Female president of the United States in popular culture

The idea of a female president of the United States has been explored by various writers in novels (including science fiction), movies and television, as well as other media. Numerous actresses have portrayed a female president. Comedic parodies of a female president have been popular, used to explore the culture gap, and what U.S. life would be like under a female president and to a lesser extent, for a female president. Fictional acting female presidents are not included in this article.

Effect of media depictions

The Traditional Values Coalition, FrontPage Magazine, and conservative commentators have gone on record complaining that the ABC show Commander in Chief was really a thinly veiled attempt to lay groundwork for a 2008 Presidential run by prominent Democrat Hillary Clinton. This charge was denied by ABC, however.

Movies and television

These movies and television shows are American unless stated otherwise.

The 1924 silent science-fiction film The Last Man on Earth shows a woman as president; in the movie all adult men die of disease.^[1]

In the 1932 animated short Betty Boop for President, Betty Boop (voiced by Mae Questel) runs for and wins the presidency.^[2][3]

In the 1948 animated short Olive Oyl for President , a dream sequence shows Olive Oyl (voiced by Mae Questel) successfully running for president, after which she makes married men exempt from taxes in the hopes that Popeye will propose.^[4]

In Project Moonbase, a 1953 science-fiction film, Ernestine Barrier plays "Madame President".^[1]

In the 1964 comedy film Kisses for My President , Polly Bergen plays Leslie McCloud, the first female president.^[5] Leslie eventually discovers that she is pregnant, and resigns the presidency to devote herself full-time to her family.

In the 1985 ABC sitcom Hail to the Chief, Patty Duke plays the first female president.^[6][7] The show focused on president Julia Mansfield's attempt at balancing her political career with raising her family.

In the 1986 British satire film Whoops Apocalypse, Loretta Swit plays Barbara Adams, the first female president.^[1]

In the 1987 Australian film Les Patterson Saves the World, Joan Rivers plays the president.^[1]

In the pilot to the 1992 TV series X-Men, a female president is briefly shown.^[4]

In the 1996 comedy science fiction film Mars Attacks!, Natalie Portman plays the president's teenage daughter, who becomes the president after the government is destroyed by aliens.^[8]

In the 1998 comedy film Mafia!, Christina Applegate plays president Diane Steen.^[1] This character is a parody of Diane Keaton’s character in the Godfather series, and she almost accomplishes world peace but is distracted by her boyfriend, a mobster.^[7]

In the 2000 episode Bart to the Future of the 1989-present FOX TV series The Simpsons, Bart looks thirty years into the future, at which time Lisa Simpson (voiced by Yeardley Smith^[9]) has become president after succeeding Donald Trump.^[10][11] Lisa states that she is "proud to be America's first straight female president," and it is implied that Chaz Bono, at the time still identifying as a lesbian, had previously been president.^[4][12]

In the 2000 episode "The Election" of the 1996-present PBS TV series Arthur, Mary Alice ‘Muffy’ (voiced by Melissa Altro) is shown to become president in the future.^[4][13]

In the 2001-2010 TV series 24, Cherry Jones plays the president.^{[14][15][7][16]} President Allison Taylor, who she plays, takes office in the 2008 TV movie, 24: Redemption, and serves in Season 7 and Season 8. At the end of season 8 she resigns and goes to prison.^[4] She is the first female president, and though a Republican is said to be based on Hillary Clinton.

In the 2001 American-Argentinian science-fiction film Perfect Lover, set in 2030, the world is run by women and Sally Champlin plays a female president.^[1][17] The film begins with her saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that young man", similar to a real-life quote by president Bill Clinton.^[18]

In CBS's 2004 TV series Century City's fictional timeline, Oprah Winfrey is the president.

ABC's 2005-2006 TV series Commander in Chief^[19] focused on the fictional administration and family of Mackenzie Allen (played by Geena Davis), the first female president, who ascends to the post from the vice presidency after the death of the sitting president from a sudden cerebral aneurysm.

In the 2005-2009 FOX TV series Prison Break, Patricia Wettig plays vice president Caroline Reynolds, who becomes president after she arranges the assassination of the former president.^[7][20][21]

In the 2006 French miniseries L'État de Grace, Peggy Frankston plays Hillary Clinton, who is shown as the president in two episodes.^[4]

In ABC's 2008-2009 TV series Life on Mars^[22] (a remake of BBC's series of the same name), it is hinted that Malia Obama, the daughter of then-candidate Barack Obama, is the president in 2035.

In the 2012 Finnish-German-Australian film Iron Sky, Stephanie Paul plays a female president as a Sarah Palin-esque parody.^[23][1]

In the 2011-2012 English-language Franco-Canadian TV series XIII: The Series, Sally Sheridan appears in two episodes. Mimi Kuzyk plays Sally Sheridan, who becomes the first female president, but is assassinated.^[24] Kuzyk previously appeared as president Sally Sheridan in the miniseries XIII: The Conspiracy, in which Sheridan is also assassinated.

In the 2012-present HBO TV series Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays vice president Selina Meyer, who becomes the 45th president after the sitting president resigns to look after his mentally ill wife.^[7][25] Her successor as president, Laura Montez, played by Andrea Savage, is also a woman.^[26]

In the 2014-2015 NBC TV series State of Affairs, Alfre Woodard plays Constance Payton, the first black female president.^[27]

In the 2015 film Justice League: Gods and Monsters, Penny Johnson Jerald plays president Amanda Waller in an unspecified alternate universe.^[28]

In the 2015-present TV series Supergirl, Lynda Carter plays president Olivia Marsdin.^[29]

In the 2016 science-fiction film Independence Day: Resurgence, Sela Ward plays Elizabeth Lanford, the 45th and first female president,^[30] who is in her first term, succeeding Thomas J. Whitmore, William Grey, and Lucas Jacobs.^[31][32] She is eventually killed by the alien queen.^[1]

In a sketch in a 2016 episode of the Comedy Central TV series Inside Amy Schumer, Schumer plays president Schinton, who gets her period on her first day as president, and does poorly because of it.^[33]

Novels

Female presidents have often appeared in science-fiction novels. In the 1959 science-fiction novel Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (the pen name of Harry Hart Frank) president Josephine Vannebuker-Brown, formerly the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, becomes president because she was the only member of the line of succession to survive nuclear war; this novel was one of the first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age and consistently ranks in Amazon.com's Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories list (which groups together short story collections and novels).^[34][35] Other science-fiction novels which feature female presidents include K.A. Applegate’s 2001-2003 series Remnants, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter’s 2005 Sunstorm and 2001 The Light of Other Days, Jack McDevitt’s 1998 Moonfall, Robert J. Sawyer’s 2013 Red Planet Blues, John Shirley's 1985, 1988, and 1990 cyberpunk Eclipse Trilogy of novels, Allen Steele's 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 Coyote series of novels, and Robert Anton Wilson’s 1979 Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy of novels.^{[7][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]}

There is also a female president in the non-science-fiction novels The Prodigal Daughter (1982) and Shall We Tell the President?, both by Jeffrey Archer, and First Hubby (1990), by Roy Blount, Jr.; in The Prodigal Daughter and First Hubby the female president obtains her position through the death of the former president.^[7][47][48] Archer got the inspiration for his female president character Florentyna Kane's political life and rise to the presidency in The Prodigal Daughter from the real-life elections of Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi. Shall We Tell the President? also by Archer, initially featured president Ted Kennedy, but following the success of The Prodigal Daughter and a previous book featuring Kane in earlier life, called Kane and Abel, the character was changed to president Kane in later editions.

Other media

There is a female president in the 1939 science-fiction short story Greater Than Gods, by C.L. Moore.^[49][7]

In the 1985 National Lampoon magazine article "Rose, Rose, There She Goes...Into the Bushes to Take Off Her Clothes", written by Shary Flenniken, Rose Ambrose becomes the vice president because she is having an affair with the president, and later becomes president after the president dies of a heart attack while having sex, and is eventually shot and killed by several people, including the former first lady.^[50][7]

An ad campaign for Donna Karan in 1992 called "In Women We Trust" featured model Rosemary McGrotha as a female president.^[51]

In a 1993 Slovenian clothing commercial, Melanija Knavs (who would later become First Lady Melania Trump) plays the first female president on the day she is inaugurated; the character is meant to be president of the United States, although the European Union flag is mistakenly used in place of the American flag.^[52][53]

In the 2003 science-fiction comic book series Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, and José Marzán, Jr., Secretary of Agriculture Margaret Valentine becomes president after a plague kills all the men; she later wins reelection because Oprah was not available.^[7][54][55]

In 2016, an ad campaign for Elie Tahari called "Madam President" featured Shlomit Malka as a female president.^[51] Tahari intended this campaign to be an endorsement of Hillary Clinton, saying, "We have a choice between a man and a woman, and the woman is smarter and more humble, and I wanted to say I support that."^[51]

See also

• Black president of the United States in popular culture
• List of presidents of the United States
• Lists of fictional Presidents of the United States

References