Axis 3
Lesson 1
Compare the two pictures below. What are the similarities and the differences? Why do you think this image was chosen to represent the TV show?
CULTURE NOTE:
Sculptor Daniel Chester French wanted President Lincoln's hands to display his two qualities as a leader. One hand is clenched, to show his strength and determination. The other hand is more open and relaxed, representing his compassionate, warm nature.
=> Both pictures represent a persons seated on a huge chair which could be compared to a throne. The chairs are the same in each picture but the person seated is different. In the first picture, the person is a woman with straight-blond hair, she has her right arm on the arm of the chair as does the sculpted person. However, her left arm is bent and her clenched fist is close to her face. The sculpted man has both arms rested on the arms of the chair, one hand opened and the other clenched as well.
The statue of President Lincoln is well known and represent the power of the president in the US. To use the same position and background indicates that the woman tends towards his ideals.
What is the title of the unit? (POTUS ON SCREEN). Read the Unit Goals and the vocabulary below.
Brainstorm on the symbols of the Us presidency
Why do you think so many TV shows take place in the White House?
Lesson 2
Read the text, listen to the audio and answer the questions.
HOLLYWOOD Vs. WASHINGTON
Hollywood emerged on the US West Coast as a space of reinvention and spectacle, distant - both geographically and culturally - from the East Coast centres of law and political authority, and it evolved into a powerful engine of myth-making rather then governance. While Washington exercises hard power through policy and institutions, Hollywood wields soft power by shaping emotions, values and collective belief, alternately legitimising the presidency as heroic and destabilising it through satire, cynicism or exposure of illusion. Across the 20th and 21st centuries, the relationship between the two has shifted from wartime alignment to today's fragmented, ironic landscape, but the core tension remains: politics governs reality, while Hollywood governs how that reality is imagined, trusted or resisted.
On Your Marks, p.98.
- Explain how the Hollywood-Washington relationship has changed over time.
- Now do the activity below.
Create three sentences: two true and one false. Your classmates must guess which one is false.
Have a look at the explanation below to help you:
Lesson 3
Read the grammar point below and do the exercices.
In groups of 3, pick a topic and be ready to present it to the class. You'll need to give the information asked in the table for your classmates to be able to complete it.
Title | Date of release | Main character | Fiction or Reality | Plot | Historical Era | Symbols spotted in the trailer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Group 1: Lincoln
Group 2: JFK
Group 3: Nixon
Group 4: Reagan
Group 5: W
Group 6: VEEP
Group 7: The West Wing
Group 8: House of Cards
Group 9: Scandal
Group 10: Madam Secretary
Group 11: Commander in Chief
Group 12: Designated Survivor
Present your findings to your classmates and answer the questions:
- What do they all have in common? => They deal with US presidencies and/or presidents.
- Identify which screen productions criticise or glorify the US president.
Criticises | Glorifies |
| |
Lesson 4
Read the grammar point below.
Read the text and answer the questions.
THESE POLITICAL THRILLERS ARE HITTING A LITTLE TOO CLOSE TO HOME
Onscreen entertainment has always found itself intertwined with politics in one way or another. Whether through realistic depictions, fictional drama or direct commentary on the landscape, watching TV and film penetrate the world of power and influence in the most imaginative, scripted ways is always interesting. On the flip side, there is something unsettling about seeing aspects of your political reality mirrored so vividly in popular media, especially when it feels as though certain events have been foreshadowed. [...]
Take, for instance, G20, Prime Video's Viola Davis-led political thriller [...]. When you think about it, the movie's core plot [...] doesn't seem too far-fetched in the world of politics, which only gets more unpredictable by the day. [...] In an interview with Far Out Magazine, director Patricia Riggen insisted that there was a "very conscious decision not to make [G20] political". And yet, so much of it is. [...]
Such is the case in Zero Day, which seed [...] retired President Mullen (De Niro) [lead] an investigation into the deadly cyberattack that paralyses the nation. This wouldn't be the first time television reimagined a 9/11-level terrorist attack [...]. However, it's interesting that Zero Day [...] sparked a ne dialogue about digital security risks - amid today's disinformation age [...].
There's also the playing on societal fears that derive from what could be happening at [the White House] that get people so engrossed in political entertainment. [...] In the end, it's not just the thrill that keeps us watching - it's the curiosity about how close to the truth these wild stories really are.
HuffPost, 2025
- Spot the titles of screen productions and explain what they are about.
- Identify the genre of these productions: how do they represent power and the US president?
- Go into greater detail: in the text, distinguish between real-wold events and fictional events.
- Now, say what the text is about.
- Focus on the sentence from "On the flip side" to "foreshadowed": what do these screen productions reveal about the relationship between reality and fiction?
- Analyse Patricia Riggen's quote: explain her intention in your own words and what actually happened.
- Focus on the last paragraph and describe how viewers respond to these productions.
- Explain how screen productions are influenced by politics.
Lesson 5 - Final Task
In pairs, write a blog entry about how movies and TV shows framed the representation of Us presidents.
