Overview
- Explores the idea of manufactured realities within the context of the American Presidency
- Brings insight from theater and performance studies to areas such as presidential rhetoric, political communication, and media and politics
- Places the unprecedented Trump presidency within the historical context of past administrations
Part of the book series: Rhetoric, Politics and Society (RPS)
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About this book
This book examines Donald Trump's longstanding connections to professional wrestling in relation to how he uses and exploits language, and the ways in which he has weaponized going public never before seen in previous administrations. Trump utilizes the language of wrestling to make rhetorical appeals and draws upon its theatrical tactics to redefine expectations of spaces to fundamentally change the nature of political expectations and expression. Wrestling is almost always about stories within a confined space, and Donald Trump inculcated many of its techniques to command an audience with rhetoric. The emotional performance supersedes truth or accuracy; factual exactness matters less than your presentation of the material. As Donald Trump blends performance and public service, social confusion over boundaries has occurred. Theatrical norms, when applied to daily life, generate vastly different reactions than within the artificial confines of an arena. It is notsimply a muddling of public and private, but rather a jumbling of theatrical and generalized social standards. This book examines these aspects and explores how Donald Trump has also utilized well-established presidential tools in completely new ways in an attempt to build the strongest executive branch in American history.
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Keywords
- Presidency
- American Presidency
- Trump
- Executive Branch
- Political Leadership
- Political Rhetoric
- Professional Wrestling
- kayfabe
- Public
- Presidential Rhetoric
- Manufactured Realities
- Social Media
- Performance
- Carnival Language
- Populism
- Populist Appeal
- Imperial Presidency
- Weaponizing Language
- Executive Branch
- Executive Power
Table of contents (5 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“In Donald Trump and the Kayfabe Presidency, Shannon Bow O’Brien offers a unique assessment through the lens of professional wrestling to better understand the public presidency of Donald Trump. Given Trump’s long connection to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), comparing Trump’s public performances to the entertainment strategies used in the genre places the tone and combativeness of his public performances into a relevant context. This book offers a fascinating addition to the literature on presidential communication through a case study of Trump’s distinctive style of campaigning and governing.” —Lori Cox Han, Professor of Political Science, Chapman University, USA
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Shannon Bow O’Brien is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in American politics with a focus upon executive politics and presidential rhetoric. Her previous book, Why Presidential Speech Locations Matter: Analyzing Speechmaking from Truman to Obama, was published in 2018.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Donald Trump and the Kayfabe Presidency
Book Subtitle: Professional Wrestling Rhetoric in the White House
Authors: Shannon Bow O'Brien
Series Title: Rhetoric, Politics and Society
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50551-6
Publisher: Palgrave Pivot Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-50550-9Published: 22 July 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-50553-0Published: 23 July 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-50551-6Published: 21 July 2020
Series ISSN: 2947-5147
Series E-ISSN: 2947-5155
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 108
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: US Politics, Political Leadership, Political Communication, Legislative and Executive Politics