From the Hood to the White House: The Cultural Imaginary of Presidential Blackness in Head of State

Abstract

This article analyzes the film Head of State’s cultural imaginary of presidential blackness that signifies national progress while sublimating social conflict. The plot imagines a black man from the hood successfully running for presidency, living the American dream, and becoming an unconventional national icon. His symbolic blackness comprises two markers of difference: his identification with the disenfranchised hood and the black diaspora. As he challenges racial inequality in the U.S. as well as moral corruption among the élite, he unifies one historical fiction of America. I focus on how the film attributes an anti-establishment legacy to a minority president based on his countercultural identity performances although he remains complicit with foundational institutions of government. While the film projects hopes for future racial and economic equality upon a fictional black president and strategically redefines the American dream, I argue that it appropriates and revives American exceptionalist myths.