When Barack Obama was the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman had already portrayed commanders in chief on film.
Eight years later, when it was Hillary Clinton’s turn, viewers had seen women ascend to the presidency on “24,” “Scandal” and “Veep.”
But while the public has occasionally seen Black men and white women play the president onscreen for decades, Vice President Kamala Harris’s historic nomination could outpace the entertainment industry’s depictions of Oval Office occupants. Very few Black women have been cast in dramatic presidential roles in television and film, and there are no notable examples of Asian American women playing the part (Harris is Black and Indian American).
Experts in film and politics say representation onscreen can break down barriers to higher office by getting voters accustomed to seeing women and members of minority groups in powerful roles. And they wonder if the lack of women of color among actors playing presidents could matter as Americans weigh voting for Harris.
While white men have played the vast majority of fictional presidents, the public had also seen some Black men and white women in the role well before Obama and Clinton were nominated. Jones played the president way back in 1972, in “The Man,” as did Freeman in the 1998 film “Deep Impact” and Dennis Haysbert on the thriller series “24.”
Then, starting in 2005, there were ABC’s “Commander in Chief” starring Geena Davis, Cherry Jones in the “24” franchise, Julia Louis-Dreyfus on HBO’s “Veep” and Bellamy Young, whose character Mellie Grant on ABC’s “Scandal” won the presidency in 2016, while Clinton was running.
Young wrote in The Hollywood Reporter in 2020 about how proud she was that the show portrayed women as political leaders.
“It was time to let our country practice seeing something new,” she wrote.
Harris does have a few real-life forerunners. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm and Patsy Mink, the first Black and Asian American women to be elected to Congress, ran for president. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, the first Black woman elected to the Senate, ran in 2004, and Cynthia McKinney, a former congresswoman from Georgia, was the Green Party nominee in 2008.
Very few Black women have played president. Even fewer had lines.
At least 11 television shows or movies have portrayed Black women as U.S. presidents since 2000.
In most cases, Black women who were fictional presidents had no lines, did not appear onscreen or appeared only briefly. Or they appeared in the unrealistic realms of animation, science fiction or fantasy — like Issa Rae as President Barbie.
On CBS’s 2004 drama “Century City,” Oprah Winfrey is said to be president but is never seen. On “Veep,” Toks Olagundoye plays Kemi Talbot, who briefly appears as president-elect in the series finale.
There is one notable exception: NBC’s 2014 political drama “State of Affairs,” which featured Alfre Woodard as President Payton. The character is shown as a serious leader with a lengthy political résumé and military background, but the series, led by Katherine Heigl, was canceled after one season.
While other shows, like Hulu’s sci-fi drama “The First,” have portrayed accomplished Black women leading the United States, “State of Affairs” remains the only political drama that did, a decade after it went off the air (it does not appear to be streaming anywhere).
Melvin Williams, an associate professor of communication and media studies at Pace University, called the lack of women of color playing the commander in chief an example of “symbolic annihilation,” an academic term describing the exclusion of groups in popular culture and mass media.
“We don’t put it onscreen, so you don’t see it as a possibility, and large audiences don’t even begin to fathom it as a possibility,” Dr. Williams said.
Television and film can help overcome the limits of stereotypes.
Research shows how pop culture can familiarize Americans with all kinds of communities, said Stacy Smith, the founder of the U.S.C. Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which researches inequality in entertainment.
Dr. Smith said that the sitcoms “Will & Grace,” which debuted in 1998, and “Ellen,” on which the main character came out in 1997, put same-sex relationships on Americans’ TV screens and that the exposure helped clear the way for marriage equality years later.
Jamil Scott, an assistant professor at Georgetown University who studies how Black Americans participate in politics, said that despite not being cast as presidents, Black and Asian women have played serious “boss-like” roles that defy racial stereotypes. She points to shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” which debuted in 2005 and has featured women of color like Sandra Oh and Chandra Wilson in powerful leadership roles.
Dr. Scott says these women are often portrayed as “swooping in and saving” the day, in a “savior” role, and those narratives “can be helpful for people to do the initial trusting of women of color.”
Parminder Nagra, an Indian British actress in Los Angeles, has played several such roles: Dr. Neela Rasgotra on “ER” from 2003 to 2009, as well as a U.S. senator in Marvel’s “Agents of SHIELD” and a C.I.A. agent in NBC’s “The Blacklist,” a character she called “empowering” and “a badass.”
Even with Asian American and Black women playing people in power in recent years, few onscreen characters have a background like Harris’s, but Dr. Scott argues that could benefit her by freeing her from comparison. She added that Harris was breaking some molds on her own, and pointed to the use of joy in her campaign, which counters “narratives around being angry, particularly associated with Black women.”
“It does give Kamala room to chart the path,” Dr. Scott said, “because she isn’t necessarily fitting into the narratives that exist for Black women.”
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