Gutman, Pierre-Simon
The Bush Presidency on Stage and on Screen
- 2011.
81
While Barack Obama was the person of the year 2008, the incumbent president, George W. Bush, was then a lot more present in the media than expected, with two theatrical shows—a contemporary play and a comical one man show—and, significantly, a biographical Hollywood movie directed by Oliver Stone. This article is an attempt to capture the way the figure of Bush has been shaped by these artistic interpretations and, through them, by history. The portrait emerging from these works is that of an often-ridiculed presidency, which seemingly constitutes a grotesque retelling of events, in which tragic or admired figures of the past, such as Nixon and Reagan, have a central place.