The West
Wing and the
wider world:
Idealised
Professor
Helena
Sheehan
School
Dublin City University
The much-acclaimed
television series The
West Wing, running for seven
seasons, was often seen as a dramatised civics lesson for the nation
and
even
for the world. The programme was undoubtedly sophisticated,
intelligent,
ironic,
well-written and well-made, but was it also arrogant and myopic ? Many
commentators and citizens saw the programme as portraying the White
House and
its place in the world as it ought to be. Bumper stickers boosted BARTLET
FOR PRESIDENT.
This paper
attempts
to analyse the process of imagining the presidency and present world
order in
this way and asks:
How did the series
represent the
What was its underlying world view ?
What sort
of contestation did it articulate ?
What
sort of contestation did it fail to articulate ?
What was its ideological centre of gravity ?
What were its parameters of debate ?
How many voices dids it allow into the
argument
?
How were they weighted ?
What voices were absent ?
How wide was the
political
spectrum it legitimised ?
How did it see the
place of the
Is
the
president of the
How problematic
is the seemingly unproblematic and constant reference to him as such ?
How do
declarations, which seem left wing in
How
did The West Wing play into national and
global politics in the contemporary conjuncture ?
Dr Helena Sheehan,