The Man, 1972
The few we have seen have ranged from the eminently sensible to the very odd: Morgan Freeman was born presidential, and 1998’s Deep Impact provided him with a wholly adequate dry-run for his inevitable portrayal of Nelson Mandela in Invictus; conversely, former wrestler Tom Lister, Jr. - aka “That Monster From Friday” - was hamstrung by a complete gravitas-deficiency in the previous year’s The Fifth Element, and his presence is evidence more of director Luc Besson’s wilfully unconventional casting strategy than of any tangible suitability for the role. Chris Rock attempted to transfer his brash, streetwise stage persona to the character of an ultimately successful presidential candidate in Head of State (2003), with mixed results. And that’s pretty much it: add to the list Louis Gossett Jr. and Terry Crews - Left Behind: World of War (2005) and Idiocracy (2006) respectively - and you can count the number of post-Jones, pre-Obama black movie presidents on one hand. So the question is: will we now, with the first black president in the White House, see more black actors being given a chance to take on the role of the world’s most high-powered individual? Will the “Obama Effect” extend to the movies?
These are early days - even if it has been more than eighteen months since his inauguration (glaciers have nothing on the inherently conservative collective Hollywood mindset) - but there are signs that it might. When Roland Emmerich was putting together the cast for his latest end-of-the-world jamboree, 2012, the director (no fan of the previous administration) specifically wanted a black actor for the role of POTUS as a direct nod to the current real-life incumbent. It’s not a great part, truth be told: saddled with the role of the dithering President Wilson, Glover is unable to bring to the party the same brand of decisive leadership Freeman did in Deep Impact, when the Earth was similarly staring into the abyss. (And he wasn’t granted the same opportunity for gung-ho flyboy heroics that Emmerich afforded Bill Pullman in Independence Day, either.) But issues of quality aside, the director has at least issued a marker for others to take note of and emulate. Whether they do so, and the paucity of black presidents in theatres is therefore redressed, remains to be seen.
In fact, in the first decade of the 21st century - pre- and post-Obama - it has been the small screen that has seemed to lead the way in this regard, as it has in many others since cable channels like HBO and Showtime began habitually raising the bar. 24 had given us a sort of African-American spin on the Kennedys when Dennis Haysbert and D.B. Woodside played brothers who both at one time occupied the Oval Office, before Heroes revealed (within a month of Obama’s victory over John McCain) that the president of its fictional America was none other than Michael Dorn, known to millions of Trekkies as Worf, the acceptable face of the once-nefarious Klingons.
But the biggest indication of a shift in attitude has come at the American network NBC - an organisation whose acronym industry insiders used to joke stood for “No Black Characters” not so long ago. The first episode of their new conspiracy thriller The Event is scheduled to air in September, in which Blair Underwood will star as President Elias Martinez. If that name sounds like it may be better suited to a president of a more Hispanic origin, it’s because that was indeed the original intention. The show was originally conceived in 2006, but after Obama’s victory the creators decided to change the character to a black president of Cuban descent in order to offer a cultural reflection of the historic result. The fact that Underwood was cast adds a further twist: the actor was a fervent advocate of Obama’s candidacy, and even spoke at some of his election rallies. Art imitating life, indeed.
Blair Underwood in The Event
If this is the start of a trend, there is one cold, hard factor that will have to play its part: Money. If people buy a ticket for, or tune into, something featuring a black president, then there will be a proliferation of them in theatres and on television screens. In this respect, the fact that 2012 has almost quadrupled its $200 million budget is an extremely encouraging sign. On the other hand Lisa de Moraes, TV critic at the Washington Post, pondered in the weeks after Obama’s victory what that result might mean for black actors in prominent roles, and their hopes rested, she argued, not on President Obama’s shoulders but on Laurence Fishburne’s. The Matrix star was in the process of taking over the mantle of leading man on CSI - one of the most watched shows in the history of television - from its long-time star William Petersen. “If the numbers on CSI stay strong with Fishburne, that’s good news for black actors,” she wrote. “If he flops, it’s bad news.” The viewing figures subsequently dropped from an average of 19 million in season 9, when he and Petersen made the swap, to just under 15 million the following season, when Fishburne headlined the show alone. Much may depend on Underwood and The Event.
