Obama’s favorite movies are “The Godfather” and “The Godfather II.”
One of our most important clues about Obama's favorite works of pop culture is a Facebook post promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership and defending the importance of copyright laws. In it, he said his favorite movies are the first two “Godfather” films. It’s a smart pick — the two movies are classic American stories and widely-regarded masterpieces of cinema.
“There’s this combination of old world gentility and ritual, with this savagery underneath,” Obama told MTV. “It’s all about family. So it’s a great movie.”
He’s also really into classics.
His other favorites include “Casablanca,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and “Lawrence of Arabia,” all of which are Oscar winners.
As Obama said, “Who doesn’t like Casablanca?”
Him and Michelle watched “Do the Right Thing” on their first date.
At an event honoring the movie's 25th anniversary, Barack and Michelle Obama recounted the time they first watched the Spike Lee movie: their first date.
"He was trying to show me his sophisticated side by selecting an independent filmmaker," Michelle said. "It ended up being a pretty good movie."
"'Do the Right Thing' still holds up a mirror to our society, and it makes us laugh, and think, and challenges all of us to see ourselves in one another,” Barack Obama said.
Their first date was adapted into a movie itself, called "Southside with You."
He’s also dropped the names of a few movies he enjoyed during the course of his presidency.
In 2015, he said he really enjoyed “The Martian," though Michelle preferred Pixar’s "Inside Out." He liked Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood" best in 2014, and his favorite 2012 movies were "Beasts of the Southern Wild," "Life of Pi," and "Argo."
“Star Wars” came out when Obama was a teenager — and he’s a fan.
Obama awarded George Lucas the National Medal of Arts — the United States’ highest government award for artists — in 2012. And at the end of his final press conference last year, on the eve of the release of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," he told the press room that he was off to see the film.
His favorite song is “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye.
He’s a big fan of Motown singer Marvin Gaye, though his favorite musical artist overall is Stevie Wonder.
"When I was at that point where you start getting involved in music, Stevie had that run with 'Music of My Mind,' 'Talking Book,' 'Fulfillingness' First Finale' and 'Innervisions,' and then 'Songs in the Key of Life,'" Obama told Rolling Stone in 2008. "Those are as brilliant a set of five albums as we've ever seen."
In fact, Obama’s taste in music is pretty grounded in the classics.
He's been endorsed by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, and endorses their music in turn:
"I've got probably 30 Dylan songs on my iPod," he told Rolling Stone. And while he’s not a Deadhead ("I don't wear tie-dye and I've never followed them around anywhere."), he does listen to The Grateful Dead, as well as Earth, Wind and Fire, Elton John, and The Rolling Stones ("Gimme Shelter" is his favorite song of theirs).
In high school, he started listening to more jazz.
He started listening to Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane, before moving on to Howlin' Wolf, Yo-Yo Ma, Sheryl Crow, and Jay-Z.
Like many people, Obama grudgingly admires Kanye West, though he prefers Jay-Z.
There’s a kind of taste test in hip-hop music: Do you prefer Kanye West or Jay-Z?
When asked this question by The Atlantic, his answer was Jay-Z — he and Beyoncé are currently American music’s first family, after all.
But he also can’t help but like Kanye. He called him "a jackass" — presumably a judgment on Kanye’s arrogant public persona — but also "talented."
He likes other contemporary music, too.
His favorite song of 2015 is “How Much a Dollar Cost” by Kendrick Lamar (Michelle prefers “Uptown Funk”).
Last year, he also revealed a “summer playlist” on Spotify that demonstrates a more eclectic taste, and includes Sly & The Family Stone, Coldplay, Arcade Fire, and Florence + The Machine.
He grew up reading comic books like “Conan the Barbarian” and "Spider-Man."
In an email to supporters, Obama wrote “I grew up loving comic books. Back in the day, I was pretty into Conan the Barbarian and Spiderman.” He forgot the hyphen in Spider-Man, though, which amounts to scandal in the comic book universe.
He thinks “The Wire” is the greatest television show of all time.
The critically acclaimed HBO drama often tops lists of the best TV series of this century, but Obama takes it a step further and calls it the best TV show of all time. He calls Omar, one of the show’s central characters, “the toughest, baddest guy on the show.”
But he’s also named “M*A*S*H” his favorite TV show.
In an offhand comment at a fundraiser in Minneapolis, he called the war comedy his favorite show.
When he's got a minute, he'll catch up on HBO dramas.
With his family, he’ll watch episodes of "Modern Family" and "Parks and Recreation" when it was on the air. But without his kids, he said he likes to sneak in episodes of "darker" shows, like "Homeland" and "Boardwalk Empire."
He also watches "House of Cards," according to The New York Times, and his favorite show of 2015 was "The Knick." He also liked "Mad Men" (it “explains my grandparents, their tastes”), as well as "Entourage" and "Downton Abbey."
One of the perks of being president is that he gets to see who dies on “Game of Thrones” before everyone else.
The showrunners said that the White House requested screener copies of the new season before the premiere.
"When the commander-in-chief says 'I want to see advanced episodes,' what are you gonna do?" producer David Benioff said.
He’s a Trekkie.
He’s been known to flash the Vulcan salute from time to time, and as a teenager had a crush on Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in the show. But he lost some of his credibility with “Star Trek” fans in 2013, when he referred to the “Vulcan mind meld” as the “Jedi mind meld.”
He’s really into BatDad.
It’s his favorite viral meme. "Whoever BatDad is out there, man, I was into your thing,” he told People.
Obama’s favorite novel is “Song of Solomon” by Toni Morrison.
It’s a little surprising that he didn’t pick “Beloved,” which is often considered the Nobel laureate’s best book. But “Song of Solomon,” about a loose group of black strivers in magical-realist Michigan, is a sensitive pick.
Since 2008, Morrison has become close to the president. She wrote a flattering letter endorsing him, and he enlisted her as a member of his braintrust to map out his post-presidency, and awarded her a Medal of Freedom in 2012.
He also admires author Marilynne Robinson, and considers her book “Gilead” one of his favorites.
Last September, he interviewed the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist in a wide-ranging conversation about faith, fiction, and the ethics of power. He’s long considered her book “Gilead” one of his favorites, and awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 2013.
His taste in books show that he’s a student of American literature and history.
On his Facebook page, Obama says his favorite books include "Moby-Dick," Ralph Waldo Emerson’s "Self-Reliance," Lincoln’s collected writings, and “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63,” a volume by Taylor Branch about the civil rights movement.
Elsewhere, he identified himself as a fan of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” which is widely cited as the book that made him pick his onetime political rival Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Obama identified Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” as a book that inspires him. Curiously, he considered “the tragedies of William Shakespeare” inspiring as well. He also, of course, counts The Bible among his favorite books.
A lot of his favorite books also grapple with themes of identity.
Among them Doris Lessing’s "Golden Notebook," Ellison’s "Invisible Man," and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby."
However, as a father of two he's also read a lot of classic children's books.
Obama considers himself a fan of Dr. Seuss, "The Hardy Boys," "The Lord of the Rings," "The Hobbit," and "Treasure Island."
He used to read the “Harry Potter” books with Malia.
Obama and Malia read the “Harry Potter” books aloud to each other, a memory he cherishes. Some reports from 2009 say that Obama made a beeline for J.K. Rowling at the end of a G20 Summit dinner, asking for her autograph. And in 2010, Rowling was invited to read from "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" on the White House lawn during the annual Easter egg roll.
But he's also known to keep up with contemporary literary fiction.
Every November, Obama makes a show of visiting an independent bookstore on Small Business Saturday. He’s picked up books by Jonathan Franzen, James Salter, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
His favorite book of 2015, he said, was "Fates and Furies" by Lauren Groff.