ABSTRACT
American political and popular culture has been quite hospitable to projections and depictions of a "black" president well before Barack Obama was elected in 2008. These depictions did not just conveniently spring up in television shows or a handful of films in the decade before Obama's candidacy. The racial character of Obama's presidency survives through framed messages, implicit associations and the semblance of plausible deniability. One of these inaugural and central framings links Obama to another improbable president, skinny lawyer and former Illinois state representative, Abraham Lincoln. Both politicians were highly cognizant of the popular cultures and new technologies at hand. For Lincoln, it was photography; for Obama, it was social media. This chapter focuses on cinematic representations of Lincoln that coincided with Obama's successful reelection and the opening months of his second term. Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was adapted from one of the many highly successful reminders that in the Obama era, the (un)dead walk among people.
