In 1924, a risky silent film featured a female president of the United States.

The Last Man on Earth is one of the first films in history to feature a female President of the United States. This set the tone for the films and shows that followed.

A hundred years ago, a woman was elected president of the United States. This didn't happen in reality, of course, but a fictional female president appeared in a movie released exactly a century ago, in 1924, and it's one of the earliest examples in the world. screen of a woman in this role.

The Last Man on Earth is a silent comedy starring Earle Foxe and directed by JG Blystone. Foxe plays Elmer, the only adult man in the year 1954 who hasn't been suffocated by a disease called “masculitis.” Luckily for him, he was living alone in a forest when the virus struck. So when he is brought back to civilization, he becomes a sought-after specimen. The government buys her for $10 million and two “senators” compete for the right to marry her, but Elmer only has eyes for his childhood sweetheart.

Adapted from a short story by John D Swain, The Last Man on Earth is really an excuse to have fun with the male fantasy of being pursued by countless women. “Little, if any, attempt is made to conceal the fact that they are motivated by sexual impulses,” the Virginia State Censorship Board said in a statement. his review of this “naughty” and “indecent” work. But the film also mocks the very idea of ​​a society run by women. The White House is overgrown and unkempt, while the President herself (Martha Mattox) prefers tend to have stray cats than to lead the country.

“Imagine,” says Erika Cornelius Smith, director of research strategy at the University of Illinois and an expert on depictions of women in fiction. “Women box! Women in government! The only way the public could deal with this sort of thing in popular culture was to know that it was absurd and would never happen.”

During the rest of the 20th century, there weren't many other female American presidents on screen. Betty Boop and Olive Oyl made brief, spirited trips to the White House in 1932 and 1948 respectively, but most filmmakers stuck to the familiar status quo of male presidents. “Popular culture is a space for creativity, imagination and possibility,” says Smith. “But [film and television creators] I struggle to balance this wonderful opportunity to be creative with the need to sell advertising and make a profit. Their shows must have a market. Opportunities and profitability will always compete. »

But why would a female president threaten this profitability? If a movie or TV series deviates from reality in other ways, why shouldn't it also shake things up in that particular way? Karrin Vasby Anderson of Colorado State University co-authored a book on the subject, Woman President, and she says that, in the past, such a character might have turned off more conservative viewers. “The American presidency has long been one of the world's most important manifestations of traditional masculinity and heteronormative family values, with the first lady playing an important supporting role,” she says. “A female president shakes that up.”

Perhaps this is one reason why, when a female president appears on screen, she is rarely taken seriously: in many ways, the president of Last Man on Earth set the tone for her uninspiring successors for decades to come. A recurring element is that the scenario takes place in the future, when, implicitly, the world is strangely different from ours. The first example, after The Last Man on Earth, is Project Moonbase, released in 1953 and set in 1970. Ernestine Barrier plays Madam President and other women occupy positions of power although, as Smith points out, the The heroine (Donna Martell), a colonel in charge of a lunar mission, is “easily frightened and turns to her male colleague and her lover as soon as the situation becomes dangerous.”

Women presidents would continue to be seen in the imagined futures and futuristic alternative realities conjured up by Back to the Future Part II (1989), Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009), Independence Day: Resurgence (2016), For All Mankind (2019-present) and Don't look for (2021). In Bart to the Future, a 2000 episode of The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson grows up to become “America's first heterosexual female president.” One of the episode's prescient jokes is that its predecessor was a certain President Trump.

Another cliché is that women presidents are often not appointed to the White House following ordinary, free and fair elections, but rather following a crisis. This is, of course, a particularly serious crisis in The Last Man on Earth. To quote Farran Smith Nehme in Film Commentary: “For a woman to be elected president, literally every man on Earth, except for a tree hermit who was presumably not registered to vote, had to first die.” But even in less extreme scenarios, it's common in movies and shows for a woman to step in only after the male president dies or resigns while in office. Just look at some of the more recent examples: Geena Davis' Mackenzie Allen in Commander in Chief (2005), Patricia Wettig's Caroline Reynolds in Prison Break (2005-2017), Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Selina Meyer in Veep (2005). 2012-2019) and Robin Wright's Claire Hale Underwood in House of Cards (2013-2018) became president without voter approval.

Likewise, the fictional women themselves are not always willing to do this work. “On television and in movies, the only women who can be trusted as president of the United States are the ones who don't want to be there,” Anderson says. “Heroic female presidents, like Ta Leoni's character in Madam Secretary, need to be trained into public service. Women with political ambitions, like Cherry Jones' president in 24 and Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character in Veep, prove untrustworthy, or their presidencies often end in tragedy. Fictional male presidents can be principled, effective, and politically ambitious. Women on screen still have to choose between ambition and trustworthiness.

Another persistent cliché is that female presidents on screen seem to have difficulty focusing on government. The Last Man on Earth president takes care of stray cats, but her later counterparts are usually distracted by their husbands and children. Hail to the Chief, a 1985 ABC sitcom, starred Patty Duke as Julia Mansfield, a president juggling politics and family. Twenty years later, in 2005, ABC's Commander in Chief commercials featured Davis' character as “a female president who has the world on her shoulders and her children on her back.”

Yet, 100 years after The Last Man on Earth, tropes are changing, albeit slowly. There have already been more fictional female presidents in the 21st century than in the 20th century, and there are even cases where their gender is not the main issue. Meryl Streep's Janie Orlean in Don't Look Up (2021) may be a terrible president, but it's not because she's a woman, while Alfre Woodard's Constance Payton in State of Affairs (2014) -2015) is competent and tough.

Hillary Clinton's candidacy in the 2016 presidential election undoubtedly had an influence. “Certainly the visibility of candidates like Hillary Clinton has had a significant impact on these types of characters,” says Smith. “I don't think Elizabeth McCord [in Madam Secretary]for example, is exactly based on Clinton, but Clinton's candidacy had a level of seriousness that lent itself to McCord's. And this show really struck me as different from the mold in a lot of ways, both in the sense that it was trying to tackle the stereotypes of previous portrayals, and in the sense that it was trying to move beyond them.”

In general, Smith adds, the more women there are in politics in reality, the more there are in fiction and, potentially, vice versa. “These shows were made when there were very serious candidates running not only for president but also for governor and positions in the Senate and Congress, so having real-life examples inspires writers and Actors in the industry begin to think about storylines with these characters. Conversely, how they then create these characters and these storylines shapes how we imagine these individuals will act in power, so I see it as a loop. feedback »

Either way, it's worth considering a film that was ahead of its time most of the time. Kisses for My President is a 1964 comedy in which Polly Bergen plays the president and Fred MacMurray plays her husband, who struggles to become a “male first lady.” “She actually offers a pretty progressive representation of a female president,” Anderson says. . “She is an intelligent and competent politician, elected by a cohort of united and enthusiastic voters.”

However, the film did not pursue its progressive premise all the way to the end. After the president passes out, she discovers that she is pregnant and therefore resigns from her position to devote herself to motherhood. “You can’t work and be pregnant, you can’t work and raise a family, it’s absurd,” Smith laughs. “And if the president can’t work and raise a family, that definitely sends a message to the rest of the women in society.”