¶ … Cinema and American Politics
The modern politics of the U.S. and their imperialistic manifestations within the global political economy (GPE) have often been reflected in the mainstream Hollywood films of the era yet simultaneously criticized and satirized by auteur and/or independent filmmakers, such as Kubrick with his 1964 Dr. Strangelove or Oliver Stone's JFK. While political science is a field in which the dynamics of political discourse may be examined more directly, an analysis of the cinematic representation of American politics as depicted in film can provide an alternative assessment of the life of U.S. political forces, how they are perceived to operate in popular film, and how popular political beliefs are shaped and communicated to citizens as a result. For instance, Spielberg's Lincoln and his recent Bridge of Spies are two films that celebrate some aspect of the American political ideal (such as freedom, unity, integrity, and democracy). Yet other filmmakers use film to reflect some aspect of the political scene that is troubling (Stone's upcoming Snowden picture, for instance, which focuses on the overreach of government agencies or the upcoming documentary Weiner, which focuses on the maligned candidacy of Timothy Weiner). This paper proposes to assess the manner in which Hollywood/independent films support and/or undermine the American political scene, depending on their depictions and their popular reception. Film is an important medium for advancing beliefs, whether they be about religion, history, the economy or politics. The global political economy, as a result, is highly impacted by and highly impactful on the medium of film.
Films are responsible for teaching generations about what happened in WW2 or what life was like in the risk management department of Lehman Brothers prior to the firm's collapse. Thus identifying the role that cinema plays in influencing ideas about American politics and the global political economy can benefit the field of political science by showing how thoughts, beliefs, ideals and criticisms are manifested, communicated, reinforced and rejected over time. Moreover, the expression of American imperialism is also something that can be studied to better understand this dimension of American politics within the GPE. How, for example did Hollywood portray the political consequences of the Cold War from its inception in the early post-War years up through the 1980s? The imperialism of the U.S. and its impact on the GPE during this era had many different representations in film. This was, moreover, a time that saw the rise of the intelligence agencies around the world -- the KGB, the CIA, MI6, the Mossad. Spy films in the 1960s reflected the urgent manner in which the public was groomed to accept such agencies: the gentleman spy in the U.S. was a favorite of Kennedy, who admired the James Bond stories and even gave filmmaker John Frankenheimer permission to film in D.C. for his Seven Days in May, a movie about a coup in America, led by the Joint Chiefs of Command. It was a realistic story that struck at the heart of American politics in the 1960s -- the tension mounting between the rising War Party and the more diplomatic Democratic Party under Kennedy, who narrowly escaped nuclear war with the Soviets by practicing detente.[footnoteRef:1] [1: Arthur M. Schlesigner, Robbert Kennedy and His times, (NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 450; John Frankenheimer, Seven Days in May DVD Commentary (LA: Warner Home Video, 2000). Film.]
Frankenheimer's film may have been resented by the hawks in the Joint Chiefs but it resonated among critics of American foreign policy -- especially in the wake of the Bay of Pigs incident and, later, the assassination of Kennedy himself. With Oswald's arrest -- and then execution days later -- the public caught its first whiff of just how deep the "deep state" that Peter Dale Scott would later come to define actually went. With mob men like Ruby and CIA operatives like Oswald involved in the murder of a U.S. president -- while foreign countries like Israel were negotiating with the U.S. over nuclear proliferation -- the entire, complex nature of the GPE suddenly resonated with a cacophony of sound and fury that signified something -- but what?[footnoteRef:2] Benoit discusses how Oliver Stone had to defend his controversial and conspiracy-oriented film JFK against backlash and how the film guided public opinion which led to Congress passing the JFK Records Act -- but, of course, that was 30 years after the event, and American politics had essentially taken an entirely new course, shape and trajectory over those three decades.[footnoteRef:3] The fact that Stone had to defend his critique of the political...
The lack of public support is one of the key factors that resulted to the failure of the U.S. There were false claims that the American government acted against people's aspirations and that the American youth protested against the war. Early initiatives of the United States under Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Truman obtained a lot of support. Only two members of the United States congress voted against giving Johnson the
They are only trying to justify their actions; they are handing excuses, telling the events as they happened. And in the end maybe these characters do find an excuse, the one that they are both human, bound to fail and to be influenced, sharing the same planet and dealing with the same kind of people. The two personages enjoyed having power and realized in the end that having power
Louis Althusser (1918-90) was one of the foremost Marxist theorists in the Western world, and advocated an especially orthodox version of Marxism that was always close to the Communist Party line. He regarded Bertolt Brecht as one of the great Marxist-revolutionary playwrights of the 20th Century, who used the theater to oppose the capitalist system and bourgeois ideology. In the 2ns section, the paper will examine how Althusser insisted on
viewer ship of Hindi Films with respect to the Non-Asian population in the UK The Hindi film industry or the 'Bollywood' as it has been referred to have made a significant mark not only in the Indian society, but has had far reaching influence among Indians residing abroad. We shall concentrate on the Hindi films in the UK with respect to the resident Indian population. The United Kingdom alone accounts
Anyone who has ever talked to a relative who lived through that era, or read personal accounts of World War II knows that while the German forces were referred to as 'Germans,' the Japanese were called 'Japs.' Anti-Japanese propaganda often portrayed the Asian enemy in quite explicitly racist terms, because of the Japanese's 'foreign' racial status, in the eyes of most Caucasian-Americans of European ancestry. Unlike the Germans, the
" (Pettersson, 2006) Oral and written verbal art languages are both used for the purpose of information communication as well as information presentation with the reader and listener receiving an invitation to consider the information. The Narrative & the Symbolic The work of Abiola Irele (2001) entitled: "The African Imagination: Literature in Africa & the Black Diaspora" states that Hampate Ba "...incorporates the essential feature of the oral narrative at significant points
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now