ABSTRACT

Collecting together some of the best thinking about the relationship between movies and politics, this book, originally published in 1993, encourages an awareness of the political dimension of film, both for film scholars and those entering the film industry. Eight essays are grouped into four parts addressing political ideology and movie narrative, political myth in the movies, political history and movie culture, and political communication and the movies. An introductory essay, as well as prefatory remarks to each of the four parts, brings additional insight and perspective and puts the essays into context.

chapter |23 pages

Introduction

Understanding the Politics of Movies

part I|4 pages

Political Ideology and Movie Narrative

chapter |24 pages

Who's Running This Show?

Ideology, Formula, and Hegemony in American Film and Television

chapter |38 pages

Film, Politics, and Ideology

Toward A Multiperspectival Film Theory *

chapter II|4 pages

Political Myth in the Movies

chapter |17 pages

The Prices of Power

Women's Depictions in Film

chapter |13 pages

Leatherstocking In 'Nam

Rambo, Platoon, and the American Frontier Myth

part III|3 pages

Political History and Movie Culture

chapter |50 pages

“Grief in the Limelight”

Al Capone, Howard Hughes, the Hays Code and the Politics of the Unstable Text

chapter |53 pages

Designing Multi-Cultural America

Modern Movie Theaters and the Politics of Public Space 1920–1945

part IV|3 pages

Political Communication and the Movies

chapter |32 pages

Politics and Auteurs

From Chaplin to Wajda

chapter |24 pages

Political Propaganda in the Movies

A Typology

chapter |2 pages

Afterword