Politics and Politicians in Contemporary US Television ─ Washington As Fiction

Bringing together well-established scholars of media, political science, sociology, and film to investigate the representation of Washington politics on U.S. television from the mid-2000s to the present, this volume offers stimulating perspectives on the status of representations of contemporary US politics, the role of government and the machinations and intrigue often associated with politicians and governmental institutions. The authors help to locate these representations both in the context of the history of earlier television shows that portrayed the political culture of Washington as well as within the current political culture transpiring both inside and outside of "The Beltway." With close attention to issues of gender, race and class and offering studies from contemporary quality television, including popular programmes such as The West Wing, Veep, House of Cards, The Americans, The Good Wife and Scandal, the authors examine the ways in which televisual representations reveal changing attitudes towards Washington culture, shedding light on the role of the media in framing the public’s changing perception of politics and politicians. Exploring the new era in which television finds itself, with new production practices and the possible emergence of a new ’political genre’ emerging, Politics and Politicians in Contemporary U.S. Television also considers the ’humanizing’ of political characters on television, asking what that representation of politicians as human beings says about the national political culture. A fascinating study that sits at the intersection of politics and television, this book will appeal to scholars of popular culture, sociology, cultural and media studies.

Betty Kaklamanidou is a Fulbright scholar and Assistant Professor in Film and Television History and Theory at Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece. She is the author of The ‘Disguised’ Political Film in Contemporary Hollywood: A Genre’s Construction (forthcoming, 2016), Genre, Gender and the Effects of Neoliberalism: The New Millennium Hollywood Rom Com (2013) and two books in Greek on adaptation theory and the history of the Hollywood rom com. Betty is also the co-editor of The Millennials on Film and Television (2014), HBO’s "Girls" (2014), and The 21st Century Superhero (2010). Betty’s articles have appeared in Literature/Film Quarterly, Celebrity Studies and The Journal of Popular Romance Studies

Margaret J. Tally is Professor of Social and Public Policy at the School of Graduate Studies at Empire State College, State University of New York, USA. She is the author of Television Culture and Women’s Lives: Thirtysomething and the Contradictions of Gender, and co-editor of The Millennials on Film and Television: The Politics of Popular Culture and HBO’s Girls: Questions of Gender, Politics, and Millennial Angst.