The First Lady in Contemporary Popular Culture

Anne-Marie Evans, Sarah Trott

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798765142257
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: Literature

From Martha Washington to Jill Biden, Mars Attacks! to Scandal, and the Ladies' Home Journal to Vogue this diverse collection examines how the nation's First Lady has become an important cultural icon within an underestimated yet symbolic position in US social politics and culture.

Academic work on the First Lady has tended to be historical or biographical in approach, but The First Lady in Contemporary Popular Culture takes the field in a new direction by focusing instead on representations of the First Lady. It explores how real and imaginary American First Ladies have been represented, reconsidered, and re-imagined by different writers, filmmakers, and fashion designers. Despite her apparent marginal position at the periphery of US politics, as this collection shows, representations of the First Lady have become increasingly significant on the cultural stage in the 21st century.

Using a range of feminist, cultural, media, postmodern, race, and communication-based perspectives, the contributors suggest new ways of understanding the First Lady and the complexities of her office. The authors explore campaign autobiographies, Curtis Sittenfeld's speculative fiction, James Patterson's on-the-run thrillers, as well as atypical representations of the First Lady, such as in Roland Emmerich's box office hit Independence Day (1996), gossip magazines, and historical fashion plates.

Removed from the patriarchal hierarchy of White House politics and expectations, the First Lady emerges as a cultural force of her own and this collection demonstrates how she subtly carves out cultural agency and gender identity despite her perceived (in)visibility in the public eye.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Sarah Trott and Anne-Marie Evans
• 1 Performing First Lady: Representations of Jacqueline Kennedy on Screen Aysha Viswamohan
• 2 The First Lady in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Philip K. Dick’s The Simulacra James Britton
• 3 Oliver Stone’s First Ladies: From Jackie O. to Pat Nixon and Laura Bush Ian Scott
• 4 On the Edge of Disaster: First Ladies at the End of the World in Mars Attacks! and Independence Day Lauren Stephenson
• 5 Ideology and Agency: Alice Blackwell as a Fantasy Version of Laura Bush in the Novel American Wife Lisa Beckelhimer
• 6 Mom-in-Chief: Michelle Obama on the Celebrity Gossip Magazine Side-Stage Andrea McDonnell
• 7 Romancing the First Lady Anne-Marie Evans
• 8 First Ladies Who Never Were: Alternate Histories, Unprecedented Evil, and the Power of the Office Suzanne Manizza Roszak
• 9 “An Intimate Look?”: Aspirant First Ladies and the Campaign Autobiography Finn Pollard
• 10 “Everything’s Coming Up Mellie”: Reconfiguring the Rape of Scandal’s First Lady from Humanizing Plot Device to Genuine Trauma Sarah Trott
• 11 First Ladies in Vogue: Reinforcing or Challenging Gender Stereotypes? Amy Tatum
• Notes on Contributors
• Index