This MA thesis discusses the depiction of President Nixon and the Watergate Affair in various works of popular culture. During the Watergate Affair Nixon committed various crimes, such as the...Show moreThis MA thesis discusses the depiction of President Nixon and the Watergate Affair in various works of popular culture. During the Watergate Affair Nixon committed various crimes, such as the obstruction of justice and the abuse of power. He resigned on August 9 1974, the only American President ever to have done so. His successor, President Ford, pardoned him for these crimes. Nixon has never been convicted for them, to the dismay of many Americans. By now Nixon has become a controversial figure in American history. He is and will be always be remembered for the Watergate Affair. He also dragged out the American involvement in Vietnam for several years, resulting in massive anti-war protests and outpourings of great hatred against him. However, Nixon was also the American President who succeeded in achieving a détente with the Soviet Union, normalising relations with China and initiating the first SALT-treaty to limit nuclear arms. Moreover, he bettered the plight of Native Americans and steered through Congress important environmental legislation. Nixon, whose fate was essentially a tragic one, has inspired writers, poets, playwrights, directors and musicians to produce very interesting works of art. Philip Roth wrote ‘Our Gang’, a political satire depicting Nixon, amongst other things, as chief devil. Gore Vidal wrote a play about him, ‘An Evening with Richard Nixon’, as well as the historical novel ‘Burr’ about Aaron Burr, another villain in American history, which displays interesting parallels with Nixon and his time. The film ‘All the President’s Men’ is by far the most well-known work discussed in this thesis, dealing with the two young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the ‘Washington Post’, who played an important role in uncovering the affair. Robert Altman’s ‘Secret Honor’ and Oliver Stone’s ‘Nixon’ not only portray Nixon, but also examine his cultural significance. The same is true for ‘The Assassination of Richard Nixon’, in which Nixon is not an actual character, but the figurehead of a sick and dishonest society. Ron Howard’s ‘Frost/Nixon’, the most recent work discussed in this thesis, paints a more positive and humane picture of Nixon. This is in accordance with a general tendency, within works of popular culture, to depict Nixon with much more depth, with more attention to Nixon as a human-being, and in a more balanced and positive way.Show less
This thesis purposes to understand how a deeply committed Christian people viewed their claims to power as they did; and through the American Civil War laid down their lives in terrible numbers to...Show moreThis thesis purposes to understand how a deeply committed Christian people viewed their claims to power as they did; and through the American Civil War laid down their lives in terrible numbers to preserve the way of life which they had forged for themselves. The Old South deemed itself to be the societal manifestation of biblical Scripture, a social order bestowed by Providence and ‘ordained of God’ . This apparent manifestation of God’s will produced a patriarchal, hierarchical slave society, legitimised almost entirely through literal readings of Scripture, and the reading of such alongside contemporary political and economic theories. Here, I will examine the forging of an ideology and social order based solidly in the realities of biblical Scripture, which Southerners believed to be just - so much so that the bloodiest war ever fought on U.S soil raged for more than four long years. Thusly, through examining the extent and depth of the effort to situate slavery on Christian ground, and build a class-stratified social order ordained of God, one may obtain some understanding as to the Southern whites’ readiness to defend a social system so odiously abhorrent, even by contemporary standards. The research focus of this paper is to present an understanding of the ways in which this deeply committed Christian people viewed their world and their claims to power as they did, and how this view emerged and was influenced by the Christian Scriptures.Show less
