{"description": {"type": "/type/text", "value": "[Below is an excerpted review from an article]\r\nReview-Article on\r\nRecent Books on American Film and Politics\r\nBy Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner, UCLA\r\n(rhammer@ucla.edu and kellner@ucla.edu)\r\nMelissa Wye Geraci\u2019s monograph John F. Kennedy and the Artful Collaboration\r\nof Film and Politics provides an in-depth analysis of JFK\u2019s media politics and how he\r\nwas one of the first to see the importance of the construction of image in contemporary\r\n6\r\npolitics as an important tool in a political campaign. Wye Geraci was trained in political\r\nscience and had a background in the entertainment industry, and then became a film and\r\ntelevision professor in Virginia, New Mexico, and, currently, at Loyola University, New\r\nOrleans. She investigates the origins of the 1960 Kennedy campaign film The New\r\nFrontier by examining primary documents that reveal how Joseph P. Kennedy, active in\r\nfilm production as well as business, taught his family the importance of the media and\r\nbought them a film camera that his children learned to use. Other documents in the\r\nKennedy research library reveal reflections by various of the Kennedy brothers on the use\r\nof propaganda and media by German fascism as well as allied democratic forces in World\r\nWar II, and thus how media could be used for political purposes, positive or negative.\r\nWye Geraci reveals how throughout his career, John F. Kennedy produced\r\nartifacts and spectacle that constructed a positive image and reflected since his student\r\ndays on the power of media. One of the Kennedy groups\u2019 salient insights involves how\r\nimages used in political campaigns must be connected to specific issues. For instance, the\r\nKennedy team believed that talking about themes like intolerance was not enough, that\r\ninstead Kennedy should be seen speaking \u201cinside the Mormon tabernacle or traveling\r\nwith nationally known Jews to New York\u201d (72-73). Or if he was promoting military\r\npolicy, he should be seen with a figure like General Maxwell Taylor. In Kennedy staff\r\nmember Fred Dutton\u2019s summary: \u201cActually the scheduling should weave unto it several\r\n\u2018acting-out\u2019 situations every week \u2013- appearances and speeches are just not enough. All\r\nof this, of course, is part of the larger need to be tangible and understandable with the\r\ngreat majority of people who live their lives without much regard for word\r\ncommunication of abstract ideas, when [sic] in contrast is the great preoccupation of\r\npoliticians\u201d (73).\r\nWye Geracci also provides analyses of Lyndon Johnson\u2019s 1964 bio-documentary,\r\nRonald Reagan\u2019s 1984 campaign film, and Bill Clinton\u2019s 1992 The Man From Hope, as\r\nwell as providing a discussion of the use of media in Robert Kennedy\u2019s 1968 run for the\r\npresidency. She makes the interesting point that the success of the presidential bio-doc\r\nhelped spawn a new Hollywood fiction genre of the political campaign film, starting with\r\nThe Candidate (1972) and makes some interesting comments about how Bulworth (1998)\r\ndraws on its motifs and Warren Beatty\u2019s campaigning for the Kennedys. In addition, the\r\nbio-doc and what Wye Geracci calls the \u201cinfo-documentary\u201d can be contrasted with infoart\r\nmythology, such as one sees in the many films about the Kennedy family, and with\r\nfilms like Oliver Stone\u2019s JFK (1991) that erode distinctions between narrative fiction and\r\ndocumentary.\r\nWhile Wye Geracci\u2019s analysis of campaign-films is ground-breaking, as is her\r\nstudy of the Kennedy\u2019s understanding and use of media, she does not discuss in any\r\ndetail FDR\u2019s use of radio, JFK\u2019s mastery of television, or how media spectacle became a\r\nform of politics from Hitler through JFK and Reagan and to the present. Thus, in a media\r\nera, the use of film in politics needs to be studied in conjunction with deployment of\r\nother media ranging from the radio to the press and Internet."}, "title": "John F. Kennedy and the artful collaboration of film and politics", "covers": [4310485], "subject_places": ["United States"], "subjects": ["History", "Motion pictures", "Political aspects of Motion pictures", "Political culture", "Politics and government", "Presidents", "Public opinion", "Public relations and politics", "Television in politics", "Political aspects"], "subject_people": ["John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)"], "key": "/works/OL6036207W", "authors": [{"type": {"key": "/type/author_role"}, "author": {"key": "/authors/OL1517778A"}}], "subject_times": ["1945-1989", "1961-1963", "1989-", "20th century"], "type": {"key": "/type/work"}, "latest_revision": 5, "revision": 5, "created": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2009-12-10T18:24:56.766512"}, "last_modified": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2024-09-18T19:27:01.035008"}}