The Cultural Politics of Contemporary Hollywood Film

Adopting and developing a cultural politics approach, this comprehensive study explores how Hollywood movies generate and reflect political myths about social and personal life that profoundly influence how we understand power relations. Instead of looking at genre, it employs three broad categories of film. Security films present ideas concerning public order and disorder, citizenstate relations and the politics of fear. Relationalities films highlight personal and intimate politics, bringing norms about identities, gender and sexuality into focus. In socially critical films, particular issues and ideas are endowed with more overtly political significance. The book considers these categories as global political technologies implicated in hegemonic and soft power relations whose reach is both deep and broad. -- .