Popular Culture References
The stereotype of the class president has been typecast in books, movies and television. Typical storylines sometimes contain a nerd or underdog claiming the title from a more popular student. The stereotype has also been used as a political allegory since the 1800s, describing everyone from the president of the United States to roles for African-American women in the U.S. Congress.
Fictional characters in the role of class president have included:
- Pedro Sanchez, played by Efren Ramirez, runs successfully for Class President in the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite.
- Zach Siler, played by Freddie Prinze Jr. is the popular jock and Class President in the 1999 film She's All That.
- Wilford "Wil C" Cardon is the Class President in the independent film produced by DJ Iggy, titled, The Rise of Number 45.
- Jessie Spano, played by Elizabeth Berkley, is the Class President at Bayside High School in the television series Saved by the Bell.
- Ryoko Asakura in the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
- Tracy Flick, Reese Witherspoon, runs for Class President in the 1999 film Election.
- Steve Holt, played by Justin Grant Wade, is Class President of the high school that George Michael Bluth and Maeby Funke attend in the television series Arrested Development.
- Mizuki Kirimiya from the Visual Novel Yume Miru Kusuri
Read more about this topic: Class President
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“For those that love the world serve it in action,
Grow rich, popular and full of influence,
And should they paint or write, still it is action:
The struggle of the fly in marmalade.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)