Barack Obama as a Cultural Object

Our shiny new President occupies an elite iconic space usually reserved for the great Presidents of the past, and is usually not entered until years and years after the President’s time in office. Never before in our nation’s history has the ideal of a Presidential candidate so permeated the very fabric of popular culture as that of Barack Obama did during the 2008 election and continues to do. Compare, if you will, the typical representation of politicians in political cartoons and the occasional parody on SNL to the pure, unadulterated, postmodern weirdness of examples such as these:

http://gamu-toys.info/sonota/sw/obama/obama.html (Japanese action figure; keep scrolling, it gets more and more mindblowing)

http://3rdworldimagineer.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/custom_1237395322201_obamaad.jpg (Russian ice cream ad, translated)

Using this basic assumption as a jumping-off point, I will study cultural representations of Obama, both disseminated by his campaign and unofficial. Example range from the already-iconic 4-color “HOPE” poster—now dubbed an “Obamicon” and enjoying a second life on the Interwebs in the form of custom-made Obamicons—to more abstract notions of political rebirth and renewal surrounding Obama.

Roland Barthes’ semiology will be particularly fruitful, especially in studying actual images of Obama such as the aforementioned Obamicons. Something tells me the fellas of the Frankfurt School would also have something to say about this blending of politics and popular culture; and, regardless of their feelings about Obama, the similarities to propaganda images of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and the like would undoubtedly crop up. Furthermore, encoding/decoding theory (and, by extension, the “circuit of culture” notion) will be useful—seeing as Obama-stuff is generated both by his camp and the general public—as will other strains of Reception & Negotiation theories; after all, it was us that elected him.

If I’m feeling particularly plucky, ventures into the deeper waters of issues like the dangers of idealization of a politician and the current state of political campaignery will be in order.

As it’s a bit early for many books to be written on this topic yet, research will lean slightly more towards primary sources, and less in-depth works of study such as articles will be more plentiful and useful.