From ‘Jackie’ to Melania: Media, Performance, and the First Ladies

The role of the First Lady slips in and out of importance depending on media savvy.

Essayist Kevin B. Lee tackles an underseen technique in his video inspired by Jackie: the desktop view. A video documenting the growing influence of media on the position of First Lady and vice-versa should embrace its own heightened, technologically-aided impact.

Accessing interviews, film clips, and other sources, Lee constructs a cyclical journey of the informal office and its expectations of its holders. Through this, he assesses not just the effects of the changing position but of its interpretation by the public at large and its more specific interpreters, like Natalie Portman in Jackie.

Performance is key, image is everything, and dipping in and out of full-screen focus then multi-windowed clutter gives the hectic tone appropriate for the political circus.

Jacob Oller: Jacob Oller writes everywhere (Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Playboy, FSR, Paste, etc.) about everything that matters (film, TV, video games, memes, life).