ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the continuities in presidential campaign films through a discussion of candidates' evocations of myth to construct images of self and others. Since presidents were first elected by popular vote in 1824, campaigns have deliberately crafted the candidates' images. As traditional party identifications have declined and television's popularity has risen, campaigns spend millions of dollars inventing images that will appeal to otherwise uncommitted voters. Presidential campaign films encapsulate campaign themes and issues, and they provide a shorthand account of the historical context in which a campaign is conducted. The candidate's image, marked by consistencies and digressions across the films, reveals the mythic construction of presidents at different sociohistorical junctures. The biographical campaign films, like the books, trace the trajectories of candidates' lives and careers. The presidential campaign films derive their dramatic images of the country from the Jackson narrative, which is itself a secular version of the American Edenic monomyth.
