An interesting CampusProgress.org article that I thought you’d want to read.
Biography’s Unnatural Women: On and off TV, men get better political roles than women
By Sarah Laskow, Yale University
Wednesday, September 6, 2006The names are already familiar: Clinton, McCain, Condi. Inevitably, the next presidential election will be about celebrity: The media has already begun obsessing about the details of the event with all the ebullience of E! before the Oscars.
Unexpectedly, that media includes the Biography Channel, which seems to have implicitly endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Recently a series of paired profiles aired under the rubric “Then & Now,†and with a heavy hand matched Obama with John F. Kennedy. The all too obvious implication was that Obama is a sort of inevitable President.
The Biography Channel trades in celebrity; naturally they would prefer that the candidate with the handsomest face win the nation’s highest office. But the “Then & Now†series distinctly understands what it takes to be president, and demonstrates why Obama has a better chance of being elected in 2008 than either of the high profile women who might run.
There’s a key moment in each hour-long Biography program, and it comes precisely at the 30-minute mark. This juncture always portrays pain or absolute triumph, as when, in a typical Hollywood bio, Vivian Leigh (best known as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind) becomes mentally ill. Right before the half-hour, after the usual obstacles to success have been overcome and accolades won, a wide-eyed picture of the subject will take up the screen as the emotion intensifies. The camera will close in just a bit more. At this moment, the text of the inane narrator ceases to communicate anything at all (though he’s still talking), because the only thing that matters is the pair of eyes on the screen. From the still frame, the celebrity gazes out, and for that one moment, succeeds in telling his or her own story.
This moment works wonderfully in Biography’s profiles of politicians. President Kennedy and Senator Obama, when playing their roles well, are idealists who might actually accomplish some of their goals. With all of the real political compromise edited out and only the personal motivation left standing, you can read into their eyes all the hope in the world.
Drums in the Global Village 