe the media set its own expectations on how President Obama’s first speech would be constructed but they tried to expand expectations by offering a myriad of outcomes: will he give the world another rhetorical device like King, Kennedy and FDR did? Will he appeal to the nation at a level of its pain as Lincoln did? Will he inspire and challenge the world and his constituents as Reagan did? In the newspapers and on-air coverage in the days following the speech, reporters seemed to split on the issue, some reaching for phrases such as “Hope over Fear” and some recognizing the sensitive nature of the times and how “appropriate” it was that he did not opt for the rhetorical mainstay.

In conclusion, I also thought it interesting that in most of the discussions about King, Obama and how many people were expected at the Mall, the issue of the Million Marches--specifically The Million Man March--was never seriously used in conjunction with the recent events even though African American men were the center of it.