The Cultural Politics of Contemporary Hollywood Film: Power, Culture, and Society 0719082986, 9780719082986

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the cultural politics of contemporary hollywood film

The cultural politics of contemporary Hollywood film Power, culture, and society CHRIS BEASLEY AND HEATHER BROOK

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Chris Beasley and Heather Brook 2019 The right of Chris Beasley and Heather Brook to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 0 7190 8298 6  hardback First published 2019 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Foreword by Douglas Kellner page vii Acknowledgements x 1 Introduction: the cultural politics of popular film 2 Frames

1 17

Part I: Security 43 3 Security: order and disorder

45

4 War and order

59

5 Disorder and fear

78

6 Fearsome monsters

103

Part II: Relationalities 121 7 Gender and intimate relationships

123

8 Romance

145

9 Bromance

168

Part III: Social critique 195 10 Against the grain? Socially critical movies

197

11 Questioning the critical

227

vi Contents Part IV: Global agendas 249 12 The big picture: the ‘metropole’ and peripheral ‘others’

251

13 Responses from ‘the margins’

269

References 292 Filmography 338 Index 360

Foreword Douglas Kellner

In this book Chris Beasley and Heather Brook interrogate the interplay between politics and culture in Hollywood film in the context of US cinematic, social, and political culture, while articulating and illustrating the specific character of a cultural politics approach to film. As they delineate their approach in chapter 1, the authors outline a view of Hollywood film as a form of ‘soft power’. They cite Carnes Lord who points out that soft power – the cultural dissemination of depictions of the USA as a place of freedom, openness, and democracy – has been of considerable significance in building America’s global dominance (Lord, 2008: 61). This passage strikes me as a profound illustration of what is at stake with regard to recent domestic challenges to American democratic virtues, which are increasingly in tension with the ongoing promulgation of soft power via Hollywood film. In this context, Beasley and Brook show how Hollywood film has constructed, and continues to construct, narratives of security which deal with threats, fears, conflicts, and wars to provide assurance that the existing order can absorb and contain threats and challenges from within and without. The cultural politics of contemporary Hollywood film also shows how Hollywood film provides social critique that engages forms of gender, racial, and class injustice with in-depth readings and critiques of a wide range of popular Hollywood films. The authors draw on an impressive array of contemporary literature and critical studies of Hollywood film to provide original and illuminating analyses of how contemporary Hollywood film is an important force of cultural politics. Rather than restricting the analysis to more

viii Foreword stringent understandings of power as capital-‘P’ politics, Beasley and Brook connect their studies with broader forms of current thinking about politics and power in film, as well as with cultural sociology and cultural studies which focus on meaning in the context of societywide power relations and ‘tend to analyse films as thematically concerned with identities – including, typically, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality and sometimes class’ (Ch. 1, p. 10). Individual chapters in Part I of The cultural politics of contemporary Hollywood film focus on security, engaging forms of social order and disorder, war, fear, and fearsome monsters. These studies engage popular genres ranging from war films to horror films, showing that representations of disorder and fear are contrasted with visions of order which demonstrate how US society has dealt with its fears, disorders, social conflicts, and wars. Yet after these analyses of film and macro issues like ‘Security’ in Part I, Part II deals with micro issues of ‘Relationalities’ and issues like gender, intimate relations, romance, and marriage. Following trends within contemporary feminism, the authors deal with the position of women and with masculinities in their examination of ‘Bromance’ and the associated Hollywood trend regarding dealing with male relationships. Part III on ‘Social Critique’ engages how Hollywood films critique society, yet the authors question the extent to which Hollywood films really ‘offer any challenge to dominant power relations with regard to nation, culture, class, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, or other axes of power’ (Ch. 11, p. 283). Their studies show how both realist and fantasy films can engage in forms of social critique, but are concerned to show the limitations of these critiques that fail to seriously challenge in any collective or radical form existing state, economic, or patriarchal power. Nevertheless, in the current era more radical alternatives and struggles may still erupt. Since Hollywood film is a global power, the authors fittingly conclude with an examination of ‘Global Agendas’ and how Hollywood film exerts global influence, yet is resisted by certain national cinemas and filmmakers. After the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’, and the ‘New Hollywood’ era beginning in the 1960s, contemporary post-2001 ‘Conglomerate Hollywood’ is now producing high-budget, effect-laden, genre blockbuster films that offer a global spectacle with enthralling

Foreword ix visuals and simple narratives accessible to global audiences. While Hollywood continues to exert a sort of ‘cultural imperialism’, the authors suggest that there is also a growing hybridisation whereby Hollywood incorporates elements from other national cinemas as well as, I would argue, cinemas and filmmakers that resist the Hollywood models. In the face of the formidable soft power of cinema, the authors point out that the USA, China, and other countries are concerned about restricting ‘foreign influences’ and deploying quota restrictions on foreign cinemas that threaten national interests and markets. Thus, contemporary Hollywood cinema is a contested terrain, not only nationally but globally, as new technologies expand the power and reach of contemporary cinema, making the cinema studies of the sort produced by Beasley and Brook an important lens through which to view contemporary culture, society, and politics.

Acknowledgements

This book has been a long time coming. It began in 2004 with the teaching of a course on the politics of Hollywood film, with some drafts appearing in 2008. Though intermittently overrun by other demands, during the last years of its production the book became an increasingly obsessive focus. Any large writing task has such ebbs and flows. Obstacles appear and disappear. What is less obvious and much more difficult to put into words, is the web of people and supports that give energy and scaffolding to that writing. Here we take pause and try our level best to bring them to life as they have enlivened us. Chris would like to draw into the limelight Bev and Vic, her redoubtable parents, who in their generosity of spirit and passion for debate offered love and intellectual sustenance in equal measure. She also joins hands with Christine and John for being, respectively, an everpresent witness and friend through so many adventures, and a new intimate partner in no doubt many more to come. Thanks to both of them, Chris was better able to think creatively and concentrate. Writing with support is like learning to swim with water-wings; you discover how not to sink and to enjoy the waves. At an institutional level Chris also wishes to acknowledge the ongoing joys of being a part of a strongly collegial team that is the discipline of Politics and International Studies, and part of a wider network of like-minded and caring scholars in the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender, both located at the University of Adelaide. Heather would like to applaud her long-standing colleagues in the erstwhile School of Social and Policy Studies, and new friends in the

Acknowledgements xi College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, at Flinders University for their solidarity and (sometimes gallows) humour. From beyond the university, she invites Abby Ward-Takarabe, Anna Liptak, and Dr Nick Murray to take a bow for their willingness to work at keeping her upright and breathing. Playing with the Saturday Quartet/Trio/Duo has offered unexpectedly rich relief from working life: Heather shouts a big bravo to Helen McDonald, Chris Rawlinson, and (especially) Kate Sugars for the pleasure of their tuneful company. For their nourishing wisdom, warmth, and ensemble skills, Heather stands to applaud Des Hollamby, Barbara Brook, Wendy Miller, and (with whistles) Rod Butlin. We also wish to draw to the attention of readers that the front cover is a photo of a three-dimensional work by Adelaide artist Fiona Hall. This work, titled ‘Slash and Burn’ (1997), shows a gamut of Hollywood war films in video format spread over the ground with the videotape rising up from their cases and knitted into various human body parts, including heads with open (screaming/astonished?) mouths. To us this seemed a salient image of the links between film and Realpolitik. Both of us would like to thank again – yes, we are loyal tipplers – our excellent local Adelaide Hills winemakers, Shaw and Smith, for their contribution to our long and riveting debates, our struggles with fraught theoretical concepts, and our moments of pleasure in overcoming stylistic issues. And finally, though we know this is not at all usual, we would like to thank each other. It has been frustrating at times and hard work always, but what a delight to work with someone you love.

1 Introduction: the cultural politics of popular film Going to the movies and mulling over power and politics are usually understood to be mutually exclusive activities. Movies are often thought to be escapist entertainments specifically removed from the world of power, politics, and social analysis. Yet even though movies may well be experienced as enjoyable flights of fancy, they are also thoroughly implicated and invested in power relations – they are part of the cultural and political landscape that both constructs and reflects social life. Movies and politics are in fact deeply enmeshed. Taking movies seriously does not have to mean forgoing their pleasures or limiting what we watch: indeed, understanding the cultural politics of film may even add to our appreciation of them. We aim in this book to provide a particular contribution to the field of ‘cultural politics’. This field investigates popular cultural forms not simply as entertainment or art, but rather as ‘political technologies’ – a term that will be defined shortly.1 We focus on one cultural form as especially illustrative: popular movies. The global dominance of film as a cultural form throughout the world (Hodge, 2015: 36), particularly amongst young people (Aubrey, 2009: 42; Chandler and Munday, 2011: 148), and the global dominance of Hollywood filmmaking and distribution (Prince, 1992: 16; Balio, 2002; Silver, 2007; inter alia), mean that we focus on a large subset of mainstream popular films – namely, films which are made in the United States for a global mass audience. These are usually referred to as ‘Hollywood’ movies. How are mainstream Hollywood movies ‘political’? Movies are sometimes overtly political – some, for example, are focused on political

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figures, events, or themes. Movies about presidents, for example, have obviously political connotations (Primary Colors, 1998; Frost/Nixon, 2008; Lincoln, 2012). Similarly, where real-life events such as the Boston marathon bombing (Patriots Day, 2016), or the capture/killing of Osama Bin Laden (Zero Dark Thirty, 2012) are fodder for film plots, political weights are clearly attached to how those events are represented. Less directly, political themes that extend beyond an individual story or character study (Thank You for Smoking, 2006; There will be Blood, 2007; Swing Vote, 2008) nevertheless exhibit strong connections to the recognisably political world. Where there are clear and familiar political references in popular movies, we label these ‘capital-P’ political. Hollywood films may also be ‘political’ in the related sense of being closely aligned with or, alternatively, dangerously removed from American government agendas. Similarly, movies which are controversial in some way, or subject to direct or indirect political/ military pressure – over classification, objections to content, or the timing of their release, for example – can be readily understood to be ‘political’. Relations between the United States and North Korea were tested by The Interview (2014), for instance – a comedy in which two American journalists are recruited to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The controversial nature of religious representations in movies like The Passion of the Christ (2004) or The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) also arouses public-political interest (as do movies featuring explicit or unusual sex scenes, or drug use). Much more often, however, the political character of movies is more diffuse. To use Michel Foucault’s (1977) terminology, a culture industry like Hollywood film is not strictly a ‘disciplinary’ political technology like medicine or psychiatry – that is, movie entertainment is not a field strongly shaped by supervision, examination, and punishment. Nevertheless, Hollywood can be understood as ‘a system of signs’ completely enmeshed in ‘relationships of communication’ which ‘can have as their objective or as their consequence certain results in the realm of power’ (Foucault, 1982: 217). In this sense, Hollywood films may be identified as a form of ‘political technology’, or practice which produces and manipulates ideas, identities, bodies, and relational ‘flows’ (Burke, 2008: xxxiii–iv).



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Even uncontroversial movies that seem to have few or no connections to the kind of politics we hear about in news and current affairs can be understood as political technologies. When we conceive of politics in this broader way, we see that seemingly unlikely films repeat socio-political ideas and assumptions on an almost infinite range of topics – justice, love, disability, shame, courage. It is this intersection of power relations with popular culture (in the form of Hollywood movies) that we understand as ‘cultural politics’. Political inflections are not limited to any particular genre or narrative categories. Cultural politics abide in all kinds of movies – including romantic comedy, westerns, horror, and children’s animations. Whether we watch movies about politics (with a capital ‘P’) or films that seem far removed from formal politics, we see the invocation of themes that are repeatedly disseminated globally, and thus have significant socio-political implications. In fact, if we understand ‘politics’ as, broadly, operations of power including government, all movies are political (see Comolli and Narboni, 1971: 30).2 In this sense, popular film is by no means simply entertainment, leisure, diversion, or escapism, even though movies may offer any or all of those things as well. Rather, Hollywood films precisely generate and manipulate identities, bodies, and flows by giving cinematic flesh to certain characters and narratives. On these grounds, it is neither desirable nor possible to cocoon culture from power and the political. Cultural politics, ‘soft power’, and hegemony The cultural form of popular Hollywood film is ‘political’ in ways that resonate with Joseph Nye’s (1990) account of the dynamics of state power expressed in foreign policy, including the state power of the United States. State power is not merely tied to military force or economic coercion (‘hard’ power), but also strongly linked to co-option and attraction (‘soft’ power). Nye coined the term ‘soft power’ to describe modes of advancing national security, including foreign aid and diplomacy, by means that are indirect, and that encourage other countries and their peoples to admire, emulate, support, and acquiesce to such advancement (Nye, 2004). Soft power is the power to win ‘hearts and minds’ as well as wars (Ikenberry, 2004). The critical resources of soft

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power lie beyond the direct control of national governments and may have their impact precisely because they seem to occur at a distance from naked state self-interest. As Nye notes, one of the main frames for soft power arises in relation to culture, and is of particular importance for the United States. In this context, Carnes Lord outlines the political significance of promoting the appeal of the USA: [s]oft power has been a strong suit for the United States virtually from its inception—certainly long before the country became a recognized world power in the twentieth century. American ‘exceptionalism’—the nation’s devotion to freedom, the rule of law, and the practice of republican government, its openness to immigrants of all races and religions, its opposition to traditional power politics and imperialism—has had a great deal to do with the rise of the United States to its currently dominant global role. (Lord, 2008: 61) Hollywood film is an important site for American soft power. It promotes the attractiveness of American perspectives and values to other nations, cultures, and peoples (Nye, 2002/03). Sometimes this link between national soft power agendas and Hollywood film is overt, as in the case of government-embedded funding to support the development of nationalistic films or films which offer a particularly American perspective (Alford, 2016). The movies Top Gun (1986), Pearl Harbor (2001), and Black Hawk Down (2001) are prime examples of this: all were filmed with the support and approval of the military (Robb, 2004: 95). This kind of direct collusion between Hollywood and the US military is not uncommon but neither is it necessarily typical. More frequently, it is simply that the point of view adopted in a film, along with the lifestyles and assumed values presented, are tied to conceptions strongly associated with the United States. We see this, for example, in the pointed emphasis on individualism in any number of children’s movies. Disney films often reiterate the desirability of self-belief and individual determination, as scenes from Toy Story 2 (1999) and Ratatouille (2007) illustrate. In Toy Story 2, Rex the toy dinosaur urges ‘You just got to believe in yourself’, while Gusteau the chef (in Ratatouille) insists that ‘Your only limit is your soul’. Similarly, in the



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Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), ‘taglines’ for the film include ‘Believe in yourself’ and ‘Dreams do come true’.3 American individualism is championed, while other countries and cultures may be caricatured as strange. In The Siege (1998), for example, American CIA operatives and the FBI are represented in strongly positive ways, while Arabs are associated with excessive religiosity and terrorism. The same kind of partisan vision is revealed in The Hurt Locker (2008) in which the viewpoint is that of elite American soldiers engaged in bomb disposal during the Iraq War in 2004. The Iraqis are barely registered as present, let alone given any ‘voice’ – they are simply part of the dangerous landscape. In these movies and countless others, an American way of life or American viewpoint is self-evidently centralised and normalised. These representations have effects. They contribute to the establishment or strengthening of some religions and cultures as ‘extremist’ or ‘radical’, while others are excused or endorsed. While this focus on soft power is consistent with at least some aspects of a cultural politics orientation to Hollywood films, cultural politics is itself much broader than Nye’s specific approach. Soft power tends to presume a reasonably straightforward fit between national agendas, national interests, and cultural forms. While this notion certainly forms part of our theoretical armoury in this book, cultural politics can also be connected to Antonio Gramsci’s (1992) broader conceptualisation of ‘hegemony’ (Howson, 2005; Howson and Smith, 2008). Gramsci uses the term to describe how rulers secure the complicity of those they subjugate. His approach offers a means to consider how social assemblages of dominant or emerging power relations contrive to achieve widespread consensus, rather than relying upon force or coercion for the maintenance of ongoing political control and stability. There are clear connections between Nye’s soft power and Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. Both conceive of power as working at a distance from direct government control, and as not simply about dominating through violence or force. Moreover, Nye’s concern with power as intimately linked with making particular agendas attractive parallels the emphasis on popular complicity in the vocabulary of hegemony. While both concepts help us to understand power as relating to legitim­ acy rather than simple force alone, hegemony’s concern with gaining popular agreement provides a less narrowly state-oriented account of

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a dominant social order than soft power. Like Nye, Gramsci conceives of culture as deeply implicated with power, but where Nye focuses on American power in foreign policy, Gramsci attends to the dynamics of power relations within a national social order (Bates, 1975; Gill, 1993). In this book, we draw on both approaches. The field of cultural politics provides a useful context for analysing popular film, but this is not necessarily a straightforward exercise. It can be challenging to bring together the cultural and the political, especially where the two are understood as intimately and thoroughly connected, rather than as separate or even intersecting fields. For this reason, we develop and employ a somewhat novel methodological approach. A cultural politics approach to popular (Hollywood) film In this book, we draw on several fields of scholarship, including politics, cultural studies, film studies, gender studies, and sociology. Our enquiries draw us to these fields for several reasons. Firstly, as we have already signalled, we use cultural politics to consider how (supposedly nonpolitical) culture is intertwined with power relations. This synthetic approach is promising on two related fronts. It may offer new ways of looking at and understanding the place Hollywood movies occupy in the global political landscape, and at the same time advance scholarship in this field. However, research comprising the broad church of cultural politics tends for the most part to emphasise either the ‘political’ or the ‘cultural’ – and both terms are usually rather narrowly defined. cultural Politics Where the ‘politics’ of cultural politics is emphasised, research tends to focus on government and the military – most particularly the US government or military – or, even more narrowly, on certain American presidencies. Relatedly, such scholarship sometimes discusses ‘political’ and ‘ideological’ messages in relation to history, propaganda, and political manipulation, classification and censorship, and government agencies and institutions. Examples of relatively narrowly political approaches within the field of cultural politics include Phillip L. Gianos’s (1998) Politics and Politicians in American Film; David L. Robb’s



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(2004) Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies; and Ernest D. Giglio’s (2014) Here’s Looking at You: Hollywood, Film and Politics. This field of research tends to assert, on the basis of its narrowed conception of politics, that most contemporary Hollywood film is not political, but simply ‘entertainment’. Researchers within the field submit that films addressing political questions constitute a small and highly specialised band of Hollywood movies. Ernest D. Giglio’s (2014) position perfectly illustrates this perspective. He states that the vast majority of Hollywood films are ‘strictly commercial’ entertainment, and estimates that only 5 or 10 per cent have any kind of ‘political message’ (Giglio, 2014: 1). Today, he says, ‘political films’ – that is, movies which deal with ‘social and political issues’ – are usually left to independent filmmakers outside of the Hollywood production system (Giglio, 2014: 12 and xiii). Commercial entertainment and the political are presumed to be mutually exclusive categories. Another field of scholarship on politics in film has a strongly historical focus, and hence is generally less attentive to contemporary films. Thematically, this research concentrates on war, defence, political leadership, and political/party frameworks (including ideologies, or ‘isms’): examples include Nora Sayre’s (1982) exploration of films of the Cold War, Auster and Quart’s (1988) book about film treatments of the Vietnam War, and Steven Ross’s (2011) account of the political influence wielded by Hollywood movie stars. Often such studies restrict their discussion to a few exemplary or ‘classic’ film instances – for example, Shindler (1972 – war films made in and shortly after World War II); McInerney (1979/80 – films of the Vietnam War); Dick (1996 – films about World War II) – and, not surprisingly, pay limited attention to film/cultural theory. This form of analysis does, however, present films as socially relevant, and often connects films to their public impact in an accessible, readable fashion. Cultural politics By comparison, scholarship attending to the ‘cultural’ side of cultural politics is often conceived at some distance from the restricted conception of politics as concerned with nation-states and government, and instead is inclined to focus on modes of analysis usually associated with cultural

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sociology and/or cultural studies. Cultural sociology, by Clifford Geertz’s definition, is concerned with how meaning is framed. It is not limited to what people do, nor to particular institutional imperatives, but rather explores how culture, cultural forms, and cultural objects give shape to how people make sense of themselves, others, and the conditions of their lives (Geertz, 1973: 89; Alexander, 2003). While this cultural focus is not always or obviously associated with the field of ‘cultural politics’, we suggest that it should be. Cultural studies, like cultural sociology, seeks to understand how meaning is generated, disseminated, and produced (Barker, 2012: 5–12). However, cultural studies as a scholarly field is perhaps more attentive to conceptions of power than is cultural sociology. For example, Mark Gibson (2007) notes that employing a cultural studies approach requires attending to both power and culture, such that cultural forms are often considered in the context of society-wide relations of power. This approach can be set against a more literary orientation which considers cultural forms in terms of their æsthetic or formal elements (Gibson, 2007: 1–5). Yet cultural studies, like cultural sociology, operates at a distance from the stricter conceptions of power as capital-P politics – in the sense of political movements, parties, parliaments, government, and governance. The emphasis in both cultural sociology and cultural studies on meaning in the context of broad power relations, rather than more stringent understandings of power as capital-P politics, means that writers employing these approaches tend to analyse films as thematically concerned with identities – including, typically, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and sometimes class.4 Examples of research focused more heavily on the ‘cultural’ side of cultural politics include Robin Wood’s (1998) Sexual Politics and Narrative Film; Barbara Creed’s (2005) Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny; Eric Greene’s (2006) Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race and Politics in the Films and Television Series; and Charlotte Brunsdon’s London in Cinema: The Cinematic City since 1945 (2007). The sweep of cultural sociology and cultural studies is usually more cosmopolitan than work exploring films explicitly focused on capital-P politics. This cultural sociology/ cultural studies scholarship often speaks of matters beyond US-based concerns even when addressing Hollywood film, and devotes more



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attention than those focusing on capital-P politics do to film theory (and cultural theory more broadly), sometimes concentrating on specific cultural institutions like Disney, or a particular film franchise (as against specific political institutions). However, while researchers in this field are certainly concerned with investigating popular films, they are also more likely to attend to idiosyncratic, specialist, or ‘highbrow’ films (that is, films typically seen by relatively small or elite audiences). Furthermore, these researchers are much more inclined to engage with in-house debates in cultural theory and address a highly knowledgeable readership. Such ‘cultural’ scholarship thus tends – by contrast with the ‘political’ film scholarship – to be presented in specialist and often highly abstract language. Cultural Politics Both orientations of cultural politics are important, and indeed both are employed in this book. We suggest, however, that the tendency to privilege one or the other – either the political or the cultural – invites certain limitations in approaching the terrain of cultural politics, and does not take best advantage of its synthetic possibilities. In short, both the ‘political’ and ‘cultural’ modes of scholarship tend to view the field of cultural politics through unnecessarily narrow lenses. As Stephanie Schulte has acknowledged, ‘[q]uestions about film and politics are located in the articulation between political science and popular culture research and, therefore, rarely investigated in either field’ (2012: 46). There is nevertheless some research in the field which does attend to the interplay between politics and culture, and this research best represents the approach on which we build. This focuses on power and the political, but also mobilises broader understandings of politics that cross over into the preoccupations of the cultural, and refers to more expansive ‘social’ themes. In this category we would include, for example, Richard Grenier’s (1991) Capturing the Culture: Film, Art and Politics; essays in American Film and Politics from Reagan to Bush Jr. (Davies and Wells, 2002); Ian Scott’s (2011) American Politics in Hollywood Film; and Mark Sachleben and Kevan M. Yenerall’s (2012) Seeing the Bigger Picture: American and International Politics in Film and Popular Culture. Similarly, there are a number of cultural sociology/cultural studies-oriented titles that advance a more developed

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awareness of the broader socio-political field. Among these, we include Jackie Stacey’s (1994) Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship; Michael Shapiro’s (1999) Cinematic Political Thought: Narrating Race, Nation and Gender; and essays in To Seek out New Worlds: Exploring Links between Science Fiction and World Politics (Weldes, 2003). Even though such research gives more space to the interplay between politics and culture, scholarship attending to both aspects comprehensively and syncretically is not especially prevalent. However, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film (Ryan and Kellner, 1988) exemplifies an approach that does precisely that. Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner argue that movies are intimately connected to power and politics, and suggest that ‘their political meaning may be more complex, contested, and differentiated’ (1988: 2) than many critics suggest. For them, [t]he political stakes of film are … very high because film is part of a broader system of cultural representation which operates to create psychological dispositions that result in a particular construction of social reality, a commonly held sense of what the world is and ought to be that sustains social institutions. (1988: 14) Our aim in this book is both to draw on and extend Ryan and Kellner’s work. We intend, like them, to synthesise elements of political and cultural approaches. In so doing, we conceptualise power relations as deeply embedded in the constitution of social meaning and, at the same time, envision social meaning as highly political. At a pragmatic level, we pay attention to the traditionally political by considering nation, security, war, and social order, while also engaging with prevalent cultural sociology/cultural studies concerns regarding gender, sexuality, and similar axes of identity and power. We consider these themes in both national and international contexts. In keeping with these aims, we also develop a methodology suited to the synthetic characteristics of the field. Our view is that in existing scholarship there is often a mismatch between a purported interest in the interplay of culture and politics, and a methodology that deals with only a few films and/or specialist films, frequently at length. This



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methodology essentially reflects the legacy of literary analysis (Wan and Kraus, 2002: 419–20),5 and is often adopted despite the methodological uncertainties of assuming too much about the meaning/impact of individual films. Moreover, discussion of film in any given research is almost invariably anchored in a particular film genre. However, in considering contemporary popular film as politically engaged, rather than as an æsthetic endeavour or commercial entertainment, we find ourselves adopting a course that is somewhat different from many film analyses. In order to consider movies as a political technology we pay less attention to individual genres as such, and even less to the particularities of individual films, and much more to tropes reiterated in a very wide array of highly popular films. The dynamics of power deployed in myths, identities, and relationships are discussed throughout the book within thematic as opposed to genre boundaries, even though these themes are sometimes reasonably and conveniently aligned with genre conventions. There is an almost infinite number of themes that could be identified and analysed. We have homed in on those that speak to us most obviously about the nature of collective identities and power relations, but our selection is by no means intended to be exhaustive. Our choices reflect, to some extent, our particular intellectual interests, and build on research each of us has undertaken both within and beyond the field of cultural politics. Broadly, we divide our analysis into three overarching themes: security (concerning order and disorder in the collective/nation), identities and interconnections – that is, relationalities (gendered subjects and their political relations with one another, particularly in love, sexuality, and friendship), and flaws in the social fabric (dealing with social problems, commentary, and dissent). These three overarching themes and their associated terminologies (for example, terms such as ‘fear films’) register our particular analytical language for exploring the cultural politics of Hollywood film. This orientation necessarily informs our methodology: rather than sifting through genres (such as action movies, romantic drama, animations, and so on) for their political characteristics or inflections, we explore how political ideas are repeatedly formulated and reformulated in popular films. In other words, we attend to selected themes (order, fear, intimacy, social criticism, and more) over genre categories. There is, nevertheless, some overlap: certain

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political themes appear more often, or in their clearest iteration, in some categories of film. Our central focus on the relationship between the political and the cultural in this book means that we are precisely concerned with cultural tropes that are not idiosyncratic but repeated and widespread.6 This calls for our attention to be trained on popular film. We discuss popular films produced by major Hollywood studios for mass global audiences rather than independent, art-house, or avant-garde productions.7 Indeed, the films at the centre of this book are mostly worldwide box-office hits that have been viewed by a very large number of people. Occasional comparisons between Hollywood and other national cinemas are intended to highlight the specificity of the former. In effect, we develop a specific methodology appropriate to our field of analysis – that is, we offer a contribution framed by the analytical focus of the field of cultural politics. This methodology both informs and explains the scope of this book. Overview Our focus is on how power and power relations are represented in dominant cultural forms across a wide range of genres within contemporary Hollywood film, drawing mostly on examples from the 1970s through to the present day. In this introductory chapter we have sketched our ‘cultural politics’ approach, showing how we both build on and depart from existing scholarship. In the chapter to follow, we begin by providing an account of the frameworks we use to define and identify political myths in Hollywood film, situating these in a schematic history. We argue here (and throughout) that popular film can be usefully understood as a political technology. Although our focus is contemporary Hollywood movies, to understand these some theoretical and historical context is essential. In setting out our approach and contextualising its critical analytical frameworks, the first two chapters offer a platform for the ensuing analysis. Our exploration of security begins in chapter 3. Here, we examine the role Hollywood movies play in maintaining and representing national security. We argue that security has two faces: it is constructed and represented as ‘us’ (that is, as social/community/governmental order),



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and as a response to ‘them’ (disorder). These facets of security can be investigated using selected approaches resonant with the key terms in cultural politics already outlined: ‘soft power’ (Nye, 2004) and ‘hegemony’ (Gramsci, 1992). In chapter 4, we narrow the scope of ‘security’ to demonstrate how political myths concerning security, social collectivity, and government play out in cinematic treatments of war. We identify the typical trajectories war films take, and consider their weight as reiterations of national political/military agendas over time. Our analysis suggests a continuing congruence – despite occasional, minor divergences – between Hollywood and US government security agendas. Locating and discussing historical trends allows us to show how Hollywood has mythologised war to present particular and consequential stories about the proper constitution and exercise of authority. In chapter 5 we turn to the other face of security – disorder. We introduce what we call ‘fear films’. As a discrete but broad category, fear films include but are not limited to stylisations of horror. Our analysis of fear films illustrates how movies not usually considered to be ‘political’ address power relations through their representations of threat and its containment. We discuss the history and meaning of ‘fear films’ across three categories of disorder: strangers, disasters, and monsters. In chapter 6 we flesh out the political significance of the monster category in more detail, focusing on zombies. Zombie movies are a political technology illustrating how fear inheres in category instability, and bear additional socio-political weight as both representations of and models for theorising power relations. Romantic films are even less likely to be considered ‘political’ than disaster and monster movies. In chapters 7, 8, and 9, we turn from considering state–citizen relations to demonstrate how Hollywood films present opportunities for thinking about citizen-to-citizen political relationality and power relations. In this section, we scope the ostensibly ‘personal’ world of love and friendship to reveal its political contours, mainly in relation to gender. Of course, gender is not the only axis of collective identity in play at the movies, but it presents a number of distinct and pronounced instances for analysis. For this reason, in chapter 7 we begin by considering gendered representations and genres. Our enquiry draws on Allan G. Johnson’s (2014) tools for identifying the ‘patriarchal legacy’ in Hollywood, feminist research on ‘chick flicks’,

14

The cultural politics of Hollywood film

and the mythical place of fairy tales in representations of cinematic romance. In chapter 8, we continue our exploration by considering how two political myths – heteronormativity and hypermonogamy – play out in romantic movies. The term ‘heteronormativity’ refers to the ways that norms about gender and sexuality work together to make heterosexuality, gender polarity, and gendered power relations seem natural and innate. The myth of hypermonogamy pivots on the insistence that every person has a unique soul-mate, or that there is someone – one and only one special someone – for everyone (after Emens, 2004). We argue that Hollywood romantic comedy is a political technology for the anxious endorsement of heteronormativity and hypermonogamy, and reveal how these political mythologies are mobilised in a number of reiterative ways. The final chapter in our analysis of citizen-to-citizen political relationalities concerns fraternity, or masculine homosociality, and the significance it takes on in bromance. ‘Bromance’ is a relatively new term describing intense and affectionate yet non-sexual friendship between men. In this chapter, the myth of the fraternal social contract – a fundament of liberal-democratic political theory – and related hegemonic requirements regarding masculinity shape our analysis of the ways bromantic comedies treat gender and sexuality. Together, these three chapters offer a taste of how cultural vocabularies of relational interconnection produce and reflect power relations in Hollywood films. While we understand all movies as political, some are more selfconsciously political than others. In the third section of the book focusing on thematic reiterations in Hollywood film, we identify a spectrum of films that can be understood as engaging with social commentary or critique, and assess their capacity to offer counterhegemonic visions. These ostensibly more serious movies generally aim for a closer connection to real life (as opposed to the more fantastic worlds of action-adventure and fairy tales), and often rely on dramatic realism to make those connections. In chapter 10 we outline the key characteristics and typical subject matter of socially critical movies. Surveying the broad range of films that can be understood as socially critical allows us to identify what is typically presented to us as worthy of serious attention. The promise that socially critical movies make is to show us flaws in the social fabric, and perhaps even to indicate



The cultural politics of popular film

15

directions for their repair. While the category is apparently diverse, a number of threads dominate. In chapter 11, we summarise key debates concerning the political traction of socially critical movies. Exploring the typical trajectories of socially critical movies, we argue that warnings of one kind or another constitute the dominant narrative. While socially critical films might seem to offer more opportunities than other movies for counter-hegemonic social commentary, our analysis demonstrates that this is by no means decided. Finally, in chapters 12 and 13, we draw together an account of the global dominance of Hollywood films, the political ‘stories’ they tell, and their potential global social impact, to consider questions of film policy and issues related to cultural and political diversity. Our aim, here and throughout, is to undertake critical analysis of the limits and possibilities of the ideas and identities presented to us in dominant cultural forms. To this end, we identify what ‘choices’ are made available in popular film; show how particular forms of conformity and rebellion are represented and legitimated; and consider whether cultural globalisation is a matter for concern. In a period in which it has become more important than ever for us to examine the question of American global dominance, it is a matter of some urgency to review the politics of culture. American power and influence are by no means just a question of military and economic might, but also involve the arguably more seductive charms of American culture and its global reach. Thinking about the cultural politics of film by no means obviates the pleasure we take in watching movies. On the contrary, when we take our seats in the multiplex, the critical framework and analysis presented here add flavour and substance to the cinematic popcorn we consume. Notes 1 This kind of approach parallels Anthony Burke’s (2008) analysis of how the notion of security is a political apparatus; see also Prince (1992). 2 We concur here with a general perspective outlined by – among others – Comolli and Narboni, who famously insisted that film is always political. This broad approach has been highly influential in Anglo­ phone studies of film. Comolli and Narboni employed a particular version of linguistic and Marxist structuralism that they described as

16

3

4 5 6 7

The cultural politics of Hollywood film

‘scientific criticism’. They undertook to identify how and to what extent films were ‘ideological’ by outlining seven categories which took realism to be a central feature of the ‘ideological mainstream’. While we too start from the overall point that film is political, we depart from the theoretical and stylistic assumptions that were in circulation at the time this key scholarship was published. A ‘tagline’ is an advertising device which involves a shorthand invocation of the crucial theme or appeal of the film. For example, the tagline for Alien (1979) is ‘In space no one can hear you scream’. See chapter 2 for more detail. Less frequently, but no less importantly, other markers of identity are identified and explored, including age (Harrington et al., 2015) and disability (Shakespeare, 1994; Ginsburg and Rapp, 2015). This tendency to a literary form of analysis is especially evident, for example, in psychoanalytic readings of films. See also Brant (2012: 121). Repetition may be especially salient in the production of ‘truth effects’ (Fazio et al., 2015; Fazio, 2016). While the distinction between mass and art-house films is reasonably straightforward, the distinction between majors and independents is increasingly difficult to establish. Independent films can be bought by Hollywood distributors – Little Miss Sunshine (2006), for example, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival but was snapped up by Fox Searchlight Pictures. The criteria for determining whether a movie is mainstream or independent are unclear: major Hollywood studios are attempting increasingly actively to capture specialised markets, cinematic ‘styles’ associated with ‘independents’ change, and some independent films (like Fahrenheit 9/11 [2004]) generate both critical acclaim and significant box-office success (Giannetti, 1999: ch. 8; Zion, 2004: 10).

2 Frames

Movies are cultural artefacts with specific political and social frames of reference. This chapter provides an overview of two frames we use to register and delineate the cultural politics of film. The first of these is conceptual, and turns on the idea that Hollywood movies both reflect and produce political myths. We introduce and define such myths, exploring how an expanding, globalising Hollywood is implicated in reiterating and generating fundamental political understandings. In addition, even though the main focus of our attention is contemporary movies – that is, those produced within the last fifty years, and especially since the turn of the twenty-first century – we offer a schematic historical account of key characteristics of earlier Hollywood eras, so that the historically and politically specific nature of the analysis we develop can be more readily discerned. We use these two frames to show how political mythologies emerge and change in Hollywood movies over time. Ultimately, these frames cannot remain separate: instead, each informs and scaffolds the other. In this endeavour, we do not attempt to outline the many and various competing theories regarding film, nor do we discuss the technical aspects of contemporary filmmaking in any detail. Rather, our object of analysis is the conceptual and contextual intersection of Hollywood mythology in the cultural politics of contemporary film. Popular film and political myths As prefigured in the previous chapter, our focus on the cultural politics of contemporary popular film lends itself to an interest in film as

18

The cultural politics of Hollywood film

implicated in soft power and the cultural production of hegemony, which in turn invites an exploration of mainstream film as a political technology. In the preceding chapter we suggested that this avenue of investigation entails identifying reiterated ideas and meanings concerning political myths in contemporary Hollywood film. Exploring political myths within film means attending to the ways that movies ‘rehearse and work through’ shared values and constitutive contradictions within societies ‘by rendering them in symbolic narrative’ (Langford, 2006: 18). In this context, it is no surprise to find that certain themes relating to power relations are repeated in popular films over and over again, with and without variations. The meaning of such themes is never precisely or certainly fixed. They are not necessarily true (or false, for that matter) but take on the weight of truth – that is, they are popularly believed. Myths recur and endure. Their meanings emerge according to a number of factors, demanding an approach that attends to their reiteration, and identifies possibilities for their absorption and digestion as well as for resistance and critical analysis. The crucial characteristic of myths in general is that they are uncritical and provide a supposedly timeless explanatory or narrative iconography which purports to make sense of the social and natural world. In contemporary times their significance has arguably become more tightly yoked to politics and political activity. Indeed, for some, ‘politics cannot be imagined without the use of myths’ (Milošević and Stojadinović, 2012: 77–8). In the early 1970s, Henry Tudor defined myth – and political myth in particular – in the following way: [a] myth is an interpretation of what the myth-maker (rightly or wrongly) takes to be hard fact. It is a device men (sic) adopt in order to come to grips with reality; and we can tell that a given account is a myth … by the fact that it is believed to be true, and above all, by the dramatic form into which it is cast … What marks a myth as being political is its subject matter … [P]olitical myths deal with politics … A political myth is always the myth of a particular group. (Tudor, 1972: 52) More recently, but in similar fashion, Christopher Flood offers a working definition of political myth which highlights its constitution as a group

Frames 19 ‘truth’. For Flood, a political myth is a politically marked narrative ‘which purports to give a true account of a set of past, present, or predicted political events and which is accepted as valid in its essentials by a social group’ (Flood, 2002: 44; see also Frey, 2014: 10, and Bottici and Challand, 2006). In other words, political myths are by no means merely idiosyncratic, psychological, or personal. Some writers refer to their links with ‘ideology’, by which they mean the provision of a shorthand world-view which simplifies understanding and decisionmaking about the world. However, our preference is to consider the social group meaning of political myth in terms of its ‘solidary aspect’ – its role in generating belonging and self-image or identity arising from group membership (Higgs, 1987: 42). To embrace a political myth may thus be conceived as adoption of an ‘ideology’, but also as the means ‘to join a community of like-minded people’ (Higgs, 1987: 42) in order to accomplish collective endeavours and experience a sense of belonging. Political myth, like all myth, is thus deeply social. Its targets are mass social groupings such as ‘nations, classes, ethnicities, generations, etc.’ and its primary purpose is ‘to stabilize and … unite a political community’ (Stevanović, 2008: 25 and 34). On this, Chiara Bottici argues that while political theorists appear to have for the most part neglected myth, it nevertheless has a crucial role in the preservation of a polity and in its further associations with political mobilisation (Bottici, 2010: 915). In other words, political myths can play a part in maintaining power relations and so may be deployed as a strategic political tool. This attention to collective meanings and explanations does not mean that political myths have no use for narratives featuring individual protagonists. On the contrary, myths often mobilise a singular protagonist hero or heroine whose exploits demonstrate strongly symbolic elements. Such symbolism is apparent in a range of conventions, including synecdoche and allegory. Synecdoche occurs where a part stands in for the whole – a hammer for tools, a wheelchair for disability, or one American for all Americans. Allegory is the (usually more abstract) use of symbols whereby one icon represents another thing, class, or quality – pigs might represent greed; champagne represents luxury; flags represent nations. These forms of representation are precisely the stuff of myth. They suggest that films in themselves may work in a

20

The cultural politics of Hollywood film

mythologising fashion – for example, where a fictional character is believed by many to have really existed – as well as provide a vehicle for myths, in that myths are referred to or incorporated in Hollywood narratives. In both ways, films can become familiar, collective explanations for who we are; what we value; and the way things are.1 Political myths provide simple and familiar accounts that usually validate power relations, for example in relation to social hierarchy, the state, government, authority, and order (Milošević and Stojadinović, 2012: 78), as well as in relation to communal understandings of selfhood, personal interactions, and insider belonging (Nafafé, 2013; see also Bottici, 2007). The guiding social function of political myth is reassurance and, as Stevanović notes, to work against the intrusions of ‘chaos, doubt and pessimism’ (2008: 25), eradicating uncertainty and insecurity by illuminating social relations (2008: 29 and 27).2 Because political myths provide validation for existing social arrangements, they are not always obvious in cultural forms, including contemporary film (see Yanarella and Sigelman, 1988; Morrison, 1980). Their impact is sometimes obscured precisely by their familiarity and their indexing of normalised and naturalised power relations. Political myths are truths in story form that are so important that they provide instruction for living, yet appear typically as uncontroversial, not contestable, and even mundane. Almost inevitably, these myths present powerful explanatory stories, directing our attention to what is important in life, and demonstrating what constitutes a good life. They show us how to recognise and relate to others, promote notions of identity and alliance, and may even influence the constitution of those notions. These political myths are not usually explicit: more often, they are embedded in what we experience as escapist or recreational stories.3 As Bottici notes, myths (including political myths) ‘are narratives that contain fundamental moral and theoretical beliefs of society’ (2010: 916). Hollywood films produce and reflect social truths, marking and solidifying what is of shared significance for a polity. Myths are also necessarily repetitive. Major forms include the myth of the saviour – the exceptional individual whose feats of bravery rescue multitudes – and the myth of unity, a oneness characterised by identical values and objectives and the absolute absence of division (Milošević and Stojadinović 2012: 79). There are many more – indeed,

Frames 21 myths are under more or less constant construction. As noted in the previous chapter, one staple Hollywood myth is the narrative that ‘dreams can come true’.4 This story achieves mythical status both in its reiterated and uncritical account of the social, and through its symbolic links with conceptions of national identity. It offers the validating narrative of individualised success, which in turn presents an uplifting, personalised explanation for how the attitudes and actions of individuals produce society – and indeed, a society of merit. The ‘dreams can come true’ story renders an attractive legitimacy to social life, and encourages agreement or complicity in what is legitimated. It asserts that any accomplishment can be achieved if it is desired strongly enough. The flipside of this narrative of individualisation, of course, is that social failure is presented as a failure of individual will: if a person’s dreams fail to materialise, this must be their own fault. Similarly, the myth of equality – that all people have identical opportunities to succeed – is relatively explicitly embedded in a range of cinematic narratives over and over again. By this means, power relations limiting social equity are made invisible, and their effects naturalised. These validations of the social order are not merely reiterated and placed beyond critical assessment as self-evident but pointedly reflect a particular political world-view which is culturally specific. In this way, political myths are often strongly linked to myths of national identity and national character (Guibernau and Hutchinson, 2004; Milošević and Stojadinović, 2012: 81). Myths such as ‘dreams can come true’ are not merely broadly Western, then, but sound out a reiterated form of liberal individualism that is particularly resonant with notions of the American national dream (Guimond, 1991: 14–17; Jenkins, 2014: 175–85). Such myths provide the comfort of a recognisable cultural universe that offers individuals a sense of belonging in a national community. The production of political myths in Hollywood films clearly arises in a specific cultural history. Hollywood histories Since the articulation of political myths in cultural forms like popular film emerges from particular historical locations, it is useful to consider, as a frame of reference, not only political myths but also the frame of

22

The cultural politics of Hollywood film

historical development of the Hollywood film industry. It is not our intention here to provide a comprehensive or exhaustive history. Thorough and detailed analyses can be found in a range of other texts.5 Instead, we offer a schematic background which can situate and contextualise the place of political myths in contemporary Hollywood. Periodisation is a complicated and sometimes hotly debated aspect of any history, including the history of Hollywood film.6 Unsurprisingly, a range of different modes of periodisation are employed by commentators on film (Neale and Smith, 1998, xiv–xvi). Major forms of Hollywood film (silent, classical, post-classical, and contemporary) are often associated with discrete blocks of time, or ‘eras’ (such as classical and ‘the Golden Age’, post-classical and the ‘New Hollywood’ era). We adopt a similar but more flexible periodisation, employing an interpretative approach.7 Because our focus is on political myths, we engage explicitly with ‘ethico-social-political norms’ and histories (Langford, 2010: xv). We assert, with Langford, that film cannot be politically innocent. For us, attention to such norms cannot be bracketed off from other forms of analysis. The ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood (late 1920s to late 1950s/early 1960s) Prior to 1927, films did not record sound. They used external, nonsynchronised music to convey mood, ‘title cards’ were edited into photographed action to convey dialogue or narrative exposition, and a highly theatrical style of acting was employed. These elements, along with tinting and non-standard projection speeds, drew attention to the non-naturalistic character of ‘silent’ movies (Gibb, 2015: 1–32; Zucker, 1993; Denby, 2012). The ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood generated a new audio-visual style and mode of production. This period began with the release of the ‘talkie’ film The Jazz Singer in 1927, and ended in the late 1950s/early 1960s. The Golden Age was characterised by a relatively ‘invisible’ technical apparatus in terms of camera-work and editing, as well as the introduction of sound recording. The ‘invisible’ format meant that films of the Golden Age were notable for their captivating illusory quality. They used formats which did not draw

Frames 23 attention to their artifice but rather centred upon strongly defined characters in clearly realised narrative structures, inviting audience immersion and identification. This realistic style enhanced Hollywood’s capacity for generating and reiterating political myths as natural, self-evident, and inevitable. The introduction of sound enabled a more complete sense of immersion in the film narrative. It also strengthened the industry’s profitability and paved the way for the global scale of Hollywood today, and for these reasons our interest lies in the aftermath of the development of ‘talkies’. In the Golden Age, the Hollywood film industry was dominated by eight film-producing companies.8 The sole or main business of these studio houses was movie-making. Each business was headed by a studio boss (or bosses) who wanted above all to create entertainment – as distinct from art or culture – and, of course, to make money doing so (Balio, 1993). Studios in this period exerted considerable control over their products and, relatedly, their workers. The majors developed a technical and narrative style later tagged ‘classical Hollywood’ which involved the generation of clearly formulaic styles (or ‘genres’) such as the western, the musical, drama and, later, film noir. This structure and style of production is known as ‘the studio system’. The products of particular studios were sometimes even recognisable as such because of their characteristic modes of storytelling, and their employment of specific creative teams and stars. The control exerted over film production by the studios is nowhere more evident than in the ‘star system’. Under the star system, actors were contractually bound to particular studios that constructed and enforced studio-created personas for them. The studios also determined which films any particular actor would appear in (McDonald, 2000; deCordova, 2001; Dyer, 2004). The studios were highly productive, turning out large numbers of films on relatively limited budgets. The Golden Age of the ‘classical’ studio system, with its rigid control over stars and film production, was also a period in which Hollywood offered occasional possibilities for considering social uncertainties alongside regular and strong endorsements of social conformity. During this period, Hollywood initially produced films that were typically seen as vulgar and sensational, yet sometimes also socially critical and

24

The cultural politics of Hollywood film

even subversive. This variety was possible partly because of the sheer volume of films produced (Doherty, 1999a). However, Hollywood began to reconstitute itself as ‘as a beneficent provider of entertainments suitable for the whole family’ (O’Brien, 2013: 53) and soon the range of films became decidedly narrower. Hence, the Golden Age is sometimes divided into an earlier period in which there was no rigorous enforcement of moral restrictions such as those that came to be placed on films by the industry’s ‘Production Code’, and a later period (from 1934) in which the Code was more strictly applied (O’Brien, 2009; 2013: 53–4). The regulation and classification of movies has its own history. In 1930 the major studios adopted the Motion Picture Production Code (or Hays Code).9 This (at first) voluntary code laid down guidelines regarding acceptable and unacceptable content, and was enforced stringently from 1934. Its demise was associated with a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court (the 1952 ‘Miracle Decision’), which held that film was not merely a business, but rather a form of art, thus deserving of protection under the US Constitution’s First Amendment, a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and expression (Jowett, 1996; Milliken, 2014). In 1968, the industry began to change and the Hays Code was replaced by the rating system of the renamed studio peak trade body, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).10 In terms of locating the political myths which are the primary concern of this book, the Golden Age is notable in several ways. First, the shift from silent films to the more naturalistic world of talking movies rendered the meanings (including political meanings) of film less obvious and more interpretative. Second, the rise and decline of the ‘studio system’ with its formulaic genres offered opportunities for iteration and reiteration. This, along with restrictive censorship, meant that socially conformist myths were heavily endorsed. On the other hand, however, the repressive strictures of studio system production and censorship prompted some innovation in narratives, generating disguised subtexts for dealing with concerns that were likely to be excised. Such innovations in political agendas were given further leeway by the sheer volume of films produced by the studios. Individual films were not always required to produce massive profits, and thus the studios could afford a few films which departed from socio-political norms or even

Frames 25 offered some degree of less conformist or critical perspective. These, however, remained a minority. The ‘New Hollywood’ (early 1960s to late 1990s) From the late 1940s the studio system was in decline. The number of films being produced annually began to drop and, in an attempt to distinguish its products from those screening in the new medium of television, studios began to produce a smaller number of larger-scale films with bigger individual budgets.11 ‘New Hollywood’ cinema emerged from this change in the business and production model that had previously dominated, a change accompanied by a growing mood of defiance with regard to censorship. By the late 1960s/early1970s the regimented production mode of the studio system was breaking down, and a tone of social criticism that for the most part had been effectively silenced began briefly to re-emerge. With the weakening of the studio system and the end of the Hays Code in the 1960s came the development of ‘post-classical’ cinema in which Golden Age story-lines and expectations were challenged. This response to and departure from Golden Age modes of narrative included more explicit depictions of sex and violence, and heralded the emergence of ‘auteur’ filmmakers who shaped stories driven by a highly personal vision in ways that would scarcely have been possible under the studio system.12 It is worth noting however that while the visual style, plot-lines, and content departed in many ways from those of the Golden Age, political myths associated with this new trend in filmmaking were not necessarily critical of existing Hollywood assumptions. Before the 1970s ended, Hollywood had changed in ways that largely worked against the somewhat tentative emergence (or re-emergence) of social critique earlier in that decade. Hollywood was overtaken by media conglomerates, or ‘media giants’. The eight studios of the Golden Age gave way to six ‘majors’. Whereas the Golden Age studios were enterprises whose only business was movie-making, ‘majors’ became the moniker for media companies with film units located within them – including Time Warner (Warner Brothers Pictures), 21st Century Fox Film Corporation (20th Century Fox), Viacom (Paramount Pictures), Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group (Columbia Pictures), NBC Universal-Comcast (Universal Studios), and Walt Disney Company

26

The cultural politics of Hollywood film

(Walt Disney Pictures). In this new economic and production structure, studio heads were relegated to middle management or largely deposed, and no longer exerted the kind of influence and control they had in their Golden Age heyday. The distinctive studios became mere divisions of larger corporations whose business extended well beyond moviemaking. Sony Pictures, for example, is simply the US film and television production base of a Japanese multinational company which has wide-ranging financial interests in technology and media.13 This shift in the status of movie studios, and those working within them, is intimately linked to the rise of a particular form of film. Many of the post-classical films of the 1970s were commercial successes but the impact of the spectacular box-office failure of Heaven’s Gate (1980) – which contributed to the selling-off and effective closure of its studio, United Artists – sparked a significant shift away from the relatively unrestrained creative and financial control of post-classical cinema driven by auteur directors, and marked the reassertion of studio control over film production. This paved the way for a crucial form of film characteristic of the New Hollywood period – that is, the development of the modern ‘blockbuster’. The phenomenal financial triumph of Jaws (1975) and the first film in the Star Wars franchise (1977) consolidated a tendency towards studio production of a smaller number of big-budget films, supported by a massive marketing machinery linked with giant media companies. The blockbuster was associated with the loss of independence by ‘creatives’ and, indeed, even by studio heads. In a clear shift from the studio system of the Golden Age, decisionmaking about New Hollywood films was entrusted to corporations with interests outside of and additional to movie-making. While highly successful films (in terms of box office) did appear in earlier periods and were even described as ‘blockbusters’,14 the New Hollywood mode contained a cluster of specific characteristics that marked a new stage in the Hollywood film industry (Izod, 1988; Krämer, 2005). The rise of the blockbuster can be illustrated by considering the 1974/5 movie Jaws (Schatz, 1993; Buckland, 2006). The film stands as something of a turning point in that it both marked and exemplified important developments: first, it was at the forefront of massive increases in spending on publicity; second, it instigated widespread changes in the management of distribution and release patterns; and third, it gave

Frames 27 a contemporary meaning to the term ‘blockbuster’ indicative of a new type of film, or perhaps even the arrival of a distinguishable film genre, whose quality was the subject of considerable debate (Sanders, 2009; Shone, 2004a, 2004b). While earlier box office hits like Gone with the Wind (1939) or Ben Hur (1959) did require both costly production values and significant publicity, the term ‘blockbuster’ was applied to them on the basis of their popularity with audiences. The emergence of the New Hollywood blockbusters in the 1970s saw a fresh focus on marketing that harnessed the expanded resources of media conglomerate companies. In other words, a film in the New Hollywood period could be unsuccessful at the box office, yet deemed a blockbuster on the basis of its production and marketing costs. This emphasis was highlighted and consolidated in the development of the ‘summer blockbuster’. This concentrated version of the New Hollywood blockbuster marshalled an annual marketing blitz around the release of a mass-market, high-budget film in the northern hemisphere summer to capitalise on the spending power of young, holiday audiences. The summer blockbuster involved the release of a film that aimed to achieve spectacular financial returns through investment in production, massive advertising, and associated merchandising and timing, but also required a particular distribution pattern at its release – that is, mass-release screenings in many cinemas simultaneously. The rise of the home video market in the 1980s/1990s fuelled the growth of the new blockbuster format as studios and their media conglomerate companies sought to differentiate the experience of watching films at home from the cinematic ‘event’. These features of blockbusters – big-budget publicity, and shifts in release and distribution patterns – are relatively uncontroversial. Features which relate to the content and form of such films, and connected questions regarding whether the blockbuster constitutes a specific genre and about its quality, are more contested. However, there is general agreement that the rise of blockbusters fostered a distinct and recognisable format.15 The format involves a number of central components within a cluster of genre narrative modes (strongly linked with assumptions about likely audience): pace and orientation, plot and character, casting, and spectacu­ lar special effects associated with innovations in digital technologies.

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The cultural politics of Hollywood film

These components amount to more than the sum of their parts, producing a mode of hyperrealism in which audience immersion arises not through the invisible production of realism (as for movies of the Golden Age), but rather through a format steeped in artifice. The production of cinematic realism most associated with ‘classical’ Hollywood film of the Golden Age was generated with the aim of providing audiences with the sense that they were observing life – for example, by employing recognisable actual locations and seemingly real stories peopled with characters that were not overtly stylised (Bordwell and Thompson, 2010: 133).16 This emphasis upon authenticity or realism necessitates disguising how the filmic narrative is created and staged, or hiding the traces of its construction. By comparison, New Hollywood blockbusters create audience immersion through larger-than-life visual spectacle and an associated focus on sensation, through surfaces and suspension of critical distance. This mode of hyperrealistic immersion has implications for Hollywood film as a political technology. Because blockbusters remain politically and culturally significant today, a short outline of the specific form of the key elements of blockbusters and their shaping of hyperrealistic immersion follows. The development of the Hollywood blockbuster, and particularly the summer blockbuster, is linked to a cluster of existing genres that are understood to be preferred by young people – including, specifically, young Americans. These genres typically include action, adventure, fantasy, horror, and science fiction. The blockbuster often involves blending of genres from within this cluster. The tastes and preferences of this particular demographic are critical because, as the peak Holly­ wood industry body notes, ‘[f]requent moviegoers who go to the cinema once a month or more continue to drive the movie industry, accounting for 51% of all tickets sold’, and the largest ‘frequent-moviegoing age groups’ are those aged 18–24 and 25–39, with the 12–17-year-old group not far behind (MPAA, 2015a: 12).17 The cluster of genres deployed in blockbusters very often features two-dimensional characters, somewhat simple plots, and comparatively little concern with subtleties of mise-en-scène.18 Instead, they are commonly effects-driven, and tend to follow a recognisable pace and orientation. The Hollywood blockbuster, precisely because it is not oriented

Frames 29 towards depth, intricacy, and slow interiority in the style of many European counterparts, drives plot along at a fast and exteriorised pace. For this reason, although a cluster of genre stories are employed in blockbusters, they are most often framed by the conventions of the action genre, consistent with its emphasis on physicality and relentless movement (O’Brien, 2012). This energetic style resists recourse to critical distance, and is heightened by moving from one point of view to the next in short takes. Every aspect of the blockbuster format tends to promote activity as against introspective reflection. The unflagging mode of the blockbuster has implications for its logic as a political technology, and these are evident in plot and character. Film genres by definition offer familiar narrative stories and stock characters, enabling audiences to view them with reasonably predictable expectations – even if these stories and characters shift somewhat over time. The plot forms of genre movies are rarely driven by complex story-lines or by character development, but rather by genre conventions. In the case of blockbusters this is even more pronounced. Simplification in plot compresses story-lines into a struggle between good and evil, while simplification of character fosters caricature and surface presentation of character ‘types’ engaged in this struggle. There is little – if any – uncertainty in the account of conflict between good and evil, and contests based around collective axes of identity and social justice (like gender, ethnicity, and class), which might give rise to critical reflection, are usually ignored (Van Ginneken, 2007). The emphasis on surface with regard to plot, character, and visual presentation also has an impact on stars and casting. The focus of Hollywood blockbusters tends to be upon visually explicit and dynamic action, but specifically in response to a stylised narrative contest between good and evil. This is paradigmatically demonstrated through the physical challenges faced by a central protagonist who represents what is good and desirable and is pitted against a lesser antagonist. The key role is usually a single (almost invariably male and white) individual – offering a ready-made formula for the creation and perpetuation of actors as stars. The simple yet individualised basis of the plot carries a certain kind of political mythology (valorising liberal individualism) while also resting heavily on the casting of big stars. Such stars enjoy sufficient box-office appeal to reduce the risks attached to the huge

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The cultural politics of Hollywood film

financial investment in blockbuster production and publicity costs carried by media giants. In this respect, blockbusters echo the Golden Age concept of films as star vehicles. While plot and characterisation are flattened out, visual surfaces are expanded and developed in Hollywood blockbusters, creating opportunities for high-impact special effects. The significance of the special effects in Jurassic Park (1993) offers one example of the increasing ‘dominance of the visual’ (Lister et al., 2009: 142) in the blockbuster format, as does the The Mask (1994). At the time of its release, The Mask’s mix of computer-generated animation and human action was novel, and even startling. The movie was a commercial success, but the blockbuster’s reliance on effects is frequently understood to be juvenile, superficial, and contrived (Lister et al., 2009: 143). As New York Times movie critic Janet Maslin makes plain, ‘The Mask underscores the shrinking importance of conventional storytelling in specialeffects-minded movies, which are happy to overshadow quaint ideas about plot and character with flashy up-to-the-minute gimmickry’ (Maslin, as quoted in Klein, 1998: 217). Maslin’s comment reports a perceived loss of quality in contemporary Hollywood film. Blockbusters are associated with ‘dumbing-down’ and appealing to the ‘lowest common denominator’. As Julian Stringer notes, the blockbuster form of mass-market film is frequently viewed as an exercise in mere money-making, and indeed as ‘culturally retrograde, beneath serious consideration or analysis’ (Stringer, 2003: 1). Others are less ready to categorise blockbusters as always or inevitably at odds with the conception of film as art. Tom Shone regards the blockbusters of the New Hollywood era as offering an invigorating mode of fast-paced and technically innovative narrative. Shone insists that attention to audience entertainment does not necessarily compromise claims to critical recognition (Shone, 2004a: 27–40; Maher, 2015). The question of artistic quality and merit in the modern blockbuster is intriguing, but not crucial for our purposes. Rather, we have attended to the historical development of some descriptive and relatively unproblematic elements which can nevertheless extend our understanding of the place of the New Hollywood blockbuster in relation to the presentation of political myths.

Frames 31 As noted earlier, the rise of blockbusters fostered a recognisable style of hyperrealistic sensory spectacular (Tasker, 1993; King, 2000; Lister et al., 2009: 138). Its constituent cinematic codes are highly visual: blockbusters commingle physical and virtual reality; they are unsubtle to the point of exaggeration; and they are emotive, though with limited emotional range and depth. Being less dependent on plot complexity and words than films of the Golden Age, the blockbuster is more portable across cultures. Blockbusters do not require much intellectual reception, and may even be actively resistant to it. In moving away from the immersion style of the Golden Age films towards simple parables delivered through larger-than-life, dazzling sensation, the blockbuster approximates both the style and purpose of the mythical. Political myths become more rather than less relevant in the cultural politics of the blockbuster, concealed as they are under the apparently apolitical banner of simple economics and ‘pure’ entertainment. We have suggested that, for our purposes, the New Hollywood era is distinguishable in three major ways: the brief rise and long decline in authority of filmmakers in the face of the increasing significance of media empires whose drive is profit; the narrowing of the industry to its reliance on a reduced number of big-budget blockbusters with a limited and simplified range of narratives; and the related shift to creating immersion through spectacular, sensory movies. The effect of these changes for the shaping of political myths in Hollywood film was largely to curtail the capacity of the industry to produce socially critical films. On one hand, the diversity of Hollywood films was effectively pruned back by the disciplining force of industry profitmaking. On the other hand, the narrowing of formats towards activity and excitement – a mode largely at odds with analytical audience engagement – also had disciplining ramifications for the narrower range of films that were produced. Post-9/11 Conglomerate Hollywood (early 2000s to present) The 11 September attacks on the United States in 2001 present another pivotal point in the shaping of contemporary Hollywood film. The confluence of the media corporations’ increasing focus on blockbusters with the attacks of 9/11 accentuated the development of a certain type

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of format. As outlined previously, blockbuster ‘tent-pole’ films of today – designed to secure massive box-office and merchandising profits – very often rely on a story outlining a simplified struggle between good and evil. The format offers a remarkably comfortable fit with the anxieties of the post-9/11 era. Although the initial response to 9/11 was to develop more literal, realist, and overtly nationalistic war stories, these soon gave way to special-effects-driven action fantasies shaped more broadly by the ‘war on terror’. These action fantasies typically feature a superhero protagonist, and often draw directly upon the pared-down simplicity of comic book characters and styles.19 The rise of the comicbook superhero blockbuster franchise epitomises what is distinctive about Hollywood in the new millennium. Steven Mintz and his colleagues suggest that ‘popular films offer a valuable vehicle for examining public responses’ to social concerns, and reveal much about socio-historical conditions. Before 9/11, they say, Hollywood presented ‘responses to the social disorder and dislocations of the Depression; the fears of domestic subversion of the late 1940s and early 1950s; the cultural and moral upheavals of the 1960s; [and] the meaning and significance of the Vietnam War’ (Mintz et al., 2016: xi). In the contemporary context, the comic-book superhero blockbuster offers a telling invocation of the defensive allure of the saviour, and of the desire for security in seemingly dark and uncertain times (Mintz et al., 2016; Collin, 2014). The appeal of saving the world and making it secure has particular resonance for the USA and its location as the global leader of the Western/Northern political community. Here, mainstream Hollywood’s admixture of entertainment and political myth becomes evident. As described earlier in this chapter, a crucial feature of myth – and, specifically, political myth – is that it provides a timeless iconography in which a protagonist evokes an identity and belonging which uncritically brings together, stabilises, and validates a political community. The comic-book superhero blockbuster, with its emphasis on the struggle of the recognisably North American, white, male hero to make his community – and, by extension, all of us – safe from evil, presents an exemplary story legitimating the US polity and the central significance of America in the world. In the aftermath of 9/11, the US government quite explicitly treated the Hollywood film industry as an element of American soft power,

Frames 33 and an important part of its political armoury in the ‘war on terror’.20 At this time, Hollywood movies were regarded as a particularly useful weapon of war (Frago et al., 2010: 58). Alongside the armed front, President Bush’s administration envisaged an ‘ideas front’ in which universal principles of freedom and democracy, and the crucial role of the United States in promulgating these principles, would be marshalled against Islamic fundamentalism. The US National Strategy for Combating Terrorism explicitly stated that America is at war with a transnational terrorist movement fueled by a radical ideology of hatred, oppression, and murder. Our National Strategy for Combating Terrorism … recognizes that … protecting and defending the Homeland, the American people, and their livelihoods remains our first and most solemn obligation … From the beginning, the War on Terror has been a battle of arms and a battle of ideas—a fight against the terrorists and their murderous ideology. (White House Office, 2006: 1, 7) Since the key social function of political myth is to provide a uniting and legitimating reassurance while working against ‘chaos, doubt and pessimism’ (Stevanović, 2008: 25), it is scarcely surprising that Holly­ wood film was viewed by the US political establishment as a means to advance the war against terror, a war of Good against Evil, as well as a means to encourage ‘favourable international opinion of US security policy’ (White House Office, 2006; Frago et al., 2010: 60). Some commentators have analysed fictional reconstructions of 9/11 as illustrating Hollywood’s response to such political advocacy (Frago et al., 2010, for example). Dramatisations of those events include United 93 (2006), World Trade Center (2006), and in a different key Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011). In addition, a number of war films offer direct parallels to the war on terror – including The Sum of All Fears (2002), The Hurt Locker (2008), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and American Sniper (2014). With the exception of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011), which is a treatment of the grief and traumatic effects of terrorism at home as distinct from any kind of narrative explanation for the events themselves, these adaptations are rather literal and perhaps do not capture in their entirety the

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implications of the post-9/11 environment for the Hollywood film industry. The current era offers a political context precisely suitable for narratives about American ‘Good’ versus amorphous, unpredictable, and unfathomable ‘Evil’. More broadly allegorical action blockbusters are just as relevant as and much more numerous than the dramatisations and adaptations just listed. These blockbusters occasionally reference the war on terror through locations – Transformers (2007) and Iron Man (2008), for example. However, more often they simply employ the ‘war on terror’ trope of the individual (North American, white, male) hero struggling against evil forces – as we see in Spider-Man (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), and The Dark Knight (2008). Such films, from the relatively literal reconstructions to the comic-book extravaganzas, engage dramatically in the broader political-mythological role of Hollywood film. They justify defending the homeland by validating its polity and simultaneously effacing uncertainty and insecurity. In this era, the comic-book superhero blockbuster is emblematic. It is no surprise that the director of Spider-Man (2002) explained its audience appeal with a reference to 9/11, noting that ‘[t]hese are tough and scary times, and during these times we always look to stories of heroes to show us the way and to give us hope’ (Sam Raimi, as quoted by L. Burke, 2015: 2). Similarly, when the director of Iron Man (2008) was asked ‘Why do you think this period of time is so good for superhero movies?’ he answered ‘I think 9/11 … was a game changer. I think people were looking for emotional simplicity [and] escapism’ (Jon Favreau, as quoted by L. Burke, 2015: 2). The alignment of filmmaking style, economics, and historical-political moment is evident in the significant percentage of the Hollywood worldwide box office provided by such comic-book superhero blockbusters (see Graser, 2007: 3; Dupont, 2011; Hickey, 2014a). The visual spectacle of contemporary Hollywood’s comic-book style has been facilitated by recent technical innovations. Advances range from the Blu-ray disc and IMAX theatres, to the use of computergenerated imagery and 3D in a wide range of films;21 and, with the advent of streaming services, the capacity to watch them on smartphones, smart-TVs, computers, tablets, and other internet-connected personal devices.22 While such innovations in technical capacity have improved

Frames 35 production values and expanded audience reach, they have also helped to bolster the ever-growing revenue of the Hollywood film industry. Hollywood revenue, including box-office and all other revenue sources (such as rentals, streaming services, and digital downloads), has risen consistently since the turn of the century. Global box-office revenue has been steadily increasing since the early 1990s, and rose from around US$7.5 billion in 2000 to around US$36 billion in 2014. A major contributor to this financial success has been international box office – that is, box-office revenue from beyond the United States and Canada – which accounted for 70 per cent of total worldwide revenues in 2014 (MPAA, 2015b). One effect of this is that blockbusters are no longer made specifically for the United States (and similar markets), but increasingly for global audiences, including many who speak languages other than English. Liam Burke raises doubts about the global reach of the political subtext of the comic-book superhero blockbuster in the post-9/11 era. He observes that such movies are usually more successful in the domestic North American market and that they ‘uniquely tally with US filmgoing interests’ (L. Burke, 2015: 26). In contrast, Nathalie Dupont suggests that the global market for films like The Hulk (2003) ‘has often enabled Hollywood to make up for disappointing domestic figures’ (Dupont, 2011). Her view is sustained by evidence that recent versions of the superhero blockbuster such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) have garnered most of their profits from box office outside the United States, including the huge Chinese market (Yueh, 2014). Indeed, such is the regular success of the comic-book superhero film that it has been ‘held up as the ideal model for the Hollywood blockbuster’ (Gordon et al., 2007: vii). The political mythology of the North American, white, male messiah in the post-9/11 era is not a simple reworking of the New Hollywood heroes of the 1970s and 1980s. The contemporary hero is, typically, neither a jingoistic patriot nor a guilty, self-reproaching disbeliever. Rather, the American superhero worries, and is not entirely sure of himself – a characterisation which delivers soft power aims of the US political establishment by rendering American power as less than inexorable, less than total. The comic-book mode of the post-9/11

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blockbuster plays out, in less rigorous and less confronting terms, recognition of doubt within a continuing story of US hegemony that also appears in other recent blockbusters about heroes and national security.23 Relatedly, these successful films of the post-9/11 Hollywood era do not always hand the hero a happy ending on a plate, nor does he always ‘get the girl’ (Dupont, 2011). These iterations of uncertainty are balanced by the extension of the blockbuster into the blockbuster franchise, which gives the hero further opportunities to save the day and achieve a happy – or at least happier – outcome. This kind of serialisation is, of course, consistent with the (perhaps nostalgic) comicbook experience. The blend of heroic uncertainty and continuing opportunities to fight offers a form of simplification which entails seductive believability. Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man is precisely not like the characters created by John Wayne in The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Steve McQueen in The Great Escape (1963), or Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Rambo’ in First Blood (1982); he is the anxious but nevertheless undoubtedly superhuman American hero of today. The particular kind of protagonist appearing in post-9/11 blockbusters influences the characters and relationships we see on screen. While the dominant depiction of relationships in blockbusters (1975 to 2013) is between a leading man and those he cares about, the most common relationship presented is between males – for example, father and son (Hickey, 2014a). Blockbusters offer simplifications, including simplifications of what and who matters. The political technology of contemporary films perhaps most insidiously resides in the presentation of a story of axiomatic social asymmetry wrapped in an account of the accomplishment of justice. The post-9/11 political mythology of these films arises, as noted earlier, not only in relation to historical contexts and styles, but also in a specific economic and production system. Film studios have now been entirely subsumed within the six major media conglomerates described in the previous section. These conglomerates are massive companies composed of a number of smaller subsidiaries. They engage in a wide range of enterprises, including television, radio, music, video, internet sites, gaming, magazines, toys, and other merchandise. The production of film is now tied to feeding these other media/ entertainment arms of the conglomerates. More than ever before, the

Frames 37 smaller number of large-scale and very costly Hollywood films must be reliable money-spinners appealing to a mass audience both within North America and beyond it (Grainge, 2007; Schatz, 2009: 19). This does not encourage filmmakers to take risks or raise difficult issues. Rather, it invites the safe repetition of readily acceptable narratives that are familiar and comforting to mainstream audiences, and which neatly align with the function of political myths to uncritically stabilise. Certain kinds of stories, exemplified by the spectacular adventures of comic-book superheroes, fit the bill. Now, more than ever, is the era of the blockbuster franchise. Contemporary franchise movies intensify the simplification of the earlier blockbuster. They dovetail into the characterisation of their protagonists as less cocksure than earlier heroes, allowing for less decisive resolutions, and subsequent instalments. They capitalise on technological advances in film production, and they enhance the global profitability of the conglomerates that produce them. Franchises are distinguishable from blockbusters, even if some have subsequently mutated into franchises. A blockbuster dominates box-office release for a discrete period of time and has an evident starting point, middle, and end. Its makers may contemplate the development of a sequel, or less commonly a prequel, only if its box-office return is sufficiently robust to justify a further significant investment. The franchise film is a rather different creature. As Dwayne Winseck (2012) observes, ‘the Age of the Franchise’ involves developing films with the express aim of making several sequels. Such films are often reliant on wellestablished sources for adaptation (like comics, or other existing series) that will provide ready-made story-lines conveniently organised in parts. Rather than the sustained and massive box-office return required by a blockbuster, franchises offer more than one bite at the cherry, so that less rides on the success of each individual film. At the same time, the pre-existent story from which the franchise is typically adapted, as well as the multiplication of films within the franchise, supply a predictable, even guaranteed audience and reliable box-office returns. Contemporary franchises, unlike movies leading to sequels in the earlier periods, operate so that the initial film acts as marketing for those that follow. Winseck points out in this context that the Iron Man movies (2008–13), Thor (2011), and Captain America (1990) were

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The cultural politics of Hollywood film

essentially ‘expensive ads for a later associated film, The Avengers’ (Winseck, 2012). The success of franchise movies has helped sustain, in large part, the long period of highly profitable growth in movies since the late 1970s. Other kinds of film, as well as the cultural particularities attaching to the content of non-American cinema, are now situated as riskier ventures. The franchise mode thus has a monopolistic effect. Framing Hollywood The packaging and repackaging of myths at the movies has been a feature of Hollywood movies from their inception. The mythical shape of popular film is not always obviously political, but almost inevitably speaks to operations of identity and belonging. Movies index collective identities, preferences, and norms even as they valorise uniquely individual heroes. Hollywood film is thus a pre-eminent arena for soft power and the cultural production of hegemony because this cultural form enacts national/communal political mythologies while appearing apolitical. Few films announce any kind of explicit engagement with political histories, figures, or events in ways audiences might recognise as instructive or analytical. Nevertheless, the practice of watching movies involves repetitive exposure to technologically mediated myths: movies not only tell us stories, they frame their stories in genre and other iterative social conventions that are as familiar and comfortable as nursery rhymes. The soft power capacity of film and its implication in generating consent to hegemony resides precisely in its exercise at some remove from government agendas. This distance enables engagement in ways that may not be especially programmatic or deliberately notated, yet assume and promote culturally specific, shared norms, values, and histories. All the same, there is little that is subtle about Hollywood’s biggest pictures. Instead, in the era of post-9/11 Conglomerate Hollywood, the blockbuster format has moved increasingly towards simple comicbook superhero story-lines – that is, movies have shifted ever further away from interiority and naturalistic styles. Connections to myth in Hollywood movies are most obvious here – the supernatural origins and abilities of characters like Spider-Man and Superman resonate

Frames 39 strongly with the fantastic realm of myth. This trend has yielded strong growth and continuing profits for the major media conglomerates. This is reflected in the global marketability of Hollywood enterprises, and speaks more generally to the globalising aspects of Hollywood industries and products. Finally, the expensive blockbuster format has narrowed with the rise of franchise movies. The ongoing reduction and simplification of Hollywood narrative forms in order to sustain and expand profits is linked to fewer opportunities for alternative (let alone socially critical) films, and has contributed to the monopolistic dominance of Hollywood worldwide. The combined impact of these elements has effectively restricted the interpretative range of political myths we see in film. While the post-2001 era has been a period of great change in the Hollywood film industry, and further innovations are likely to develop, these changes have, in short, worked to limit political diversity. The story of particular political myths in Hollywood films, outlined in the chapters to follow, enables more detailed analysis of the broad trajectories described here. Notes 1 On the workings, not just of allegory and synecdoche, but of metonymy more broadly, see Ryan and Kellner (1988: 15). 2 This aspect of political myth is especially relevant to our discussion of national security in the three chapters to follow. 3 See, for example, Prince (1992); Lipshutz (2001); Dickenson (2006); Wheeler (2006); Shapiro (2009); Kellner (2010); Boyd-Barrett et al. (2011). 4 This is the tagline for Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). 5 See, for example, Schatz (1983); McCrisken and Pepper (2005); McDonald and Wasko (2008); Thomson (2012). 6 Elsaesser and Buckland (2002: 26–79); Cubbitt (2009); DaCosta Kaufmann (2010); Jackson (2010); Le Goff (2015). 7 On this point, Warren Buckland asserts that ‘serious study of Hollywood has galvanised around three trends: (1) the æsthetic; (2) the interpretive; and (3) the industrial economic’ (2009: 7), to which may be added (4) audience and address. However, because this book and the periodisation outlined here are shaped by our emphasis on political myths, we suggest that even this expanded version of Buckland’s categorisation is not robustly apposite. While the approach we take may be described as primarily interpretative, it inevitably draws in discussion of the

40

8 9

10 11 12

13 14

15 16

The cultural politics of Hollywood film industrial economic and audience/address – that is, discussion of both production and reception. In this sense, the book as a whole and the periodisation which follows below should be placed under yet another analytical rubric – a rubric which, in its focus on these norms, is inextricably connected to and to a degree shapes the previous four. The five ‘majors’ were Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, MGM, and RKO Radio Pictures, with three other companies close behind (Columbia, Universal, and United Artists). The Motion Picture Production Code is often referred to as the ‘Hays Code’ after the head of the major studios’ trade association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), founded in 1922. The MPPDA was rebadged as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in 1945. For example, in 1963 the studios released fewer films than in any year since the 1920s (History Cooperative, 2016). Films like MASH (1970), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Dirty Harry (1971), Straw Dogs (1971), The Godfather (1972), Chinatown (1974), and Taxi Driver (1976), and filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Sam Peckinpah, Stanley Kubrick, Don Siegel, Roman Polanski, and Robert Altman are associated with post-classical ‘New Hollywood’. Of these auteurs, perhaps only Altman’s body of work (including Nashville [1975] and The Player [1992]) can be said to offer a distinct challenge to the Hollywood modes, themes, and perspectives dominating at the time. Walt Disney Studios offers an alternative example. Disney is a major studio which is located within a larger corporate body whose business interests include music, theatrical production, and theme parks. Earlier ‘blockbusters’ – those released prior to the arrival of what is frequently described as the blockbuster era – include Gone with the Wind (1939), Quo Vadis (1951), The Ten Commandments (1956), and Ben Hur (1959). On the blockbuster as a new category of film, see Hall (2002); Stringer (2003); Neale (2008); Hall and Neale (2010); McIntyre (2012); Redfern (2012). It is worth noting, however, that the Golden Age emphasis on producing a form of realism with stories and performances that seem close to recognisable everyday life and ‘natural’ behaviour was not uniform or straightforward. Some genres such as comedy do not employ realism in the same way as drama might, and expectations of naturalistic performance in any case change over time such that Marlon Brando’s performance in A Streetcar named Desire (1951) might once have been viewed as highly realistic while now it might be viewed as rather stylised.

Frames 41 17 Young people in the 12–17 and 18–24 age groups continue to be overrepresented in moviegoing statistics relative to their portion of the US population (MPAA, 2015a: 13). 18 Mise-en-scène refers to everything that is placed within the shot on the set of the film, all of which involves decision-making. These elements include the setting, the positioning of cameras, length of shot, colour employed, decor and props, costume and make-up, lighting, and staging, along with the performance of actors and movement within the shot. Mise-en-scène elements may be contrasted with editing, which occurs after shooting (Cook, 2016). 19 Here we endorse Liam Burke’s view that the superhero story has become synonymous with the comic book film (L. Burke, 2015). 20 For more on the United States government and Hollywood in the post-9/11 context, see chapter 4. 21 See, for example, films like Gladiator (2000), The Perfect Storm (2000), The Day after Tomorrow (2004), Cloverfield (2008), Avatar (2009), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). 22 Streaming services include Amazon Prime Instant Video, Netflix, iTunes, Presto, and Stan. 23 An apposite example is the Bourne film franchise (2002, 2004, 2007, 2012, and 2016).

PART I SECURITY

3 Security: order and disorder

My most important job as your President is to defend the homeland; is to protect American people from further attacks. (George W. Bush, 2002) I think all citizens have a responsibility to join in this effort against terrorism. People in Hollywood are citizens of the United States … [W]e certainly need to … [use] whatever skills we can deploy to help the war effort … We are trying to have communication with the armed forces, telling them that we … are grateful to them … [E]very now and then you have to fight a war to preserve, protect, and defend your constitutional liberties. (Jack Valenti, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America 1966–2004, 2002) Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can’t figure out what from. (Mae West)1 In this chapter, we begin by considering what a cultural politics approach brings to understandings of political myths and narratives of national security as these are presented in Hollywood movies. After briefly reviewing the extent and reach of Hollywood’s global domination of the film industry (see chapters 12 and 13 for more detail), we consider some of its effects in the context of national and transnational security. However, our main aim in this chapter is to provide an outline of the category we label ‘security films’ and to sketch out some of the major divisions within that category.

46 Security ‘Security’ films – with their stories about society, nation, and community – alert us to how power relations concerning the government of nations and citizens become manifest. In this chapter and the several following it, we demonstrate how power relations become palpable in such films – that is, we explore movies iterating a fundamental concern with how communal security should be governed. Here and in the next three chapters, our attention turns to the two faces of security: representations of security as comforting order and as fearful disorder. Identifying positive, active articulations of security alongside more passive, negative conceptions, this chapter sets the scene for analyses of order films – specifically war films (in chapter 4), and disorder (or fear) films – which include stranger, disaster, and monster movies (chapter 5), including closer attention to a particular instance within the latter grouping, zombie movies (chapter 6). Cultural politics and security In the Introduction (chapter 1) to this book, we argued that culture, including popular culture, is not simply a matter of æsthetics (concerned with the pleasures of artistic elements), technical scaffolding (descriptive of technical or other features of cinematic forms), or escapist recreation. Adopting a cultural politics framework allows us to consider how power relations in society and across the globe are linked to cultural forms such as popular film, offering an opportunity to analyse how power shapes, is embedded within, and promulgated through cultural products. Mass-cultural forms such as popular film offer a useful way in to thinking about cultural politics. In the first instance, this is because popular film, like all popular cultural forms, is ‘the culture of the people’ (Browne, 2005: 27, cited in Delaney, 2007). According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (n.d.), film ‘is the world’s most lucrative cultural industry’. Moreover, the industry continues to expand, with global box office increasing by 15 per cent in the years 2009–14. Watching movies remains ‘one of the most popular cultural practices’ around the world (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, n.d.). In Australia, for example, the ‘proportion of Australians attending the cinema at least once per year has averaged 69 per cent since 2000’ (Screen Australia, n.d. [a]). Over two-thirds of the North American population



Security: order and disorder

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more than 2 years old went to the cinema at least once in 2014 (MPAA, 2015a). Even though there has been a recent dip in cinema attendance, this is associated with viewers watching films in locations other than cinemas, not with less film viewing (White Hutchinson Leisure and Learning Group, 2011; Scott and Dargis, 2016). Such popularity shows the importance of a cultural politics perspective. Audiences are engaged by film; they do not merely watch unresponsively. Its capacity for engagement is precisely why film registers as popular, as a widespread commonality which necessarily ‘both reflects and influences … the most immediate and contemporary aspects of our lives’ (Delaney, 2007).2 As Ray Browne notes in his characterisation of popular culture and its forms, [p]opular culture is the way of life in which and by which most people in any society live. In a democracy … it is the voice of the people—their likes and dislikes—that form the lifeblood of daily existence, of a way of life … It is our heroes, icons, rituals, everyday actions, psychology, and religion—our total life picture. It is the way of living we inherit, practice and modify as we please, and how we do it. It is the dreams we dream while asleep. (Browne, 2002) In this context, it is crucial to note that Hollywood film (which patently is not universal, but a specifically US-based cultural medium) has unparalleled global dominance in the realm of the cinematic ‘voice of the people’. Tom O’Regan asserted in 1992 that ‘Hollywood has been able to obtain a significant “market share” of between 40% and 90% of the national box office in Western markets’ (O’Regan, 1992: 302). In 2006, a former head of the Australian government’s peak agency for film and television pointed out that ‘Hollywood controls 73% of the world’ (Rosen, cited in Craven, 2006: 37).3 This dominance has continued since the beginning of filmmaking according to measures such as tickets sold, gross box office profit, and span and extent of geopolitical distribution (Epstein, 2011, as cited by Brooks, 2016). Indeed, Hollywood’s command of the world cinema industry has now spread even further afield. Contenders for global dominance such as the Indian (‘Bollywood’) and Hong Kong/Chinese film industries produce

48 Security as many movies as Hollywood (or more), but their wares – unlike those of Hollywood – are largely screened only within the confines of national borders and diasporic language locations (Cieply, 2014; UNESCO Institute for Statistics, n.d.). Although commentators may differ over the reasons for Hollywood’s pre-eminent global positioning, there is no disputing that Hollywood is the dominant force in the industry.4 Hollywood’s worldwide dominance is reflected in its extraordinary influence within many individual countries – including the United Kingdom, where 77 per cent of movies screened are Hollywood products, and Australia, where at least 84 per cent of movies are US productions.5 Hollywood’s reach is not limited to Anglophone nations. American movies dominate the cinemas of many nations where English is not the first language – including Mexico (where 90 per cent of films screened are Hollywood products), Brazil (75 per cent), Malaysia (82 per cent), Taiwan (75 per cent), Singapore (90 per cent), and Venezuela (90 per cent). Even nations that have historically been more removed from Hollywood’s reach, like mainland China, now evince signs of ever-growing market penetration, with a recent report estimating that 38 per cent of movies screened in China are Hollywood creations. While these percentages emerge from relatively inconsistent data, they nevertheless tell a straightforward story about not only market penetration, but also cultural penetration by US-based cinematic agendas. Indeed, they speak of cultural saturation (Epstein 2011; see also Brooks, 2016: 88). Mass-cultural forms like Hollywood film have a further quality making them especially ripe for a cultural politics perspective on security. They offer a narrative format – a story. Some cultural forms do not have any readily generalisable meanings – abstract sculpture, for example – but popular films convey stories which are not intended to be simply idiosyncratically expressive. Rather, they aim to communicate shared meaning. For this reason, we focus not only on the hegemonic positioning of Hollywood film but specifically on the stories iterated therein. It is in these retold stories that it is possible to see what is constituted time and time again as the safe, the proper, the important, the ideal, the way things are or should be ordered, and, alternatively, what is to be rejected as unsafe, improper, peripheral, or subordinate. These stories,



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because they are made for and shared by mass audiences, permit and even demand consideration of their socio-political meanings and effects. The narrative form of popular film facilitates a cultural politics framework because, as Hilary Radner says, film ‘is perhaps the most logical arena in which to analyse dominant trends in popular thought’. She goes on to suggest that film offers ‘a dense articulation of the contemporaneous discursive formulations in which [it] participates’, while also providing ‘representations of contemporary discourses in which tensions and controversies are writ large’ (Radner, 2011: 2). In order to engage viewers within a brief time span of an hour or two (compared, for example, with novels and television series), popular film must economically distil reasonably complex but necessarily familiar social content into recognisable stories and characters. Familiar tropes operate as a kind of shorthand to cue viewers at speed. Working with this form of shorthand, specific genres repeatedly restage the same concerns over and over again (Taylor, 2015: 4–5). Cinematic narratives, precisely because of their compression, offer a condensed and highly accessible cultural space for the exploration and resolution of these concerns. Popular film is a medium which is so central to so many within the present everyday world that it may be said to construct ‘the most compelling accounts’ of social preoccupations (Taylor, 2015: 5; Sobchak, 1997: 16). While the idea that social concerns are iterated in popular movies is not contentious, the ubiquity of political interests is not so readily acknowledged. Jason Stanley asserts that within liberal democracies, including the United States, political messages are more pervasive and influential than is generally believed. Stanley firmly rejects the notion that propaganda emerges only from authoritarian regimes with agencies dedicated to its production and effects (Stanley, 2015; Walsh, 2016: 52). Indeed, he asserts that such a notion is itself a key tenet of the propaganda of liberal democracies like the United States. The charged language of ‘propaganda’ and the assumptions circulating alongside it buttress the West-North’s unreflective self-promotion as a space of freedom, and as a space free from any repressive or limiting effects of power. Stanley here draws upon long-standing critiques of the undemocratic, unequal, and illiberal aspects of liberal democracies to insist that propaganda does indeed flourish within these polities. In particular,

50 Security he draws attention to the presence and proliferation of the insidious propaganda message that there are no controlling elements within these polities; that there are no modes of power directed towards persuading the citizenry to accept and embrace existing power relations within them. Reiterated cinematic narratives in Hollywood film are not explicit targets of Stanley’s critique. However, from a cultural politics perspective, they can be understood as generating a specific form of propaganda associated with liberal democracies and, expressly, the United States. In this reading, Hollywood film is engaged in relentlessly maintaining, reproducing, and defending representations of the American way of life. As Stanley explains, propaganda is about the deployment of ideals and is not necessarily simply false; nor is it always produced with calculated insincerity as intentional manipulation. In this sense Holly­ wood film is inevitably implicated in socio-political meanings and effects, providing narratives which raise and typically resolve sociopolitical concerns, tensions, and controversies through a medium which is more usually supposed to be distant from manipulation and power. Our intention is to demonstrate Hollywood’s links with both the ‘soft power’ persuasive tools of the United States in advancing national security domestically and beyond and, more obliquely, with upholding the worth and security of liberal democracies – that is, constituting hegemonic consent to the value and pre-eminence of democratic liberal regimes like the United States.6 This cultural politics approach has particular resonance in relation to the ways in which Hollywood film (both directly and in more covert ways) acts as a propaganda medium for the upkeep and legitimation of national and liberal-democratic security. Security: the concept First, however, it is necessary to explain exactly what is meant by ‘security’. In the context of politics and international relations, ‘security’ is a contested term, but generally it refers to the militarised protection of nations. Freedom from threat is understood as the ability of states to maintain national sovereignty in the face of the possibility or actuality of war (Baylis and Smith, 2001: 254–5). Barry Buzan extends this



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definition, proposing that security refers to the ability of states to go beyond narrow self-interest in order to maintain the integrity of a range of aspects of national identity, including political, economic, environmental, and societal elements (Buzan, 1983: 214–42). Buzan’s notion of security moves the analysis beyond the limits of government practices or the calculation of various states’ military might. This expanded understanding is evident in the associated term ‘securitization’, which points to the ways that cultural constructions of meaning and identity (in language, and cultural forms like films) contribute to how security is conceived and legitimised. Cultural constructions, in this context, are thus critical to the mobilisation of security agendas (Buzan et al., 1998: 25, 39). By contrast, most mainstream discourses on the topic of ‘security’ emphasise purportedly objective evaluations of risk, such as may be assessed by calculating numbers of weapons amassed by countries deemed to be presenting a security risk. These accounts are not without their differences and disagreements, but their descriptions of defensive cohesion are remarkably uniform, pitting supposedly similar and trusted ‘insiders’ against a generalised or specific distrust of dissimilar ‘outsiders’ from other nations. Security is thus at once a comforting identification with an ‘us’ and a distrustful, perhaps even xenophobic fear of ‘the other’ (Burke, 2008: 330).7 Paul Verilio describes this dichotomy as solidarity versus exclusion (Verilio, 1989). These mainstream conceptions of security are often projected in Hollywood representations. The binary insider/outsider coding of ‘security’ is strongly invoked in those films which are the subject of the following chapter – those offering representations of security as familiar and comforting order. These can be seen as directly aligned with US government agendas, a point which will be elaborated and illustrated in more detail shortly. More nuanced understandings of ‘security’, however, should also be borne in mind. ‘Security’ may be not so much a name for something self-evident and pre-existing, but rather a political technology or practice that produces and manipulates identities, bodies, and relational ‘flows’ (Burke, 2008: 330). In this light, Hollywood security films can be viewed as political technologies giving cinematic flesh to certain assumptions, characters, and stories. From this perspective, culture is not entirely distinct from politics but is part of a range of power relations.

52 Security Hollywood security films are capable in this context of being understood as a political practice forming part of the mobilisation of security – as part of the ‘securitization’ agenda mentioned earlier. Here the dichotomy of the insider/outsider distinction evoked by the term ‘security’ blurs into broader binary associations of safety/danger, comfort/anxiety, and familiarity/foreignness.8 Hollywood security films draw on both the narrower, mainstream meanings of security and the more extensive notion of securitisation. At the same time, security films offer a continuum of emphases: some (for example, ‘order’ films and especially war films) tend to foreground the implications of the narrower definition, while many ‘disorder’-fear films emphasise the more diffuse connotations of the second. Screening security As is evident from the preceding discussion, in films concerned with constructing and protecting the nation and its citizens, security has two faces. Security can be understood and expressed in terms of positively struggling to generate or protect order, safety, moral worth, well-being, a citizenry/community, or a trusted and responsible leadership. In this guise, ‘security’ actively upholds the good nation, the good society, and legitimate authority. Security becomes a story of orderliness, of being good and doing good. However, security can also be imagined negatively as a reaction or response to threat, such that security is understood and expressed in terms of dealing with political anxiety. This second way of perceiving security – that is, security as based in fear of disorder – is elaborated in many analyses of contestations over its meaning (see for example, Burke, 2008). The meaning of security – in both its ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ articulations – may be enhanced by contrast with the concerns laid out in chapters 10 and 11, which focus on a cluster of films we label ‘socially critical’ or ‘social problem’ films. Security films are typically constituted by a conservative emphasis, repeating stories which reinstitute mainstream understandings of the safe and the unsafe, offering a cinematic record of reiterated yet historically shifting political myths regarding self and society, citizen and collective/nation. They are strongly marked by dominant conceptions of power relations and typically have only



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minor politically alternative or critical elements within them. This emphasis on the maintenance and endorsement of the status quo in security films involves recalling on one hand a sense of identification with ‘us’ (our community/our nation/our culture), and associating this with a sense of order, the familiar, and legitimate authority, while simultaneously inciting an anxious fear of ‘the other’ as the enemy aligned with disorder and the unknown. In contrast, socially critical films appear to be decidedly attentive to – and sometimes focus strongly on – destabilising, challenging, or even perhaps subverting dominant conceptions of ‘us’ in the existing social fabric. In these more critical films, alternative perspectives are brought into view and sometimes take centre-stage. To illustrate the characteristics of security films and their distinction from socially critical films, a more focused contrast may be useful. Two films which offer a very clear instance of the distinction are the security-as-order film We Were Soldiers (2002) and the socially critical film Boys Don’t Cry (1999). In We Were Soldiers, the narrative follows the heroic leadership of US Army Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore (Mel Gibson) through a terrible conflict in the Vietnam War. In its valorisation of American loyalty and sacrifice, national identity, patriotism, and the nation itself are affirmed. In contrast, Boys Don’t Cry (1999) tells the story of trans man, Brandon Teena (played by Hilary Swank) and his fateful endeavour to find love in Nebraska. Brandon Teena is constantly faced with brutal social rejection and violence. We Were Soldiers invites the audience to ‘remember’ that the US military intervention in Vietnam was led and informed by noble intentions and heroic actions, with the clear implication that any doubts about its motivations or outcomes are misplaced. In Boys Don’t Cry, the central narrative questions fond and familiar assumptions about the good American society. In presenting Brandon Teena as fully human, the key notion that sex determines gender, and is fixed as an exhaustive and exclusive pair-category (in which everybody is either male or female, no-one is neither or both, and in which there can be no traffic across categories) is questioned in a sustained and profound way. The myth of American individualism, or the presentation of the United States as the premier locale in which dreams come true and people can be whatever or whomever they choose, is exposed as troubled and flawed.

54 Security Security films persistently reiterate dominant conceptions of the safe and the unsafe, and these have decidedly political meanings and implications. There are sometimes (usually minor and momentary) elements in security films that express ambiguity about or even resistance to such dominant conceptions, and therefore gesture towards alternative political directions. However, if they arise at all, these elements are unequivocally subsidiary in security films, and barely disturb the largely uncritical acceptance of the centrality of the United States as the communal, social, and national frame of reference. Our contention here (and in the chapters to follow) is that security films reproduce and endorse dominant power relations (with regard not just to nationality and ethnicity, but also to religion, class, gender, race, sexuality, and other axes of power), and that they do so by mobilising political myths. Hollywood security films may be viewed as constituting a political practice. They can even be aligned with government agendas, including foreign policy and military objectives – as will be revealed in more detail shortly. More particularly, films concerning the positive or active generation of security through the affirmation and reiteration of order, the good society, and proper leadership, tend to focus upon a putatively homogeneous ‘us’ and ‘ours’ (our boys, our women, our wives, our cause, our ‘civilisation’, our moral values), as against ‘them’ and ‘theirs’. The threat – the ‘them’ – must sometimes be inferred and is often marginalised as somewhere out there, at or beyond the margins of the picture. Security-as-order enacts a typically strict, binary insider/outsider distinction associated with its traditional usage in political theory, with the identificatory emphasis firmly upon the insider. By contrast, films attending to negative or reactive versions of security bring into view the broader associations of Buzan’s (1983) account of ‘securitization’ as the relentless and suffusive evocation of the unfamiliar and of peril, fragility, and unease. Security-as-disorder shifts attention to our boundaries, the margins, our vulnerability, and brings ‘them’ or ‘it’ (the danger, the threat, the outsider) and ‘their’ world centre-stage, uncomfortably closer to home. As was noted in chapter 1, the cultural politics framing of this book evokes a dual concern with Joseph Nye’s (2004) conception of cultural products like film as a mode of ‘soft power’ alongside a consideration



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of cultural forms as implicated in Antonio Gramsci’s (1992) broader notion of producing ‘hegemony’. Our analytical framework, in other words, is directed towards viewing Hollywood security films from two theoretical angles. On one hand, Hollywood film is conceptualised as strongly connected to the state power of the United States and the advancement of national security through the promotion of American perspectives and values in a format that appears to be ‘entertainment’ rather than as national self-interest. On the other hand, Hollywood film is viewed as implicated in the constitution simultaneously of agreement with and complicity in the legitimacy of the national social order. Stanley (2015) asserts bluntly that cultural forms like Hollywood film act, both directly and in more disguised ways, as a propaganda medium for the maintenance, legitimation, and endorsement of national and liberal-democratic security within an international setting. Stanley’s perspective may be conceived as more aligned with Nye’s notion of ‘soft power’ and its depiction of a direct link with state power. Yet Nye’s West-centric understanding of soft power as shaping and wielding influence through appeal rather than violence or coercion presumes a largely uncritical conceptualisation of liberal democracies like the USA as attractive precisely because they are supposedly different from authoritarian regimes – that is, this difference between states marks democratic soft power as distinct from totalitarian propaganda. In this context, a range of commentators have noted that liberal democracies (including the United States) may be rather less free of authoritarian elements than Nye’s neo-liberal reading suggests, and that authoritarian regimes also engage in (soft power) efforts to cast themselves as legitimate and credible.9 Soft power, in this more complex assessment, can include covert as well as conspicuous propaganda, and emerges from a range of governmental regimes, including liberal-democratic nation-states. In keeping with this assessment we employ an analytical mode which brings Nye’s account of soft power together with Stanley’s account of liberal-democratic propaganda. By comparison, we connect Gramsci’s emphasis on the gaining of consent in the production of hegemony with Buzan’s depiction of ‘securitization’ as the diffuse association of the existing social status quo with safety – that is, a political technology concerned with obtaining tractable acquiescence. In short, our second analytical strategy brings together a Gramscian articulation of the

56 Security means to legitimisation of hegemonic power relations with Buzan’s articulation of securitisation. Security as order and disorder (fear) These two theoretical strategies (soft power-propaganda and hegemonic consent-securitisation) produce a cultural politics approach that can be fleshed out in the category of security films by exploring two directions: we consider security films which illustrate a positive, active, ‘us’-focused, security-as-order orientation, as well as those dealing with security-as-disorder and its more negative conception of security as reactive. The ‘order’ category of security films is typified by the blunter, more direct focus of war films, whereas the ‘disorder’ category is much broader and more diffuse. The ‘disorder’ category refers to what we call ‘fear’ films (such as monster movies, disaster movies, and more). The distinction is not always simple: we do not mean to imply that war films never evoke fearful responses, nor that ‘fear’ films do not mobilise concepts of order and ‘the good’. Rather, the distinction hinges on the dual association of order with ‘us’ and disorder with ‘them’. Order movies nearly always allow the ‘enemy’/other to be only marginally imagined, even when these narratives are set in places quite apart from the American homeland. By contrast, disorder movies almost inevitably present the threat in close-up, glorious technicolour. The orientation Nye and Stanley offer may be seen as most strongly reiterated in the former, while the perspectives of Gramsci and Buzan are more clearly demonstrated in the latter. In short, order films are more evidently linked to the imperatives of soft power-propaganda, while disorder (fear) films are more closely aligned with hegemonic consent-securitisation imperatives. When considering order and disorder formats of security films alongside each other, it becomes apparent how infrequently Hollywood films attend to ‘us’, to ‘our’ insider community, ‘our’ moral universe – that is, how little they attend to the United States as a positively imagined, constructed collectivity – as against how regularly these films depict ‘us’ negatively by focusing on what ‘we’ are not – that is, by focusing on an ‘outside’ threat seeking to imperil or attack ‘us’. In other words, order films are considerably outnumbered by disorder (fear) films. This means that understandings of ‘us’ – the community



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or polity worth defending – are very often both axiomatic and inferred, assumed rather than deliberately and clearly laid out. At least in part this lack of development or veiled account of the good ‘us’ may be strategic, especially in a global market place. Since order films necessarily place centre-stage the normative ‘us’ that is at the core of Hollywood security films, de-emphasis or evasion of its specifically American character avoids these films appearing as bluntly national propaganda and thus potentially provoking critical resistance. It may be that security films are more effective, nationally and internationally, when the national-cultural specificity of the security agenda is not directly announced as it is in order films, but rather buried within the evocation of disorder, in the fear of the unknown outlander, the outcast-alien. Perhaps the less a film reveals its instructional premise – the less it undertakes the direct instruction which traditionally characterises propaganda – the better it performs as such. Whatever the case, films which depict security in terms that emphasise ‘us’ and upholding order, rather than focusing on the fearful threat, are not only fewer in number but also arise in a much narrower band of genres. The most obvious genres in which the political mythology of security-as-order is routinely encountered – the narrative of the virtuous legitimate polity and the dangers it faces – arise in war and political leadership movies. While security films as a broad grouping are by no means limited to these forms and may traverse Hollywood genre categories as diverse as science fiction, fantasy, western, horror/ thriller, action, combat, monster, disaster, stranger, and even ‘social problem’ films, security-as-order films are typically more circumscribed. Indeed, their classic form is the war film. In the next chapter, we turn to this narrower band to discuss what might be regarded as the first of the major political myths, or what O’Regan calls ‘thematic regularities’ (1996: 7), apparent in Hollywood film: the myth of conflict undertaken by the virtuous, the myth of the just and ennobling war.

Notes 1 Cited in Young (2003). The juxtaposition of quotations from Bush and Mae West is Young’s. 2 See also Petracca and Sorapure (2012), Storey (2013), and Brummett (2015).

58 Security 3 Brian Rosen was head of the then Australian Film Finance Corporation from 1988 to 2008. That agency was later subsumed within Screen Australia, the federal government body presently responsible for production as well as promotion and distribution of Australian screen content. 4 Semati and Sotirin (1999), De Zoysa and Newman (2002), Scott (2004), Trumpbour (2007), Galloway (2012), and Hoad (2013) all agree that Hollywood is the pre-eminent film industry. However, Hoad challenges the 2013 MPAA figures and considers that if ‘complete stats were available’, Hollywood’s global box office would be higher than 70 per cent. The likelihood that Hollywood’s market share is of the order of more than two-thirds of total global box office is a clear indication of its cultural hegemony. 5 Definitional differences make accurate comparisons difficult. Screen Australia (n.d. [b]), for example, includes co-productions and productions involving ‘a mix of Australians in key creative positions’ in its categorisation of ‘Australian films’. 6 On the usefulness of the terms ‘soft power’ (Nye, 2004) and ‘hegemony’ (Gramsci, 1992), see chapter 2. 7 The notion of ‘the other’ has a long-standing and varied history. It is a term that can be used in many ways, including the psychological means by which self-definition arises, the definition of self in comparison or opposition to others, and, more broadly, the distinction between the social self (us) and social others (them). In contemporary uses of the term – such as feminist, anti-racist, postmodern, and post-colonial uses – the other denotes how the constitution of individual and social identity is by no means a neutral or objective process but rather is historically and culturally contextualised by the operations of power, involving and justifying domination. These contemporary uses display a scepticism towards binary or other categorical distinctions between, for example, men and women, colonisers and colonised, and insiders and outsiders. This is not intended to ignore, downplay, or collapse differences but rather to complicate them, to acknowledge the interdependence and co-constitutive character of categories, and most importantly to refute the self-evidence of hierarchical relations between them (see for instance, Alison Mountz (2009)). 8 This mobilisation is especially evident in those films which are the subject of chapters 5 and 6. We label these ‘fear films’ because they present visions of security in the negative – that is, as disorder, situating the threat, villain, or outsider at the centre of the picture. 9 On this, ‘hybrid regimes’, and the boundaries of ‘soft power’, see Diamond (2002); Rocha-Menocal et al. (2008); Basaran (2011); and Barr et al. (2015).

4 War and order

One of the most pervasive myths reiterated in Hollywood movies is the narrative of virtuous and hence legitimate order – the story of the good nation, the good society, and legitimate leadership and authority. Films which focus on order, on ‘us’, elicit a sense of identification with ‘home’, linking not only self and collective but also citizen and nation in positive, active constructions of security. This construction of security is found in a relatively limited array of genres. By contrast, those which concentrate on disorder, fear of them/it, and threats to the social polity are found in a much more diverse range of genres. In this chapter, our attention rests on films in the former category. Representations of security-as-order can be identified in films from the genres of war, political leadership, combat, spy, cop, and action movies, along with some fantasy and science fiction films. Nevertheless, only the first two – films about war and political leadership – are typically and almost inevitably immersed in the reiteration of security mythology. The most obvious location for political myths relating to ‘security as order’ is war films. War narratives typically revolve around the necessity to secure the virtuous polity, which legitimates the use of violence so that war can be worthwhile and be fought honourably, because the good nation must be defended to the death. The mythical connotations of such contests enable the strictly binary construct of the centre-stage ‘us’ (the good) versus the mostly off-stage evil (‘them’), a construct usually associated with traditional, militarised usages of the term ‘security’ as specifically national security. For example, while a number of films include frequent or intense scenes of combat, all

60 Security war films involve combat scenes which clearly depict national concerns. Films like Kill Bill: Volumes 1 and 2 (2003, 2004), the Karate Kid series (1984–94), and science fiction films like the Predator series (1987–2010) rely heavily on combat action, but do not necessarily engage with notions of security. By contrast, in war films combat is an important means of exploring security. War films are indeed the most explicit genre concerned with upholding the social order in the face of threats to national/cultural sovereignty. They unambiguously evoke identification with a national collectivity, with patriotism, national leadership, national defences, and the military. As such, they offer the most useful shorthand guide to the history of security concerns in Hollywood film, as well as to the degree of alignment between these concerns and those of national government. What is a war film? War films, for our purposes, can be defined as Hollywood movies whose central narrative concerns the activities of uniformed American military personnel in conflict with organised non-American forces. War films constitute a specific genre in that they frequently rehearse settings, characters, plots, and themes in familiar, sometimes formulaic ways. As against the looser category of combat films, war films may be best described as a genre which is typically concerned with narratives about actual historical wars. Sometimes the conflicts represented are in the past (as in Saving Private Ryan, 1998, where the action concerns European battlefields of World War II) and sometimes they are more contemporary (as in the treatment of the Iraq War in The Hurt Locker, 2008). War films invariably feature combat sequences (or ‘see action’): they stage representations of specific historical experiences (usually wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries) and offer a relatively blatant and jingoistic commentary upon the nation/society of the ‘homeland’ being defended – that is, most often, the United States. The historical and social commentary aspect of war films means they are often marked by ‘gritty realism’ (Basinger, 2005: 30), no matter the circumstances in which they are produced. They are intended to portray ‘the real’, to be about the real ‘us’. Hollywood war films very frequently present a relatively diverse assortment of men (representing



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the mythical melting pot of American society) who are assembled into a coherent fighting unit. In We Were Soldiers (2002), the protagonist, Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore (Mel Gibson), is a highly experienced soldier, training troops who are preparing to be sent into the emerging war in Vietnam. Before leaving for Vietnam, Moore delivers a rallying speech to his unit. Look around you. In the 7th Cavalry we got a Captain from the Ukraine, another from Puerto Rico, we got Japanese, Chinese, Blacks, Hispanics, Cherokee Indian, Jews and Gentiles, all American. Now here in the States some men in this unit may experience discrimination because of race or creed, but for you and me now, all that is gone. We’re moving into the valley of the shadow of death, where you will watch the back of the man next to you, as he will watch yours, and you won’t care what colour he is or by what name he calls God. Let us understand the situation: we’re goin’ into battle against a tough and determined enemy … Dead or alive, we all come home together. By this means the audience is reminded of American individualism, of American individual freedom, precisely at the moment of its contingent, heroic sacrifice for the higher good of national defence, although hierarchy in the form of natural leadership invariably emerges (see Basinger, 2005: 31). In war movies, Americans are always sharply distinguished from the usually undifferentiated and inferior enemy, who are very often the faceless, mindless, treacherous, inhuman ‘other’. Indeed, James Agee has described war films as closer to the enactment of a tribal ritual than theatrical performance, and sees them as having ‘nightmarish accuracy’ as a distilled projection of collectivity (cited in Hodgkins, 2002: 74–5). In Hollywood war movies, ‘the enemy’ is identifiable not just by ethnic or racialised markers (though these often do appear), but also in the way they wage war: those constituted as ‘the enemy’ cheat, are treacherous, they imperil women and children, they behave like animals. In Black Hawk Down (2001), for example, the enemy ‘ambush and slaughter’ United Nations peacekeepers, then launch an attack on American soldiers sent to ‘remove’ (rather than slaughter,

62 Security kill, or assassinate) the enemy leader and ‘restore order’. It is important to recognise the gendered character of this distilled projection. The representations of both ‘us’ and ‘them’ are uncritically presented as collectives of men. In this way, the political myth of maintaining security to uphold legitimate order presented in Hollywood war films allows for a collective fraternal solidarity (see chapter 9 for more on this), in which women are cast as window dressing, and used, for the most part, to signal what the men are prepared to sacrifice, temporarily, in order to protect – namely, ‘home’. Women are ironically positioned as the internal group ‘other’, whose presence does not disrupt but rather furthers the centrality of the American male ‘us’, led by a white man. As their representations of women suggest, Hollywood war films link this projection of collectivity with a psychic distillation of home, a psychological placement within a comforting normative order. The action in Hollywood war movies typically occurs in a place marked as ‘foreign’. Contrasts are set up by juxtaposing ‘home’ and the battlefield or by narrating a back-story at the film’s beginning. Maps are sometimes used to locate the scene, as in the opening of Black Hawk Down (2001). In these pointedly foreign contexts, US military personnel are tied to ‘home’ by markers of popular culture, including language, consumer artefacts, and practices. In Black Hawk Down, conversations between enemy combatants are not always subtitled, and local music is punctuated by gunfire and shrieking. In helicopters flown by ‘our’ soldiers, however, the songs of Elvis Presley are played. These markers of popular culture and consumption place the audience firmly on the side of the good, on the side of the group reassuringly arrayed behind the white, (heterosexual) male redeemers. The implication is that the leading white men can solve the problems of the group of subordinate others, usually through means ‘punctuated by acts of courage and heroism’ (Peatling, 2013). In this way, the privileged protagonist offers a vantage point from which everything of significance can be understood and typically resolved – an orientation in keeping with a parallel inclination which Peatling identifies in relation to Hollywood racial inequality films (Peatling, 2013; see also Masur, 2012). Such racial inequality films – including slavery sagas and some biopics – for the most feature a white, male protagonist who saves the dispossessed



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(Dances with Wolves, 1990; The Shawshank Redemption, 1994; Avatar, 2009), or narrate the life story of an establishment, white, male figure who becomes responsible for overcoming racial injustice (Glory, 1989; Lincoln, 2012). Although often they are rather smugly lauded for their radical social critique, such films tend ultimately to reinstate first-world, white, male privilege. War films follow similar narrative formulas in relatively predictable ways. They routinely reiterate that the white, male elite must be entrusted to overcome danger and eliminate risk and injustices. This occurs within the existing social hierarchy and national political arrangements, thus obscuring ongoing inequality both within the group and beyond it (Giroux, 2014). It follows that the existing social hierarchy is tacitly accepted and any emergent doubts are allayed. As Martha Bayles observes, in war films, ‘[at] the level of myth, it [is] important to show the sons of democracy fighting more valiantly than the sons of dictatorship’ (2003: 14). The order of the polity which is defended in war films is painted as (already) just, good, morally upright, and even perfect. Above all, the reason for troops being in these foreign places is almost never detailed (Kane, 1988: 87–8; Andersen, 2006: 217–9; Stahl, 2010: 79). The political and historical context for the group’s involvement in conflict is rarely explained in anything but the most abbreviated fashion. The inference is that the men are there for reasons they do not understand (Kane, 1988: 87). However, they do not need to understand: their ‘job’ is not to rationalise, but to do their duty. An exchange between two American soldiers in Black Hawk Down (2001) illustrates this precisely. One asks ‘You think we shouldn’t be here?’ To which comes the reply ‘Doesn’t matter what I think.’ A further inference here is that even if ‘we’ do not understand the reasons for the conflict, ‘our’ place too is acceptance, as well as to support ‘our’ boys’ sacrifice on ‘our’ behalf. The psychologically comforting aspect of war films revolves around identification with a purportedly virtuous and legitimate homeland and its representatives: emotional security is firmly tied to national security. In this context, anti-war films comprise a very distinct minority and, as will be discussed shortly, flare only momentarily, or for brief historical periods. It is, after all, comparatively pleasurable to be offered

64 Security fantasies of membership and moral worth which allow the viewer to be a good person, belonging to a good community or nation, as against the more uncomfortable and much less frequently aired option of cinematic narratives in which the audience is located on the side of the morally reprehensible or ambiguous, and thus implicated in undeserved privilege, injustice, inequality, or even evil. While there are a few contemporary examples of Hollywood films which do not subscribe to the white, male, redeemer trope (including several racial inequality films like Django Unchained, 2012, and 12 Years a Slave, 2013),1 this is almost ubiquitous in war films. As noted previously, war films are dominated by a concern with portrayal of security as order, and usually confine themselves to depictions of ‘us’ and ‘our’ nation as morally worthy. The proclivity to glorify the nation – specifically, the United States – and its security forces constitutes war as an expression of patriotism. In short, in these films war may be hell, but it is also worthy, uplifting, and redemptive. While accounts of this kind were common in Hollywood war films of World War II (see, for example, The Sands of Iwo Jima, 1949), recently there has been a return of such sentiments. War is, once again, venerated. War films not only revere ‘our’ community/society/nation and thus laud war undertaken on ‘our’ behalf, but also exalt leadership in mythologising ways. In this context, it is interesting to compare images of the military with those of political office. The highly patriotic Saving Private Ryan (1998) was released at the same time as the sceptical Primary Colors (1998) and the socially critical Wag the Dog (1997). Overtly ‘political’ (or capital-P political) movies are often comedies or even satires. The genre location of most ‘political’ films in the realm of the comic locates them as less bound to uphold the social status quo – although they do sometimes stray into celebratory or elegiac biopics. Additionally, the culturally specific elements of films about political life are usually more apparent, often referencing explicitly political concepts and narratives, and are weighty in terms of script and character (as against the word-light action base of most war films). Thus, explicitly ‘political’ (or capital-P political) movies are intended for a smaller, more Anglophone market than, say, war movies, which are usually more globally portable. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the most obvious and globally salient accounts of nation, order, and



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leadership can be found in Hollywood’s war movies. In these films the nation remains intact, even though its political leadership may not be up to the mark. War and nation: the military and Hollywood In conceiving of films as political technologies from a cultural politics approach, connections between the stories which films project and national policy agendas are hard to ignore. These connections are apparent in a number of ways, not least of which is the co-operation (if not outright collusion) evident between Hollywood industry executives and the Pentagon. This relationship is hardly surprising given that the dissemination of American world-views is so readily and effectively delivered by the global domination of the Hollywood film industry. In a 2002 interview, the long-time President and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Jack Valenti, was at pains to describe Hollywood in terms of its independence from government (Valenti, 2002; Alterman and Green, 2004). Ironically, this interview also reveals one of the most flagrant instances of close co-operation between Hollywood and government security agendas. The interview recounts a meeting shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. On 19 November of that year, key figures in the US entertainment industry, including Valenti, met with powerful political identities, such as presidential advisor Karl Rove, at the latter’s instigation. The US government and military clearly saw Hollywood as an important ally in national defence (Frazier, 2002). The outcome of this meeting was an informal agreement that it was timely for Hollywood to endeavour to produce movies with positive patriotic themes. Valenti vowed that Hollywood would ‘go to war’ to actively support the US government, and offer morale-boosting fare for the armed forces. In this context, he praised Saving Private Ryan (1998) as exemplifying the kind of film that would do the job of supporting American national solidarity and military efforts. Prior to this much publicised meeting, the Hollywood film industry was already aligned with US government agendas. Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor (2001), for example, were produced well before the meeting. In the direct wake of the 9/11 attacks, certain action and war

66 Security films such as Training Day (2001), Spygame (2001), Collateral Damage (2002), and Windtalkers (2002) were temporarily shelved as inappropriate. The release dates of both The Quiet American (2002), a film depicting how terrorism could be used by American governments as a pretext for war, and Buffalo Soldiers (2003), a satire about the military, were also delayed (Jacques, 2003). However, this quietly diplomatic concern for audience sensibilities soon expanded to mobilise Valenti’s explicit support for national security. Hollywood began delivering a contemporary explosion of films exemplifying what has since been termed ‘the new patriotism’ or ‘the new militarism’ (Doherty, 2002; Wetta and Novelli, 2003). War films which offered jingoistic or at least celebratory approaches to national security, such as accounts of American ‘get up and go’ – Behind Enemy Lines (2001) – and unflinching heroism – We Were Soldiers (2002) and Black Hawk Down (2001) – were rushed into release (Ansen, 2001; Moses, 2002). Indeed, military documents released in 2001 indicate that the Pentagon has been very willing to co-operate with and influence Hollywood, viewing cinematic depictions as in the nature of a ‘commercial’. The exchange works both ways: many Hollywood producers have been similarly willing to alter plots to show the military in a more heroic light in order to gain access to equipment and property (Lacy, 2003: 613). Instances of collusion between filmmakers and government are not limited to the wake of extraordinary events like 9/11. As Ryan and Kellner observe, connections between Hollywood and the US government and military agencies are long-standing, and patriotic militarism on film at the service of government agendas is by no means new (1988: 210–16). Moreover, Aida Hozić (2001) notes how the use of advanced technology in Hollywood blockbusters has stimulated continuing and even heightened co-operation with the US Department of Defense. She describes this co-operation as now forming a kind of militaryentertainment conglomerate dominating the global media space (see also Der Derian, 2001). In this respect, Hollywood films become ‘a strategic American export’ (Lin, 2002).2 A considerable number of films about war have been directly subject to government influences shaping their content. Two films from different eras exemplify this. During World War II the US government exercised considerable sway over film, even enlisting Hollywood to produce



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direct propaganda of its own (Koppes and Black, 1987; Doherty, 1999b; Loy, 2003). The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) offers a telling instance of this relationship. The film delivered its heavily patriotic message by making use of US Marine Corps archival footage showing troops training in New Zealand (McDonnell, 2001). The military realism of this story, featuring heroic John Wayne and his platoon in the Pacific theatre of war, was crucial to its ‘truthfulness’ as an account of the American role in World War II. In a similar vein, the triumphalist patriotism of Pearl Harbor (2001) looks in many ways like military propaganda – partly because the US military provided extensive support for the film (Lacy, 2003). These instances exemplify a relationship between cultural forms and the state which gives weight to the work of Joseph Nye and Jason Stanley with regard to security films centrally concerned with order – such as Hollywood war films. Nye (2004) insists that cultural forms like film operate as a ‘soft power’ arm of the US state, while Stanley (2015) asserts that such forms act as a medium for more or less covert American propaganda. As Jihong Wan and Richard Kraus have argued, although the Hollywood film industry depicts itself as strongly independent of government, this perspective should be balanced against its ‘long history of turning out entertainment films that implicitly support the political and economic status quo’ (2002: 431–2). A history of Hollywood war films In order to understand ‘the new patriotism’ of contemporary war films, it is necessary to grasp their specific historical development. The broad historical account of Hollywood film presented in chapter 2 outlined three main periods: the ‘Golden Age’ (late 1920s to early 1960s), ‘New Hollywood’ (early 1960s to late 1990s), and ‘Conglomerate Hollywood’ (early 2000s to the present day). We see, alongside each of these periods, related shifts in the war film genre. Golden Age post-war patriotism declines, in the 1960s, with ‘New Hollywood’ challenges to patriotic obedience associated with the Vietnam War, and this mood continues until the early 1980s. These changes were followed by the growth of an ambivalent or disguised rehabilitation of patriotism in the latter part of the New Hollywood epoch associated with Reaganite responses

68 Security to the Cold War. Since the events of 9/11, the Conglomerate Hollywood period has seen the increasing recuperation and reinvigoration of hyperpatriotism. Most recently, as we saw in chapter 2, the relatively literal reconstructions available through war films that enabled displaced accounts of the war on terror have given way to allegorical action blockbusters. Comic-book superhero narratives, in particular, continue to refer (usually obliquely) to the post-9/11 defence of order and the national homeland.3 Moral nation in the Golden Age Depictions of ‘us’ (and ‘our’ nation) as morally worthy are strongly evident in war films produced during and after World War II, continuing in its wake into the 1960s. In this period, war films such as Gung Ho! (1943), The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), To Hell and Back (1955), and Battle of the Coral Sea (1959) glorify the national homeland and present war as an expression of patriotic commitment to that homeland. War is represented as demanding and traumatic but, with few exceptions, also uplifting and honourable. In many ways, the period sets a benchmark for how war films enact the political mythology of the heroic and righteous nation, community, and people. The narrative of Sergeant York (1941) is illustrative, here. Sergeant York at first refuses to fight, but ‘is guided by a wise commanding officer to the realization that freedom cannot be taken for granted’ (Bayles, 2003: 14). This formula became standard for a number of Hollywood war films that followed (and is currently experiencing something of a revival). During World War II, alternative accounts which might have offered a less glorious account of combat and of soldiers were subject to direct censorship by the US government. Many productions involved direct co-operation between filmmakers and government/military personnel, including consultancies tasked with ensuring that representations of military scenes and activities were ‘authentic’. Movies were clearly seen as part of the government’s propaganda effort to keep up morale. Not surprisingly, the equivalence established in Sergeant York’s ‘just war’ formula between the United States and democratic virtue was never challenged: war films of the period were specifically and unproblematic­ ally America-centric. In this context, it is notable that recently there has been some return to such sentiments. War and the military, though not



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irreproachable, are once again reputable, and indeed honoured (Ansen, 2001; Doherty, 2002). Critique and revenge in New Hollywood The advent and repercussions of the Korean War did not see the ‘just war’ formula of Hollywood war films challenged (with the exception of a few films like Pork Chop Hill, 1959). However, in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate (which showed corruption at the highest levels of government), Hollywood movies began to express doubts about unthinking American patriotism as the justification for military undertakings. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hollywood war films had begun to question the notion of ‘my country right or wrong’. In its place, they began to express uncertainty about the trustworthiness of military, intelligence, and political leadership (MASH, 1970), even occasionally showing some distrust of American values as being the best possible way of life (Catch-22, 1970). US involvement in Vietnam was increasingly depicted as a mistake – a national mistake. American soldiers who fought there began to be presented in markedly less positive ways – as drug-addled, deluded, even as engaging in war crimes, and returning home more damaged than ennobled (see for example The Deer Hunter, 1978, Apocalyse Now, 1979, Platoon, 1986, Hamburger Hill, 1987). While several important films critical of the Vietnam War were released as late as the 1980s (Platoon; Full Metal Jacket, 1987; Hamburger Hill), these films arguably show a shift away from the implied criticism of both national leadership and the soldier characteristic of the 1960s/1970s films towards a construction of soldiers as victimised. The short-lived critical phase outlined above led to expressions of betrayal by conservatives and the political/military establishment (Suid, 1999: 269; Lembcke, 2010). Perhaps the outrage itself reveals the extent to which Hollywood had been aligned with government agendas. In any case, the industry began to be seen, somewhat ironically, as irredeemably left-leaning, anti-establishment, and anti-war. Indeed, Hollywood was increasingly perceived by national elites as traitorous, as having committed a disloyalty to the nation for which it needed to atone. Alongside the shift in the political agenda signalled by the election of Hollywood alumnus Ronald Reagan to the presidency,

70 Security space for criticism of the status quo narrowed. In addition, by the 1980s the industry was restructuring in ways that were likely in themselves to curtail continuing critical analysis. The rise of massive media conglomerates accompanied a shift back towards US government agendas and a rehabilitation of traditional notions of home, hearth, and Americans in combat situations. Examples include Taps (1981), Top Gun (1986), and a whole range of gung-ho, hyper-masculine action movies – like the Terminator and Rambo series – with warrior protagonists often sporting ‘spectacular bodies’ that were essentially invincible (Tasker, 1993). For the most part, films of the 1980s avoided references to any specific, real war. In the exceptions that did, there was movement away from the mood of the previous decade. For instance, in the ‘Rambo’ film First Blood (1982) – a definitive 1980s security-as-order film – the Vietnam vet is constructed as victim. Films of this era were often clearly pro-Republican/pro-Reagan in content. They typically express antagonism towards government administrators but great faith in individualist entrepreneurial aggression, characterised as the spirit of the American nation. The Rambo series (1982, 1985, 1988, and 2008) enabled the reconstruction of the patriotic hero and the virtuous nation by blaming a faulty administration. Significantly, in First Blood Rambo asks ‘Do we get to win this time?’ and in so doing offers a ‘do over’ opportunity for Americans to re-fight the Vietnam War. In this and other films Americans are thus granted ‘a symbolic victory’ (Sutton and Winn, 2001). National leaders (both military and political) are still presented negatively in these films, but men at war stand in as national heroes (as in Missing in Action, 1984). The good soldier may be said to maintain national pride, to carry the dominant politics of the good ‘us’. This focus on the honourable or at least sympathetic brotherhood of comrades-in-arms has intensified and remains apparent today. Perhaps it is no surprise that it was possible to reprise Rambo in 2008, in keeping with the further recuperation of Americans at war after 9/11. By the 1990s it was becoming less possible to criticise, let alone demonise, American men at war (consider Forrest Gump, 1994; or Air Force One, 1997). Nevertheless, actual wars, especially contempor­ ary wars, remained difficult to depict – symptomatic, perhaps, of an



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underlying social discomfort. Vietnam still echoed as a failure. At the end of the twentieth century, the symbolic victory granted in 1980s films gave way to a more straightforwardly righteous ‘compensatory fantasy’ (Moses, 2002; Palmer, 2003: 42). Return of hyperpatriotism (‘new’ patriotism) in Conglomerate Hollywood The end of the 1990s saw the emergence of a wave of salutary combat films about the past (Saving Private Ryan, 1998; The Patriot, 2000; Pearl Harbor, 2001). Setting the drama in historical conflicts – especially World War II – enabled easy engagement with a time when the American national identity was seen as untarnished. This nostalgic approach intensified with the rollback of critical accounts of nation and war after 11 September 2001. As noted earlier in this chapter, in November 2001 a meeting was held between key political and entertainment industry figures (including Karl Rove and Jack Valenti) to discuss cultural responses to the 9/11 attacks. The New York Times reported in March 2002 that ‘the Pentagon’s image builders take Hollywood just as seriously as they take the news media, if not more so … In the wake of September 11, the military sees what television analysts call “militainment” as one of the most effective ways to get its message across’ (as cited by Frazier, 2002: 4). Since one of the central themes of US foreign policy since World War II has been to expand both global trade and soft power cultural influence, and the MPAA (the industry’s peak body) has the same global strategy, this synergy of interest is hardly surprising (Frago et al., 2010). Saving Private Ryan epitomised the future direction of Hollywood films, effecting an intense idealisation of and mythologising of World War II as, above all, a ‘just war’ and of its soldiers as the ‘greatest generation’. The film captured the contemporary shift to ameliorate the painful legacy of Vietnam in the national psyche through recuperation of American participation in the ethos of war (Pinkowitz, 2016). In the shadow of the events of 9/11, two films consistent with the tenor of the Rove/Valenti meeting were rushed into an early release (Black Hawk Down, 2001, and We Were Soldiers, 2002). Both films presented American soldiers in an unabashedly patriotic way, as honourable comrades. They also offer this account in ways which reference

72 Security the Vietnam War explicitly or indirectly (Doherty, 2002).4 This would have been unthinkable twenty or even ten years before, when social disquiet about the justness of that war and its effects were still prevalent. Miramax, the company that delayed releasing a film which depicted how terrorism could provide government with a rationale to advance warmongering (The Quiet American, 2002), stated the post-9/11 situation clearly when its co-chairman Harvey Weinstein said ‘you needed to have your head examined if you thought this was a time for questioning America’ (cited in Jacques, 2003). The surge of unapologetic American nationalism in Hollywood war films in the early part of the Conglomerate Hollywood period began to shift somewhat towards the latter half of George W. Bush’s presidency (which extended from January 2001 to January 2009). Signs of somewhat more equivocal elements began to surface in films like Jarhead (2005), Rendition (2007), The Hurt Locker (2008), The Messenger (2009), and Green Zone (2010). In these more recent war films, patriotic glorification of war is muted, at least compared with the earlier part of the contemporary Conglomerate Hollywood era. Nevertheless, several iconic spy films strongly linked with war themes, such as Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Argo (2012), remain on patriotic target and largely endorse US foreign policy. Though Zero Dark Thirty incorporates some concerns about the organisation of homeland security, both films strongly reinforce the pluck and inventive talent of US intelligence services. In Argo, a CIA agent rescues American hostages from Iranian hordes, while Zero Dark Thirty depicts the hunt for Osama Bin Laden as a distasteful or even sullied operation, but nevertheless a justifiable heroic action-adventure by US national security forces. For the most part, however, war films in the current period offer an odd recycling of the disguised rehabilitation associated with the second part of the New Hollywood period (from the 1980s to the late 1990s). Just as this earlier period entailed a movement between doubt and patriotism, so too the Conglomerate Hollywood period since the mid-2000s shows signs of a comparable shift in perspective. In this case, however, the movement is away from overheated patriotism to a more veiled form, a movement which involves forms of recuperative redirection. The first form of recuperative redirection, which is of direct significance in war films (in the New Hollywood period and



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again today), involves the replaying of Reaganite uncertainties about the state, about its leadership and organisation in relation to political, intelligence, and military administration, along with an associated stress on the soldier as victimised hero. Once again the virtuous nation and just war are recuperated through mythologising the honourable or at least sympathetic brotherhood of soldiers who bear the symbolic weight of the good ‘us’. Green Zone (2010), for example, raises some questions regarding the Iraq War (the second Gulf War, 2003–11). It casts some doubt on claims about Iraqi weaponry that provided the grounds for the US invasion, but reasserts the unshakeable bond between brothers-in-arms. Films like Jarhead (2005) and The Hurt Locker (2008) offer a less obviously equivocal tone in their harsh accounts of the first Gulf War (1990–91) and the Iraq War respectively. Their critical elements are deeply buried beneath the focus on action. In many ways, these films continue in the vein of post-9/11 movies like Black Hawk Down (2001), upholding Jack Valenti’s aim for Hollywood to present positive patriotic themes through recuperative representations of comradely brotherhood. Indeed, all of these films enable us to identify with American soldiers’ suffering as they undertake war in other, foreign (Middle Eastern) lands. Tara McKelvey goes so far as to state that, although The Hurt Locker represents the trauma and violence of war, its construction is still that of US propaganda, insofar as ‘you feel empathy for the [US] soldiers when they shoot … For all the graphic violence, … The Hurt Locker is one of the most effective recruiting vehicles for the US Army that I have seen’ (2009). This point returns us to the ways in which war films offer instances of links between Nye’s (2004) conception of soft power and Stanley’s (2015) account of propaganda in liberal democracies. The critical and box-office success of The Hurt Locker appears to confirm a renewed interest in and comfort with representing an American viewpoint in relation to war. While recent Hollywood war films now tend to offer less-than-eulogising scenes of combat, they are by no means anti-war. Their Middle Eastern locations appear to provide a way of emotionally engaging with the US military and ongoing American engagement with conflicts in Iraq and other countries in the Middle East. Such films still offer a means of responding to, compensating for, and even avenging

74 Security the 11 September attacks on the United States, just as the Hollywood war films of the 1980s and 1990s attempted to respond to and re­ habilitate memories of Vietnam. A sense of uncertain engagement sits alongside a strongly patriotic tone, but by no means refutes it. These films are not the same as the wholehearted embrace of glory played out in Saving Private Ryan (1998), but their bleak account of war itself is not necessarily at odds with Valenti’s vow that Hollywood would ‘go to war’ in support of the US government. This manoeuvre is accomplished by acknowledging the harshness of war and doubts about the US administration, while simultaneously redirecting those doubts towards embracing the heroic brotherhood of US soldiers. As Bayles observes, the prevalent ethos in contemporary war movies is that American soldiers fight for each other as much as – or more than – for the nation (Bayles, 2003: 18). They fight, in other words, for the American people rather than for the state, politicians, or generals: they are ‘us’, and precisely at a distance from those in power who formally represent the American nation. An example of this recent shift towards a more veiled, yet popularist, hyperpatriotism can be seen in the film American Sniper (2014); tellingly, the highest-grossing war film in US film history – a title previously held by Saving Private Ryan (1998). Indeed American Sniper is the highest-grossing war-themed film that has ever been produced, anywhere (Epstein, 2015; Whitney, 2016). The film tells the ‘true-life’ story of a Navy SEAL legendary for his pinpoint accuracy in killing the enemy in Iraq. After his four tours of duty he returns to the USA but continues to be traumatised by his war experience. While US soldiers in the 1970s were presented in films as more damaged than ennobled by war, this film does not present that damage in the same unfavourable light. Instead it offers a sympathetic eye that more closely resembles the 1980s/1990s perspective on soldiers as heroic victims who bear the marks of their sacrifice on ‘our’ behalf. The compensatory righteousness that is associated with the 1980s/1990s epoch is certainly muted. However, patriotic righteousness is not entirely done away with, but rather recuperated in a form of attention to the emotional wounds suffered by US soldiers – that is, it is reclaimed through resignification as manhood melodrama. The classic Hollywood melodrama (1930s to 1950s) focuses on a female protagonist who must face exceptional



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personal sacrifice (Palmer, 2003). However, manhood war melodramas (or ‘male weepies’, as Lutz [2002: 186] labels them) like American Sniper revolve around a male protagonist. Their heightened emotionality is made palatable for men – is rendered ‘for’ men – by attaching emotions to public matters like nation and war. A second major form of recuperative redirection of patriotic themes that has become increasingly dominant since the mid-2000s involves a form of filmic navigation that is also reminiscent of the 1980s/1990s. This mode involves displacement rather than emotive resignification. If films of the earlier period ‘saw action’ but avoided referring to specific wars, by the mid-2000s this tendency became even more pronounced, with moviemakers channelling attention away from war as such in favour of fantasy combat settings drawn from comic-book battles. The narrative of the blockbuster franchise enabled a compression of the war story-line into a simplified allegorical struggle between good and evil, featuring superficial character ‘types’ representing each side of the struggle. Such compression enables the resurfacing of the good ‘us’, along with glorification of the ethos of war and of retro, superheroic ‘soldiers’ that would not be easily digested within the gritty realist format of war films. In Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), the American patriotism praised by Jack Valenti can be accessed once more. Such comic-book extravaganzas engage dramatically in the broader political-mythological role of Hollywood film in defending the homeland by validating its polity and simultaneously effacing uncertainty and insecurity. These fantasy blockbusters are increasingly important in and have become emblematic of the contemporary era’s reference to 9/11. We are indeed in the high renaissance of superhero culture (Maher, 2015), but also of the displacement mode of securityas-order films. America-centric war Whether set in recognisable if resignified conflicts or as allegorical displacements, Hollywood war films offer a point of view which almost invariably upholds US centrality and worth. While there are some instances of resistance to this perspective, for the most part such films uphold a national security agenda. Their America-centric

76 Security perspective – a perspective which could restrict their global appeal – is buried and repackaged. For example, war films like Valenti’s favourite, Saving Private Ryan (1998), employ a range of techniques to encourage identification with the filmic ‘us’ on screen. The first twenty-seven minutes of the film graphically sets up the brutal World War II Allied invasion of the Normandy coast. The film focuses on the Omaha Beach assault on 6 June 1944 (D-Day), an assault which saw heavy casualties. The American soldiers arrive at the beach and the audience arrives in a very visceral way ‘with’ them. The camera’s viewpoint is at the eye-level of the soldiers: ‘we’ see what they see. The American soldiers are under siege, subjected to unrelenting attack from invisible enemy machine-gunners who are located on high cliffs above the beach and whose faces are never seen. The American soldiers are exposed, vulnerable. They are mown down in the boats, in the water, and on the shore. The us/them construction of the battle could not be more stark. In Saving Private Ryan (as in Black Hawk Down (2001) and We Were Soldiers (2002), along with most other Hollywood war films), Americans are presented as under attack, and as overcoming the enemy against the odds, even when they are ‘elite soldiers’ with all manner of military technologies at their disposal. This is a ‘soft power’ myth presenting the USA as underdog, despite the nation’s unsurpassed military might. The myth is that when Americans win, it is because they are the most worthy, not because they are better armed, more numerous, or better resourced than ‘the enemy’. Such myths reinforce the view that America has the moral right to lead the world in a highly personalised way. The camera personalises the individuals that are ‘us’ on screen. Saving Private Ryan uses techniques like slow motion, faster shutter speeds, and blurring of sound to simulate and encourage a feeling of submersion in the dangerous but sublime (Bayles, 2003: 18) experience of the soldiers. We are encouraged to identify with the ‘us’ of the brotherhood of soldiers. This focus on wordless spectacle inhibits questions, explanations, justifications, or doubts about our identification with the filmic ‘us’. It is no surprise that war films have recently returned to the soldier-as-victim trope of an earlier time. Saving Private Ryan is a nakedly patriotic film, yet it universalises the American ‘us’. Holly­ wood security-as-order films (including, and especially, war films) put



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us all into the boots of American soldiers. We are them, fighting off other bad men. What could be more political than that? Notes 1 It is much more common in other ‘national’ cinemas (including, for example, the Australian film industry) to present racial inequality narratives which are decidedly confronting for white – non-Indigenous – audiences. However, such national offerings offer niche appeal and are precisely not like Hollywood films which are produced for a large-scale box office engaging mainstream white audiences. Relevant Australian films with a focus on racial inequality include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978); Dead Heart (1996); Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002); The Tracker (2002); Ten Canoes (2006); and Samson & Delilah (2009). 2 This point is in some ways the critical flipside of an analytical focus employed by Jack Snyder (1977) which drew attention to what he called ‘strategic culture’. The term was coined to note the crucial strategic importance of culture and cultural products to assessment of national security concerns. 3 For further analyses of the history of Hollywood war films, see Shaheen (1978); Adair (1981); Koppes and Black (1987); Dittmar and Michaud (1991); Doherty (1999b); Hjort and MacKenzie (2000); Neale (2000a); Evans (2001); McAdams (2002); and Bayles (2003). 4 We Were Soldiers (2002) is about the Vietnam War. Black Hawk Down (2001), while explicitly set in Somalia, references the Vietnam War in its claustrophobic sense of ‘our boys’ being placed in a strange and hostile location in which the people to be saved seem hardly distinguishable from the enemy and there is certainly no sense of being welcomed as saviours. Black Hawk Down’s account of a perilous – almost hallucinatory – mission has a disturbing intensity reminiscent of Apocalypse Now (1979), the apogee of critical Vietnam War movies.

5 Disorder and fear

Fear, as both a motivation for and tactic of security, occupies an important place in cultural politics. Security can be understood positively as the struggle to generate or protect the social order, moral worth, and the citizenry, or negatively as struggling against or dealing with threats. Security films reiterate conceptions of order, virtue, authority, and safety on one hand, as against disorder, impropriety, social rifts, and danger on the other. In this chapter and the next, we turn to this second side of security films. When security is figured as a response to insecurity and disorder, it is usually reactive and based in fear. A range of political analyses have noted the strong links between (national/ political) security and fear of disorder. The approach of such analyses, whether focused on the state or on broader notions of human security, and whether they attend to international relations, homeland security, or security per se, places the significance of fear centre-stage (Buzan, 2007; Booth and Wheeler, 2008; Harvey, 2008). Critical security studies like Anthony D. Burke (2008) and feminist commentators like Laura Sjoberg (2010) insist that security involves upholding the legitimacy of existing power relations and nation-states through the enabling impact of fear of threat. Indeed, Barry Buzan and his colleagues refer in this context to ‘panic politics’ (1998: 34; see also Browning and McDonald, 2011). Within the notion of security, order and disorder are thus twin concepts: order staves off disorder; disorder is recuperated into order. Each term relies on the other. However, their conceptual separation is readily apparent in Hollywood movies. When the focus is on security



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as order (as in war movies), the antagonist (the danger, the ‘enemy’) is rarely represented in any detail. The villainous enemy in these films is often absent, imagined, or amorphous – the threatening shadow. By contrast, in the movies to which we now shift our attention, the focus is on order’s necessary counterpoint – security as disorder, and this entails a shift in focus to that which generates fear, the scary ‘them’ or ‘it’. Order narratives, explored in the previous chapter, present a protected and safe homeland, with threats to ‘us’ usually occurring at some geographical distance. Films attending to negative versions of security draw attention precisely to boundaries, margins, and vulnerabilities, and bring ‘them’ or ‘it’ (the threat) closer to home. In what we have termed in shorthand as ‘fear films’, we see the narrative thrill of danger and relief when safety is (usually, eventually) restored – or, at the very least, the movie ends. Fear movies – movies foregrounding disorder – present threats to ‘our’ safety and sense of belonging. In this chapter, we explore the politics of cinematic fear by considering how disorder is represented on screen. After defining the scope of ‘fear’ films and their complex engagement with security, we sketch a panoply of fear movies across the categories of strangers, disasters, and monsters, identifying in each case what Hollywood movies say about the politics of what or whom we should fear. What are ‘fear’ films? Fear is central to a very broad range of narratives. While horror movies may exhibit the most obvious connections to socio-political fear, they are by no means its only expression: in fact, a wide variety of films mobilise fear in ways that are not without a political logic. Opportunities for thinking about the cultural politics of fear are presented in science fiction, superhero, spy, and sometimes even children’s movies. Fear may also arise in in romance or drama, since identifying with protag­ onists makes us care about the decisions they make and the risks they face. Comedy regularly deploys relations of fear: we may flinch as we anticipate the protagonist losing his pants or saying the wrong thing; we laugh when the consequences are ‘wrong’ but not catastrophic or terminal. Laughter can, after all, be conceptualised as the resolution of fear. Indeed, any narrative resolution can be understood as some

80 Security version of danger averted or fear allayed. Fear is evident in one way or another in almost every Hollywood film. It is useful to keep this broader scope in mind, while we focus in this and the next chapter on movies which engage more directly with the fearful. If fear is ever-present across a range of genres, what do we mean by ‘fear films’? We use this terminology to refer to movies whose main intention is to unsettle or frighten, and which also exhibit various elements or forms of political mythology. Thus, in fear movies we see social defences being disrupted, allowing monsters, strangers, germs, demons, disintegration, chaos, diseases, and death to advance to our doorstep. In schematic terms, fear films usually see one or more protagonists staving off or killing a threat constructed as evil, villainous, and destructive. Fear movies can be frightening by degrees, of course. Given that some degree of fear can arise in even relatively innocuous stories, there are hybrid and clear-cut forms. Adventure movies, for example, can present narratives that are fundamentally similar to fear films, requiring a hero to save the day against natural or human-made peril. The difference, perhaps, lies in style as much as story: fear films use a range of familiar techniques to distinguish them from other genres. In fear films, we hear dissonant, spare music, see shadows and indistinct forms loom, and the general mise-en-scène is typically low key, subdued, even bleak. These markers signal that the seemingly stable and secure has become unsafe, the social fabric is disturbed in troubling, discomfiting ways. In contrast, adventure movies are typically advanced by pounding orchestration and vivid colour, accompanying derring-do that can be exciting, even breath-taking, but rarely produces the anxious corporeal tensions that fear films do. Watching fear films, we hold our breath, gasp, wince, flinch, quail, and even squeeze shut our eyes. Movies that are intended to be unsettling are not usually understood to be properly or obviously political. In this sense fear films provide a paradigmatic example of our cultural politics approach in this book. They illustrate our distance from Giglio’s view that only a very small percentage of Hollywood films are political rather than ‘strictly commercial’ (Giglio, 2014: 1–2), a view which requires a narrow conception of the political in cultural forms. For us, fear films offer a marked refutation of conceptions of power as neatly compartmentalised. Rather,



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in these films, danger and vulnerability are revealed as ever-present in all social relations. Thus, we suggest, fear films exemplify the cultural politics framework of that expanded or inclusionary understanding of the political employed by Ryan and Kellner (1988), Lapsley and Westlake (2006: ix–x), Haas, Christensen, and Haas (2015: 5–8, 13, 15), and Kellner (n.d.[a]: 2–3), among others.1 In this framework, the exercise of power, and indeed of violence, pervades every aspect of everyday life and culture. As Beverly Kelley suggests, ‘movies reflect political choices’, even though ‘not with looking-glass clarity, but often as shadowed, displaced and distorted’ (Kelley, 1998: xv). Indeed, category instability is exactly what characterises fear films. As we argued in chapter 4, political messages are very often explicitly manifest in those films which offer security narratives attending to order (such as in war movies). Here ‘the political’ typically arises in the form of a strict binary category distinguishing insider/outsider (often, citizen/foreigner), and this dichotomy is clearly associated with the operations of the state, of governments, and their imperatives. However, in a much larger number of movies, notions of ‘the good society’, proper authority, and security are negatively constructed through their failings, as the borders of the realm of the comfortable and the safe are breached. In security-as-disorder scenarios – that is, fear films – the protagonists are under attack, overrun, and fighting to survive. This is often the case in war films, too, but in fear films there is an anxiety-provoking blurring of categories. The divide between what is safe and what is not, what represents comfort as against unease, is disturbed. It is no longer clear what is understood and secure as opposed to what is foreign and in doubt: fear inheres in this instability. Fear films offer an account of security concerns as diffuse and – in keeping with Buzan’s (1983, 2007) conception of securitisation – not simply located in states and institutions. Fear films usually offer a less distinctly identifiable ‘us’ and ‘them’, foregrounding that danger is not easily compartmentalised or externalised. In exemplary fear narratives like zombie movies, the point is precisely that ‘they’ were once ‘us’ and that ‘we’ can turn into ‘them’. Disorder is presented in these films in so many different forms that it is difficult to enumerate its multiple incarnations. What many fear films have in common, however, is an anxious concern with the natural and

82 Security the unnatural; the known and the unknown; and movement across these categories. Key dichotomies destabilised in fear films include insider/ outsider, familiar/strange, and safety/danger. Fear can arise anywhere at any time – even (or perhaps especially) in the safest, most ordinary, domestic, and banal of places. Indeed, part of fear’s potential as a creative catalyst appears to lie in reimagining and redrawing the lines of the safe and familiar against the unpredictable and dangerous in unexpected, fluid, and diffuse ways. Some of the most effective fear films work precisely at this juncture. The Hitchcock classic The Birds (1963), for example, takes its eponymously pretty symbols of freedom and tranquillity and recasts them as malicious predators. The familiar, non-threatening, and natural behaviour of birds is flipped to become strange, deadly, and unnatural. In movies like the Insidious series (2010–15) children are the vehicles of demonic possession, reversing the normal order of familial power relations and rendering that which is supposed to be innocent and unconditionally, universally loveable – our children – dangerous and repulsive (Balmain, 2007; Renner, 2016). Fear movies often invert normal relationships and conventions. In The Gift (2015), a seemingly unremarkable event – bumping into a former high-school acquaintance at a department store – precipitates the stranger’s annihilation of a happy and successful couple. A ‘gift’ from that stranger – something which might ordinarily be considered a welcome pleasantry – becomes, instead, a source of ruinous disorder. Fear films can represent even the most trusted and mundane people, things, or situations as other than usually imagined. In the realm of fear films, the world appears as strange, uncanny, inexplicable, and also as excessive, overwrought, hysterical. By comparison, security-asorder films offer engagements with danger that not only foreground where safety lies – the moral worth and orderliness of ‘home’ and ‘us’ – but present an orderly narrative involving a world with relatively clear demarcations and hierarchies. When set against fear films, the male melodrama of war films seems tragically coherent and the madness of their violence relatively intelligible. A broadly typical narrative trajectory is discernible in fear movies, in spite of their wide variety. Such films often open with a vision of imperfect but comfortable normality. The protagonists are introduced in the context of their familiar or even prosaic lives. Their concerns



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and irritations are inevitably small: they work long hours for an un­ appreciative boss; they get caught in traffic; the store runs out of their favourite brand. These everyday irritations are not the end of the world, and their purpose is to juxtapose inconsequentiality precisely against some version of the end of the world – invasion, contagion, fiends, demons, catastrophe – each bringing potentially violent, horrible, and untimely death. The catalyst for action is always survival, and the tensions priming characters’ behaviour frequently turn on questions of practical competency and trust. Fear shears away the niceties of its protagonists and their safe world, reducing any- and everyone to supposed fundamentals, depicted in terms of individual responses to the struggle to survive. In this sense, each fear film reiterates a cultural politics which depicts the peeling away of the mannered social surface to reveal the abject real, the state of nature beneath the supposedly extrinsic scaffolding of civilised social life. Fear films depart from the simpler world of security-as-order movies and take a step away from their more restricted narrative forms. Preoccu­ pation with fear is by no means limited to a single genre. Nevertheless, fear movies certainly cluster in key genres such as horror, thriller, supernatural, and slasher, and through the appearance of these styles or tropes within other genres. Indeed, the most obvious genre implicated in relations of fear is horror. The horror genre is distinguishable as a means for projecting ‘collective nightmares’ (Wood, 1978: 26). As Kendall R. Phillips notes, ‘horror films tend to tap into broader cultural anxieties’ (2012: 2). They index more amorphous, wide-ranging, extreme, yet also less rational, less acceptable fears. In their engagement with the collective, they exemplify the other side of security, the disquiet occasioned by disruption to normal social life, and in this way fear movies are fundamentally political. Ken Gelder suggests in this context that such movies ‘have their own “politics”’, making a range of positions available (Gelder, 2000: 1), including those which sit outside or violate the politics of security-as-order. In this way, they offer us ways of characterising, confronting, and containing what is problematic, transgressive, or evil in society. The more conventional approach within film scholarship to these collective cultural anxieties has been to consider such films as texts implicated in shared psychological processes experienced at the level

84 Security of individual inner life, in particular as concerned with psychoanalytic conceptions of the ‘return of the repressed’ (see, for example, Clover, 1992; Creed, 1993; Gelder, 2000; Lowenstein, 2005; Tarratt, 2012). In an early essay, Sigmund Freud put forward the concept of ‘the return of the repressed’ as a means to describe the re-activation of repressed memories in the form of symptomatic substitutes which present as disturbingly obsessional ideas and affects. Freud’s account remains influential amongst a range of contemporary psychoanalytic practitioners who, in keeping with Freud, assert that cathartic restoration of conscious access to the trauma that has been repressed enables therapeutic repair to occur (Freud, 1896: 169–70; 1915: 54; Kihlstrom, 1995). Film scholarship has employed this notion to discuss how the horror narrative troubles the unity and homogeneity of the self by drawing upon ‘primitive’/infantile and unresolved conflicts while also providing the cathartic experience of pleasurable momentary containment (see Lapsley and Westlake, 2006: 148–9). However, the horror genre’s engagement with shock, anger, terror, ‘unacceptable’ erotics and violence, and inexplicable chaos is not to be understood only within the context of shared psychological affect. It can also be explored as an avenue for bringing to the fore those ‘collective nightmares’ to which Wood refers in relation to risks to security. These nightmares do not just involve risks to the security of the individual self, but also to ‘us’, to our collective security. While the cultural politics of security-as-order films, exemplified in war films, is concerned with maintaining the polity and often with vanquishing or repressing doubt, fear films in the horror genre turn the central question of the political – that is, ‘how we ought to live together’ (Shorten, 2016) – into a narrative of catastrophic breakdown. The spectre of annihilation, of cataclysm, of all safety lost, which haunts every fear film but is unrelentingly centre-stage in the horror format, animates deeply held terrors. These repressed terrors return in gripping, excessive form in horror movies. And, because they are bounded by the constricted time-scale conventions of film-watching, they also provide access to both cathartic and comforting containment. The purgative wallowing in the rupture of the normal offered by horror films rarely enables any alternative social vision. Rather, they provide access to a kind of adrenaline-fuelled joyriding, with the promise of consolation available



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through the destruction of insecurity and coming ‘home’ – even if only temporarily. Because of our cultural politics focus, we do not intend to engage in any sustained way with the psychological or psychoanalytical contours of horror. Rather, in this chapter (and the next), we explore fear films through marking their relationship to the political and, especially, the political trope of security. Fear: the fragility of the social fabric The politics of security is constituted by order and its many others. When security is envisioned in terms of order (such as is found in war and political leadership movies, among other genres), we see the state’s defences and protections for its people succeed, thanks to their hierarch­ ical organisation, moral fortitude, and so on. The chaos of otherness, invasion, and unwelcome change is managed, contained, forestalled, or defeated. Nations (and the identities aligned with them) are defined and defended. Fear movies are also immersed in the question of security, but through a reactive focus on disorder – that is, security in its negative or reversed image. In fear movies, we see the state’s defences, provisions, and protections for its people fail, whether as a consequence of carelessness, bad luck, misconduct, or wickedness. Chaos is unleashed, catches us inadequately prepared, and threatens to defeat us. Although usually disorder is ultimately fended off and comparative security is restored (particularly in pre-2000s movies), fear films also allow the possibility that chaos is only ever kept at bay temporarily and is likely to return.2 For example, in the case of fear franchises like The Omen (1976–81; 2006) and the Alien series (1979–2017), this means ‘the beast’ always comes back, giving rise to enhanced commercial benefits within the apposite format of obsessive repetition of reanimated nightmares. In other words, fear films can provide momentary relief but, unlike most Hollywood films, do not entirely contain what they manifest. The ‘happy ending’ is perhaps merely contingent, and may be equivocal. Furthermore, in the aftermath of chaos we may see irrevocable trauma and damage. Sometimes disruption is total, destroying all in its path, disavowing even provisional relief, and ends in apocalypse. The monster movie Cloverfield (2008) is one of these profoundly unsentimental

86 Security instances, a narrative that offers little or no containment or consolation, let alone redemption. While security-as-order films are in many ways markedly different from fear films in terms of their perspective, focus, and logic, both types of film share certain features. Security – whether protecting order or attempting to restore it in the face of disorder – is characterised by hierarchically governed responses. In this setting, political theorist Mitchell Dean identifies two conceptual contrasts on which understandings of government depend: ‘the first, within the territorial state, between society and state; the second, between the state and its outside, whether conceived as a society of states, the international community or a Hobbesian state of nature’ (2007: 42). Fear movies invoke and realise the breaching of these distinctions. They show us states of emergency in which existing provisions (supposed to protect us) fail. If security (understood in terms of order) is tethered to government and obedient (or ‘docile’) citizenship, security in relation to disorder-fear emerges, by contrast, from the breakdown of that relationship. Fear films thus deliver citizens from an organised and familiar context to a mythologic­ ally fearful state of nature in which no particular relationships or responses can be predicted or assumed – an anarchic dystopia in which people must fend for themselves emerges in place of the polity. Fear films show us in stark relief that, beneath the thin gloss of ‘civilisation’ and orderly governance, there lies a more primal, constant, struggle for individual/familial survival. These films in many ways proffer a Hobbesian world-view of individuals as necessarily and exclusively self-interested (Hobbes, 1651), a vision in keeping with Margaret Thatcher’s famous neo-liberal edict that there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. (Thatcher, 1987; Gould, 2013) Fear films offer the threat of underlying destructive chaos rising to the surface, a threat which may be cast as utterly malevolent and yet strangely pleasurable and attractive. The threat that is centre-stage in such films typically touches on the conservative pleasure of containing



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(even if contingently) what we fear, by providing both an instructive lesson regarding what undermined order might unleash, and gratitude for order’s return. However, there is also sometimes an undercurrent in this pleasurable wallowing in disorder, in which fear of threats to order provides an acceptable cover for their seductive allure, thus permitting a disguised element of critique of the social order and its limitations. Certainly, there are pleasures in the spectacle of mass destruction. The extravaganza of demolition can be captivating in itself, and gives rein to the Schadenfreude of watching the once-mighty or at least smugly normative fall. There is pleasure, too, in imagining rebuilding from the ruins. In a mirror-image of the apparently diverse band of brothers who cohere as a military unit in war movies, fear movies explore how individuals must reform bonds and generate their own social fabric (their ‘us’) from scratch. In some ways, then, security-as-disorder movies are anchored in the political myth of the social contract, in which individual selfhood and anarchic freedom are exchanged for the social protection offered by government through law. Many fear movies explore what happens when that contract fails. In her study of twenty-first-century zombie movies, Nicole Birch-Bayley cites the following telling dialogue from the British film, 28 Days Later (2002): ‘What about the government? What are they doing?’ Jim asks. ‘There is no government,’ Selena responds. ‘Of course there’s a government. There’s always a government. They’re in a bunker or a plane.’ ‘No, there’s no government,’ Mark answers. ‘No police. No army. No TV. No radio. No electricity.’ (Birch-Bayley, 2012: 1142)

Fear for all Fear movies present social order – and the social contract itself – as fragile. They show us that chaos lies just beneath the crust of convention and, at any moment, any of us might fall through. This is cast as terrifying, yet perhaps also somewhat thrilling – the absence of rules

88 Security means that anything is permissible, and clears the way for the possibility of ‘both reactionary and radical’ responses (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 57). The contents of the orderly social contract, however, remain abstract and largely given. Hollywood movies rarely offer the opportunity to reflect on notions of the social fabric, collectivity, community, or ‘our’ shared values except as a broadly moral way of living. The limited specificity concerning the ‘us’ that is under attack allows the focus to fall on the threat, and staves off any but the most arbitrary construction of cause and effect. In fear movies, there is rarely any coherent reason why particular victims are targeted; rather, the attacks and disasters represented occur more or less randomly. For instance, the quarry of the stranger-monster figure is often arbitrary. The effete, cannibalistic, serial killer Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) is undiscriminating in his murderous insanity. Similarly, the couple terrorised in a remote location in The Strangers (2008) could be anyone at all. When they ask their assailants why they were targeted, the reply is ‘Because you were home.’ The casual violence of the stranger-monster is mythologised in a number of ways. The story of ‘the babysitter and the killer upstairs’ (Brunvand, 1981, as cited by Koven, 2003), for instance, is both a contemporary (or ‘urban’) legend and a plot repeated in a number of movies, with and without variations (Koven, 2003). In When a Stranger Calls (1976, 2006) the key feature is a series of sinister phone calls to a young female babysitter, asking ‘Have you checked the children?’ The denouement is that the killer is calling from upstairs, within the same house, having already murdered the children. The individual or people under attack become synecdochal, standing in for anyone – and everyone. It is not surprising, in this context, that Hollywood fear films ‘travel’ across national and cultural borders, resonating readily at the box office even with non-American audiences (Ryan, 2008: 38–48; Church, 2006; Castle, 2007: 1). However, this last illustration reveals a twist on the synecdochal victim in fear movies. While all fear films have a ‘terror’ narrative which centralises arbitrary violence and destruction – indeed, their capacity to arouse terror seems to rest precisely upon this synecdochal format – certain forms offer a decidedly gendered end-point which enables a further variation on the politics of fear. In ‘slasher’ movies,



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the (almost invariably male) killer dispatches a long list of victims before he faces his nemesis, the last woman alive, the so-called ‘final girl’, who escapes from or kills him, and thus lives to tell the tale (Koven, 2003). This long-standing trope in horror films typically presents the good, sensible, worthy, and typically virginal girl as experiencing extreme terror, but nevertheless accomplishing a return to normality and safety. The gender, age, and social status of ‘the final girl’ are by no means accidental but rather betray normative presumptions about social position. The ‘proper’ target of the sadistic voyeurism associated with horror fear films is repeatedly figured as a particular type. On this, Carol Clover suggested in 1992 that the young ‘final girl’ cannot be a ‘final boy’ (1992: 260). Hollywood films remain reluctant to show male characters as abjectly fearful, rather than relentlessly resolute – to do so could precipitate an uncomfortable gender-heterodoxy in which masculinity is aligned with cowardice, foreclosing any claim to manly saviour status. Fear is routinely naturalised as a ‘feminine’ response (Marcus, 2002; McLean and Anderson, 2009). Thus, the synecdochal victim in slasher films can legitimately express, and provide the emotional conduit to, intense fear but still allow restorative catharsis. This particular victim permits our identification with her plight because she is a (young, respectable) woman. This gendered end-point variation on the random character of violence and destruction in fear films has wider echoes in relation to what feminists have labelled ‘rape culture’. Rape culture and associated myths about rape and sexual assault (Burt, 1980; Lonsway and Fitzgerald, 1994; Buchwald et al., 2005) position women as rightly fearful of strangers who may just turn into monsters, and facilitate victim-blaming (Marcus, 2002; Suarez and Gadalla, 2010) by stressing the need for women to secure their own safety (by avoiding being alone at night, not opening the door to a stranger, and so on). In fact, despite being figured as ‘typical’, stranger-rape accounts for a relatively tiny proportion of assaults on women (Estrich, 1988; Bourke, 2007: 47–8; Vandiver et al., 2017). In this way, the vastly more numerous perpetrators of violence against women – those exercising ‘traditional’ masculine authority as husbands, boyfriends, fathers, and employers – are re­ habilitated, on screen, as women’s defenders. The final girl trope of the slasher horror genre and its implication in rape myths reveals that

90 Security films which do not appear to engage with the political in any obvious way – and indeed are precisely about the strange and unnatural – are nevertheless deeply implicated in the reiteration of existing dominant power relations. Fear, in both its random targets and its more genderspecific variants, is decidedly political. In Hollywood movies, fear arises out of a political mythology which depicts chaos as just below the surface of the social contract, a chaos in which social rules are apparently absent and we are all reduced to the struggle to survive. Yet Hollywood fear is also politically staged, in that the ways in which we can engage with that struggle betray the persistence of a ‘male gaze’ (see chapter 7 for more detail). Fear films revel in the looming threat of disorder, thereby enabling a simultaneous reinforcement of the status quo, including the regular re-affirmation of its gender order. Anxiety and catharsis Fear films commonly represent the social order as a thin veneer over a state of nature marked by unbridled and merciless struggle and in which governance is extraneous. As noted above, this political perspective is associated with inversely endorsing the security of the status quo, but also appears to re-animate a world of aggression that is not far removed from the Reaganite assumptions of 1980s war films (like Rambo) outlined in earlier chapters. However, the culturally and nationally specific character of patriotic American individualist ‘can do’ and of America’s enemies in those war films becomes more diffuse and incoherent in fear films. While fear films are in many ways less clear in their characterisations, the synecdochal meanings attached to both the fearful threat and the protagonist who saves the day give expansive allegorical substance to these narratives of danger. It is almost axiomatic, for example, that the Hollywood science fiction monster movies of the 1950s presented displaced expression of anxieties about the Cold War (O’Donnell, 2003). Similarly, the tenets of American individualism, competition and merit, made manifest in determined effort, pervade fear films as much as they do the more literal renderings of security issues associated with war films. Fear films are, however, less straightforward and less obviously culturally tethered. In keeping with the Gramscian (1992) notion of hegemony and Buzan’s (1983)



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conception of securitisation, they offer more indirect and veiled security mythologies. As a result, American national/cultural agendas are presented more obliquely in fear films. Such agendas may well be less likely to be rejected as narrowly American, as simply jingoistic, precisely because of their dislocated and thereby disguised account of security concerns. Fear films – envisioning security in the context of disorder – thus provide a strongly effective vehicle for representing American national security at home and abroad. In this context, Victoria O’Donnell asserts that the 1950s science fiction genre catered to public anxiety about the bomb and communism. In most of the films, scientists and/or the military managed to vanquish the enemy, offering reassurance that these threats could be overcome. In films where destruction had already taken place, the endings offered hope and redemption. Thus the science fiction films of the Cold War era may be generally interpreted as advocating the idea that Americans would be able to cope with external threats to their security. (2003: 169) In more recent times, science fiction monster movies such as I am Legend (2007) and Pacific Rim (2013) exhibit narratives in which science and defence at first fail but then save humanity through the ingenuity and determination of remarkable individuals. Americans (even if they are now ‘with’ people from other lands) still lead us all to overcome cataclysmic threat. Fear movies certainly give vent to anxiety and permit that which is repressed to be manifest, but they also tell a story about ‘us’, our polity, its disruption, and restoration. In this sense, whether an entirely restorative ending is offered or not, fear films are primarily narratives of security containment. For example, Cloverfield (2008) may not return us safely back ‘home’ but its disturbing window onto annihilation comes to an end. There is palpably cathartic relief in the cessation of terror. Catharsis is usually understood to prompt individual psychological or audience responses, including responses to cultural forms (Glaab, 2008), but it can also be viewed as political. The ‘catharsis’ of fear films can be understood in terms of cultural politics as a political purgative, providing fleeting entry into and exit from nightmarish

92 Security displacements of social angst. It is not a purgative in the sense of a purifying escape from angst, just as viewing violence is unlikely to diffuse or assuage aggressive urges (Carter and Weaver, 2003: 76–8; Singer and Singer, 2012: 232–48). Rather, fear films are politically purgative in that they offer the satisfactions of a conserving affirmation of social anxieties in a safe space. As Ryan and Kellner (1988: 51) suggest, they ‘permit anxieties to be avoided in their real form’ but addressed nevertheless in arguably more palatable ways. In this ‘therapeutic turning away’, fear can be sanctioned and mastered through its containment (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 51). Strangers, disasters, and monsters: a panoply of fear As noted earlier, while fear films traverse genre boundaries, they find their home in and are most clearly associated with the horror genre, where several kinds of threat attached to disordered security are readily apparent. Indeed, the means to explore the cultural politics of fear films is precisely through the lens of such threats. In this context, we highlight three main forms or harbingers of disorder: strangers, disasters, and monsters. To be sure, these three tropes can be represented in unthreatening ways in films whose main impetus is not the excitation and possible resolution of fear. Not all films featuring strangers, disasters, or monsters are necessarily attentive to visions of security in disorder. For example, children’s films (including some teenagers’ films) may make use of monster or alien tropes but deliberately invoke and simultaneously disarm these threats (ET the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982; The Little Vampire, 2000; Monsters, Inc., 2001; Hotel Transylvania, 2012, 2015; Minions, 2015, for example). Some comedies reference these tropes in the same way (Abbott and Costello go to Mars, 1953; Men in Black, 1997, 2002, 2012); and sometimes monsters are invoked yet kept at bay by preoccupations which shift security concerns to a rather lower order of attention (for example, The Twilight Saga series, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012). By contrast, in discussing fear films we are specifically attending to such tropes as forms of threat. Thus, alongside frightening strangers and disasters, we are crucially interested in monsters who do not



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inspire attraction, sympathy, or laughter, but are truly alarming – that is, they arouse unease, repugnance, and, most often, horror. While these three main forms within fear films are not entirely distinct and may overlap – for example, the monstrous stranger, the disaster that breeds monstrosity, the stranger who spawns disaster – they are useful nevertheless. All three iterate and reiterate dominant understandings of the safe and the unsafe, and it is these understandings – particularly as they relate to myths of nation, culture, polity, and identity – that occupy our attention. Strangers ‘Stranger’ fear films are typically localised in focus and very much fewer in number than either disaster or monster movies. Although they may overlap with these other formats, they constitute a particular type of fear film with a relatively specific agenda. They often sit on the borderline of order and disorder security films, and only in their central emphasis on threat (to community) do they slide away from the focus on national security which infuses order films. Stranger-fear films demonstrate some degree of variety – especially in the contrast discernible between ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ strangers – but offer a more limited range than the other two forms of fear film discussed here. Their variety is limited by a destabilising, fear-inducing, but, importantly, recognisably human ‘otherness’. While stranger films emphasise disturbing characters who may induce panic, their narratives are not so much marked by irrational, obsessive objects of terror as they are located in knowable if frightful situations. This narrative attention to ‘real world’ as against nightmarish or fantasised fears distinguishes stranger films from monster and disaster movies. Stranger-fear movies typically foreground those who are unknown, come from a strange cultural ‘beyond’, and who are conceived as dangerous (see for example Jack Shaheen’s [2001] discussion of ‘sheik movies’ like The Sheik, 1921; The Thief of Bagdad, 1924; and The Adventures of Tintin, 2011), or a representative person or group identifiable as a foreigner/outsider and/or as ‘the enemy’ – such as American ‘Indians’, African-Americans, Nazis, Japanese, Russians, communists, Arabs, Muslims, terrorists, and other ‘enemy’ sympathisers (Hitler’s Children, 1943; Objective Burma! 1945; Fort Apache, 1948;

94 Security Skyjacked, 1972; True Lies, 1994; Rules of Engagement, 2000). The fact that domestic American populations (such as Native Americans or African-Americans) can be rendered ‘strange’ and ‘foreign’ is telling, and suggests that constructions of ‘otherness’ are precisely that – constructions.3 Regardless of how their ‘foreignness’ is particularised, strangers typically bring difference to the fore as heralding potential for moral or more frequently violent chaos. Stranger films are in many ways the carbon-copy image of war films as viewed through the distorting lens of fear. While some films that focus on the stranger register the possibility that this outsider may offer a comment on ‘us’ and might even represent something noble or at least worthy of respect, in these instances the stranger trope turns ineluctably away from the format of fear films (see, for example, Little Big Man, 1970; Avatar, 2009). Indeed, there are two distinct, almost mirror-image foreign-stranger tropes – one mobilising cosmopolitan welcome, the other prompting fear. In the first category, a ‘stranger’ appears at first as unfamiliar, different, ‘other’ and initially repellent, only to find (or perhaps earn) a welcome place as a friend in their new locale and community. Examples here include Charlotte’s Web (1973) and Up (2009), which offer narratives of the salutary unknown/foreign person or personified creature who seems at first dangerous or distasteful yet who reveals the value of questioning assumptions and stereotypes, and of embracing diversity. This narrative of unlikely friendship is a staple not just in children’s and family movies, but also appears in drama (Bad Day at Black Rock, 1955) and (in more muted and gendered ways) romantic comedy. In these contexts, preliminary apprehension over the stranger’s ‘otherness’ is turned around. However, in the second category – stranger-fear movies – no such relationship can ever be entertained. The stranger is unfathomably and often murderously ‘other’. Stranger films which fall under the rubric of (in)security tend to be much more clearly drawn from historically specific fears than others in the domain of fear films. Those who are cast as strangers and conceived as a threat to the social fabric are exaggerated in line with social anxieties of particular historical periods, frequently drawing upon existing racialised/ethnic stereotypes and apprehensions (Maltby, 1996: 35; Nolley, 1998; Schatz, 1998: 113; Kilpatrick, 1999; Shaheen, 2001;



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Hagin, 2010: 186; Yaqub, 2016). Frightening strangers are typically constituted as foreign beyond understanding, though they fall somewhat short of the inhuman violence of disasters and monsters. Two examples give flesh to the inflammatory characteristics of stranger-fear films. Air Force One (1997) depicts the US President James Marshall (Harrison Ford) boarding Air Force One – the President’s plane – with his family and advisers after he has made a speech in Moscow declaring he will never negotiate with terrorists. A group of Russian terrorists take over the plane and the President (who is conveniently an ex-soldier) must literally rescue all on board and indeed America itself from terror. The terrorists’ abhorrent and contemptible ‘otherness’ is made symbolically and practically evident when their leader Ivan Korshunov (Gary Oldman) slaps the President’s face. In the second exemplary instance, The Siege (1998), Arab terrorists (supported by an American citizen who turns against his country) cause havoc by planting bombs in New York, leading to a declaration of martial law and the internment of Arab-American citizens. An anti-terrorist expert from the FBI and a CIA agent unite to uphold America’s civil liberties against maniacal militarism. The film appears to work against a demonisation of those falsely deemed to be enemies of the state merely on the basis of their cultural/religious associations, yet fear of ‘the other’ is nevertheless strongly endorsed. Any critique of problematic features of American militaristic nationalism is buried in a narrative of individual bad apples, while the legitimacy of the state and its security institutions is upheld. Importantly, the violence of the terrorists, and the criticisms of America voiced on their behalf, here as in Air Force One, are constituted as incomprehensible and poisonously malevolent. Arabs remain, as much as Russians in Air Force One, simply a representation of foreign murderous threat. Such films in present times seem not just evidently political but also isolationist, bigoted, deeply xenophobic, and even incendiary. In most stranger movies, the ‘stranger’ is marked by readily apparent linguistic, religious, or ethnic characteristics. Sometimes, however, strangers are ‘domestic’ – that is, located within America, perhaps not easily distinguishable from ‘us’, and may even be citizens. As noted earlier, during certain historical periods ‘strangers’ have been constituted as ‘the enemy within’. For example, this domestic set of ‘strangers’

96 Security used to include Native Americans, African-Americans, and communists (among others), but now tends to be constituted under the banner of terrorists. Terrorists, in turn, are likely to be intriguingly associated with foreign sites like the Middle East rather than with white America. In short, on screen ‘stranger danger’ continues to be culturally based and remains primarily non-white. How do stranger films as a whole square with political mythologising? The twin narratives of learning to embrace a stranger’s difference as enriching on one hand, alongside the threat of a villainous stranger (whether foreign or domestic, disguised or not), has a number of political effects. In its salutary, non-fear form, the American polity is represented as open and (eventually) welcoming to the stranger it perceives as ‘other’. The mythology of the good community/nation projected in security-as-order films is represented in welcome-stranger films as an image of the United States as an inclusive polity. Against this background, the stranger who fails to enrich the dominant culture can be more readily figured as ungrateful at best, and as a betrayer of American national trust – perhaps even a potential terrorist – at worst. The myth of the welcome-wagon competes against a construction of American citizenry as more justifiably paranoid in stranger-fear films.4 In sum, strangers present something of a paradox in Hollywood movies, and this paradox has political parallels in the representation of the American polity’s immigration history as an inclusive melting pot alongside its history of slavery, ongoing domestic racism and outward xenophobia, and continuing privileging of white monocultural nationhood (and white men within it in particular). Disasters Disaster movies came into their own in the 1970s with movies like Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and The Towering Inferno (1974). In disaster movies, the lives of large numbers of people are threatened by accidents, wrong-doing, or natural events. Their narratives typically proceed from the onset of catastrophe, through several challenges, and the eventual restoration of some form of order thanks to the ‘ritualized legitimation of strong male leadership’ (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 52). Catalysts for disaster include meteorological or geological events, such as storms (The Hurricane, 1937; Twister,



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1996; The Perfect Storm, 2000), floods (Waterworld, 1995; Hard Rain, 1998), fires (The Towering Inferno, 1974; Backdraft, 1991), eruptions and earthquakes (Earthquake, 1974; Volcano, 1987; Dante’s Peak, 1997; Pompeii, 2014; San Andreas, 2015), tidal waves and oceanic storms (The Poseidon Adventure, 1972; All Is Lost, 2013). Some disasters are triggered at the level of microbes (Outbreak, 1995; Contagion, 2011). Others occur as the result of an accident (Fail Safe, 1964; Alive, 1993); still others are the result of deliberate human acts, including treachery, political or financial corruption, and environmental degrad­ ation (Airport, 1970; No Blade of Grass, 1970; The Omega Man, 1971; Soylent Green, 1973; Wall Street, 1987; The Day after Tomorrow, 2004). They may be based on real events (Apollo 13, 1995; Sully, 2016), refer more obliquely to or reimagine real events (The Hindenburg, 1975; Titanic, 1997; The Impossible, 2012; Hours, 2013), or be entirely fictional (Armageddon, 1998). Whether based on real events or entirely fictional, disaster movies are strongly metaphorical (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 51). As Ryan and Kellner explain, threats and their solutions involve clear political allegories. The catalyst for disaster in Airport (1970), for example, is a disgruntled worker whose appetite for revenge is facilitated in part by a mob protesting noise pollution. An individualised instance of class conflict alongside ‘democratic distemper’ creates the conditions for a disaster eventually ameliorated when ‘male individualism and the corporate system’ (a loyal and ingenious airport maintenance worker and the Boeing aircraft corporation) are brought together (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 52–3). Workers who fail to be properly grateful for their employment and meddling protesters are thus enjoined, in effect, to allow businesses and corporations to go about their (patently valuable and necessary) work unhindered. Airport security and national security can be easily analogised: in order to facilitate the safe movement of people within and across borders, corporations and white male leadership must be respected. Disaster films are often directly linked to historically specific sociopolitical concerns and are ‘borne out of times of crisis’ (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 49–52; Keane, 2006: 5). They express and displace these concerns by envisaging a catastrophic scenario involving human social situations that are all-encompassing (see also Mitchell et al., 2000:

98 Security 392). In The Poseidon Adventure (1972), to borrow Ryan and Kellner’s telling example, a cruise liner is struck by a tidal wave and overturns. Passengers are literally led to their salvation by a renegade, individualist priest who, Christ-like, sacrifices himself so that others might survive. At a time when the place of religion in American social life was being questioned and new (feminist) resistance to patriarchal marriage was emerging, The Poseidon Adventure presented faith and family as the trusted solution to the tidal wave of secularism. Indeed, the very genesis of the rise of disaster movies in the 1970s emerged from a context of lost confidence in American political leadership (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 49). In an uncertain world characterised by duplicitous politicians, greedy corporations, and questions concerning the legitimacy of violence (by police and the military), 1970s disaster movies both enact and assuage fear. More recently, a specific form of disaster movie has featured increasingly – namely, the apocalyptic/dystopic film. In this grouping, the focus is not on specific natural events or human calamities, even if some human cause is proffered, but rather on the bleak and allencompassing aftermath of disaster (The Running Man, 1987; The Matrix trilogy, 1999–2003; Children of Men, 2006; Carriers, 2009; The Book of Eli, 2010; Oblivion, 2013). These films retroactively highlight what is critical to all disaster films worth the name – the moment of catastrophe. They place ‘modern anxieties’ within a scenario enabling contemplation of ‘the obliteration of the universe on the big screen’ (Wallace, 2013). Not all dystopian movies are fear films. WALL-E (2008), a children’s film premised on environmental disaster, exhibits elements of the postapocalyptic dystopia format, but is not so much a disaster movie as a socially critical or social problem movie.5 We categorise films as disaster movies only when the catastrophe is right at the centre of the narrative, not simply located in its premise, in critical commentary on it, or in its solution. As Maurice Yacowar stresses, the core of the disaster movie involves ‘a situation of normalcy erupt[ing] into a persuasive image of death’ (1977: 261).6 Whatever the cause of the catastrophe, in disaster scenarios a location is torn asunder in scenes of spectacular death and destruction



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and in which all existing systems fail (Haas, Christensen, and Haas, 2015: 345–6). Indeed, Stephen Keane wonders whether ‘there [is] anything more to disaster movies’ than spectacular scenes of death and destruction (2006: 1). The scale of the threat to security, the scale of disorder, is differently conceived from that which is offered in monster movies. However, the ambit of destruction is usually broader in disaster (and monster) movies than in ‘stranger’ movies. Disasters strike whole communities, nations, and even planets or galaxies.7 The threat is large-scale, public, often associated with the trope of ‘progress’, modernity, or excess (for example, skyscrapers catch fire, big ships sink) and is typically externalised. In comparison, other fear films tend to have a narrower scope. The reach of the monstrous, for instance, is usually more specific than the widespread effects of disaster, although monstrosity can sometimes multiply exponentially – like invasive cells, the monstrous may rapidly proliferate and spread. Strangers may be presented, similarly, as the source of a spreading contagion. More often, however, where strangers are the source of fear, their target is more contained – a family, neighbourhood, or town, for example. In any case, the threat of the stranger is more often small-scale, or even ‘domestic’, and frequently is more psychological, sexualised, or internalised. Monsters Fear films featuring strangers, disasters, and monsters may focus on different forms of threat that extend across varying ranges, but all the same they offer a recognisable mode. Within this mode the largest category of threat is the ‘monster’. The forms taken by frightful monsters are highly various. They may be human – psychopaths or psychotics like those in The Bad Seed (1956), Psycho (1960), Cape Fear (1962, 1991), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994), American Psycho (2000), and We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011), for example.8 Sometimes the frightening creature is only partly human – such as the undead, vampire, werewolf, hybrid human-alien, or cyber-human – but nevertheless has a human form or history (Dracula, 1931; Frankenstein, 1931; The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951; Night of the Living Dead, 1968; An American Werewolf

100 Security in London, 1981; The Hunger, 1983; Interview with the Vampire, 1994; Species, 1995; The Wolfman, 2010). Still others are beyond the human – for instance, malevolent paranormal forms or forces. In this category, we see monstrous animals, unnaturally animated objects or machines, and supernatural or extra-terrestrial creatures (The Colossus of New York, 1958; The Exorcist, 1973; Predator, 1987; RoboCop, 1987–93, 2014; Child’s Play, 1988; Night of the Demons, 1988; The Abyss, 1989; Jurassic Park, 1993; Independence Day, 1996; Anaconda, 1997; Ex Machina, 2015; The Shallows, 2016). All, however, typic­ ally threaten ruin, destruction, and death on an almost unfathomable scale. Monster movies are variously characterised and described. Some commentators insist that this grouping should not include zombies or vampires as these creatures are altered (or ex-)people, and thus should not be considered alongside the likes of killer rabbits, aliens, giant fruit, monstrous insects, supernatural beasts, and other indeterminate non-human ‘others’.9 However, we suggest that monster movies offer a continuum of monstrosity from the stranger-as-monster (typically the serial killer, as in the classic story of the ‘other’/dark side of the human in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde [1931]) who is nevertheless recognisably human, to the transformed human (such as the mummy), the non-human paranormal, machine or alien, and finally the non-human, transformed earthly creature (giant spiders or supercharged killer bees, for example). In short, our view is that conceiving monsters as set apart from the human within Hollywood fear movies involves an unsustainable distinction, especially since the monstrous quality of zombies, vampires, werewolves, and other changed humans is precisely associated with their harrowing transformation into something recognisably ex-human yet terrifyingly strange and threatening. The continuum of monstrosity means that different incarnations of monsters also present different kinds of threat. Firstly there are the inhuman humans and ex-humans. At the border of threats offered by strangers and monsters lies the stranger-monster mentioned earlier. The stranger-monster is human (hence the descriptor adjective), yet occupies the inhuman space of irrational, obsessive terror which moves it from the worldly strangers of Air Force One towards the disturbingly nightmarish realm of The Silence of the Lambs. If the monstrosity of stranger-monsters lies in



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the conjunction of their savagery and their human morphology, that of transformed or ex-human creatures like zombies stems from their uncanny connection with the human and the possibility of being unwillingly recruited to their ranks. Non-human earthly monsters, however, are often given their specifically fearful character by the other meaning of ‘monster’ – that is, by their gigantism (King Kong, 1933, 2005; Night of the Lepus, 1972; Anaconda, 1997; Lake Placid, 1999). Several sub-categories of ‘monster’ movie stake their claims to monstrosity in the impenetrable unknowability of their being. These include supernaturally evil spirits (Rosemary’s Baby, 1968; The Omen series, 1976–81; Insidious series, 2010–15); the broader sphere of ‘paranormal’ ghosts and poltergeists (Paranormal Activity series, 2007–15); machinemonsters (The Stepford Wives, 1975, 2004); and alien-monsters (Alien series, 1979–2017; Predator series, 1987–2010; Predator-Alien crossover movies, 2004, 2007). What these monsters share, most obviously, is the capacity to arouse fear. The source of fear is not merely the monster’s appearance, but also the prospect of the collapse of comforting ‘normality’ into utter disorder associated with menace, malice, violent death, and wanton destruction. In this chapter we have outlined the significance of ‘fear’ films and their relationship to the cultural politics of security. In the history and taxonomy of such films, we drew attention to three broad forms of threat: strangers, disasters, and monsters. Of these, the most numerous and diverse films emerge from the ‘monster’ category. Each of the sub-categories of frightening ‘others’ has its own filmic history, conventions, and preferences. We turn, in chapter 6, to a more detailed consideration of monstrous connections to the political, with particular reference to a sub-category of ‘monsters’: zombies. Notes 1 While Haas, Christensen, and Haas outline an inclusionary account of film as necessarily political, they appear in practice to return to something closer to Giglio’s narrow account in their focus on what they describe as ‘political films’ – that is, those whose narratives revolve around government and government agencies (2015: 9). 2 These conventions recall clear parallels with the Freudian concept of the ‘return of the repressed’ outlined earlier.

102 Security 3 For an account of the notion of the other and the construction of otherness, see chapter 3, footnote 7. 4 Nick Muntean and Matthew Thomas Payne (2009: 244) discuss the same phenomenon, but in relation to zombie movies rather than ‘stranger’ films. The 9/11 terrorists, they say, appeared as ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing [and] rendered nearly everyone afraid of their own skin, … wondering what might be hidden beneath the tissue of their friends and neighbors’. 5 Other apocalyptic/dystopian narratives that are not primarily disaster films but rather are focused on social critique include Fahrenheit 451 (1966); Blade Runner (1982); Gattaca (1997); In Time (2011); and Elysium (2013). The characteristics of socially critical films are discussed in chapters 10 and 11. 6 For Yacowar (1977), however, disaster films include eight types, a taxonomy that has been taken up by many commentators (Haas, Christensen, and Haas, 2015: 344–69). Yacowar outlines a very broad range of disastrous situations (as identified by Keane, 2006: 4), and subsumes monster films within the rubric of disasters. Instead, with Auger (2011), we prefer to distinguish the two. Auger argues that monster movies specifically organised around a monstrous creature or creatures (2011: 50) are sufficiently numerous and different from disaster movies more generally to warrant their separate treatment. 7 All Is Lost (2013) offers an interesting and somewhat paradoxical illustration of this idea. Even though the action centres around just one man, ‘our man’ at sea, his yacht constitutes a universe. The explicit threat is that all (and ‘everyone’) will be lost. 8 Human monsters can overlap or merge with the trope of the (domestic) stranger (in Cape Fear [1962, 1991] for example). 9 See, for example, ‘The 50 best monster movies’ [http://www.timeout.com/ london/film/the-50-best-monster-movies – accessed November 2016].

6 Fearsome monsters

In this chapter, we explore zombie movies as a particular incarnation of the fearsome monster category for their cultural-political meanings, locations, and effects. Zombies are, for the most part, a cinematic invention whose history is folkloric rather than literary (Bishop, 2006). They are reanimated corpses, ‘the living dead’ or ‘the walking dead’, who spread their contagion and multiply their numbers by killing people and feeding on their victims’ flesh.1 Applying sociologist Ulrich Beck’s (2001) concept of ‘zombie categories’ to their cinematic representations, we consider whether this sub-genre of fear films contests or endorses a politics of nostalgically conservative fear. In differentiating zombie movies from the broader array of monster movies, we also distinguish elements of ‘zombie politics’ as somewhat more socially critical than the usual tropes of monster-fear movies. As we saw in the early chapters of this book, popular film is a political technology. As such, fear films play over particular political myths concerning the underside of security, warning of the dangers of disorder. Monster movies offer instances of this overarching theme. Our aim, in this chapter, is to assess what monsters in general – and zombies in particular – can tell us about the cultural politics of fear. In popular film, certain themes relating to power relations are repeated (with and without variations). While the meaning of such themes is never entirely fixed, as Stuart Hall suggests, they accrue an iconic yet common-sense status through the repeated performance, staging, or telling of the narrative (Hall, 1973; Procter, 2004: 59–61). Ryan and Kellner propose that ‘[m]onster figures can be used to affirm the existing

104 Security order in that they represent threats to normality which are purged. The release of narrative tension is often identified … with conservative institutions’ (1988: 179). Accordingly, within monster narratives the agent of rescue provides a return to pre-existing order. The agents may be authoritative institutions such as the military (Cloverfield, 2008), police, sheriffs, or other government agents (Police Chief Martin Brody in Jaws, 1975; Sheriff Donald Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984; Agent Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, 1991), or the church (Father Merrin in The Exorcist, 1973). Often, the rescuing agent is a strong, individual leader of a familial or family-like group. The ‘conservative institutional force’ is, in these instances, a kind of individualism personified. The leader or agent of rescue in monster movies is usually a strong, mature, white man with indomitable resolution and self-command (Van Helsing in Dracula, 1931; Martin in Jaws, 1975; Dr Loomis in Halloween, 1978; Ash in The Evil Dead, 1981), or a feisty, usually young, white, ‘final girl’ (Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984; Sidney in Scream, 1996; Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs, 1991).2 Less commonly, a maverick, (white) mature woman may enable the restitution of security (Ripley in Alien, 1979). At the same time, conservative institutions (the military, or government scientific institutes, for example) are sometimes also identified as the source of the monstrous. In these instances, military and government officials are presented as debased and corrupt, at odds with their traditional roles of ensuring security, and science is conceived as precisely challenging tradition by disturbing that which is constituted as the timeless order of the natural (I was a Teenage Werewolf, 1957; Jurassic Park, 1993; The Hulk, 2003; The Crazies, 2010). Whether traditional security is advanced or placed at risk by authoritative institutions, the narrative arc of monster movies is generated by the emergence of ‘the repressed’ and its temporary or permanent defeat – that is, the threat is relegated once again to repression. By this means, monster films enable the return of the status quo, a normality which is thereby retroactively endorsed. Zombie frameworks This nostalgic leaning towards the affirmation of conservative tradition in monster movies is neither universally assumed, however, nor simple.



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In the sub-genre of zombie movies, some commentators suggest possibilities for a more subversive agenda. In this sense, while fear films – including monster films – as a whole are strongly disposed to uphold order and normalcy, zombies may represent a somewhat more complicated monster. Robin Wood posits that ‘zombies represent the suppressed tensions and conflicts—the legacy of the past, of the patriarchal [and racist] structuring of relationships, “dead” yet automatically continuing’ (Wood, 1986: 116, as cited by Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 180). In other words, the loathsome threat in this instance (zombies) is precisely that which is figured in many other fear films as ‘safe’ – existing, familiar, social structures and power relations. Dispatching zombies means rejecting familiar but inadequate traditions in the absence of a self-evident path ahead. While this seems somewhat at odds with the overarching tenor of fear and monster films, it is consistent with their blurring of safety and danger, the familiar and the unfamiliar. Wood’s account prefigures what Ulrich Beck later described in sociological terms. Beck’s (2001) notion of ‘zombie categories’ refers to outmoded understandings of social institutions – families, work, marriage – that no longer serve as adequate frameworks for understanding social life, but that continue to haunt our knowledge and experience. These social institutions are inevitably shaped by and express power relations: zombie categories therefore rest heavily on retrograde sociopolitical formulations. This is apparent in the social spaces serving as settings for zombie conflicts in the most famous of the zombie story-lines, the series of movies written and directed by George A. Romero.3 The first movie in the series (Night of the Living Dead, 1968) is set in a farmhouse, where generational, gender, and racial tensions unfold. In this movie, the brutish (white) head of the patriarchal family meets his demise thanks largely to his inflexibility – his dogged and defensive insistence on doing things as he has always done, ‘his way’. In the second instalment (Dawn of the Dead, 1978), a group of survivors is holed up in a shopping mall. Commodity fetishism, or the promise of happiness presented in capitalist consumption, is exposed as being literally and figuratively empty. The 2004 remake tells the same story: the fantasy of being locked in a shopping mall with every imaginable luxury at your disposal becomes a nightmare in which the mall is little more than an elaborate fort. The meaning of consumption

106 Security as a mechanism by which people demonstrate their status or taste is rendered nostalgic, obsolete, and yet doggedly or even invincibly persistent.4 The third movie in the Romero series, Day of the Dead (1985), is set at a time when nuclear missiles and the ‘star wars’ defence were changing the face of war.5 In this movie, the action is set in a military-industrial bunker. The zombie category mobilised here is the military itself. The film enquires about the need for nations to deploy armies when human combat appears to be obsolete. In each of these three examples, the main setting presents a zombie category – an outmoded social structure or institution that persists despite having apparently outworn its usefulness. These films engage with a political mythology that gives expression to uncertainties about the stability of the social order. For the most part, these uncertainties and their incarnation as zombies are eventually vanquished – even though they can simultaneously provide narrative opportunities for doubts about the worth or viability of the social order. Zombie movies rarely present complete or assured resolution – after the zombie apocalypse, the world cannot be returned to what it was before (Muntean and Payne, 2009: 242). Things can never be the same again, and systems must be partially or entirely rebuilt. To put this another way, zombie movies do not usually resolve with anything more promising than an unpredictable and tentative future, in which new social bonds and traditions must be forged. Whatever the extent of social critique that may be glimpsed in zombie movies, many commentators agree that their waxing and waning popularity – the ebb and resurgence of the genre – is a direct reflection of (American) social and political disquiet revolving around historically located fears. Peter Dendle notes in this context that ‘the zombie began as a parable of the exploited worker in modern industrial economies and of the exploited native in colonial nations’ (2007: 45). Zombie movies could be understood, then, as a kind of social memory of colonising and enslaving – a historically specific memory that continues to haunt the present (Dendle, 2007: 46; Laroche, 1976). Dendle suggests, however, that ‘in recent times [the zombie] has been more closely associated with contemporary anxieties concerning environmental degradation, consumer-capitalism, and biopolitics’ (Dendle, 2007: 45). In a similar vein, Nicole Birch-Bayley argues that twenty-first century



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zombie movies reflect ‘anxieties about world events … [particularised as] a fear of terrorism and epidemic in the zombie form’ (2012: 1137), while Kyle William Bishop notes that the two most recent peaks in zombie movie popularity coincided closely with the Vietnam War, and the events of 9/11 in New York and Washington (2010: 9, 13; see also Dendle, 2007: 53; Muntean and Payne, 2009). While it may be obvious that ‘fear’ movies in general should proliferate in periods marked by unease, it is by no means clear why movies about zombies more than other monsters or disasters should thrive at these times. Nick Muntean and Matthew Thomas Payne argue that the resurgence of zombie movies in the post-9/11 context is due to the particular appositeness of zombie movies as an allegory for terrorism. While, as noted earlier, zombie movies may provide opportunities for dealing with the dead weight of the past, they can also give flesh to the desolation of the present. Terrorism is formless and diffuse, a ‘constantly shifting Other’ whose ‘ontological blankness [is] strikingly similar to that of the zombie’ (2009: 255). For them, ‘the zombie horde’, like the mercurial and shapeless threat of terrorism, ‘is a monstrous tabula rasa’ (2009: 240). However, this kind of allegorical indexing is not limited to zombie movies: fearful responses to 9/11 are, for instance, strongly evident in the destructive monster terrorising New York in Cloverfield (2008). Similarly, the rendering of safe places and people as potentially dangerous is a key characteristic of both fear films in general and stranger movies foregrounding terrorism in particular. In reading zombies as a proxy for terrorism, zombie movies return us to more familiar terrain in which a narrative featuring the temporary or permanent defeat of ‘the repressed’ enables a return to the status quo, even if that status quo now seems rather more shaky. Setting aside rationales for fluctuations in their popularity and their narrative directions, the particular cinematic tradition of zombie stories (Bishop, 2010: 12–13) certainly makes them a uniquely appropriate vehicle for fear associated with visually spectacular bodily violence. The sometimes comically gory spectacle associated with zombie movies is considered to have been pioneered by George A. Romero and consistently referenced ever since. The first in the Romero series, Night of the Living Dead (1968), shocked its audiences with its gruesome scenes, even in black and white (Bishop, 2010: 12). The ‘realness’ of

108 Security dismemberment and cannibalism in Romero’s movies is politically salient, and has been interpreted as critical commentary on the brutal violence brought into Americans’ living rooms via televised news of the Vietnam War (Bishop, 2010: 14, 21). Indeed, the special effects artist who worked on the second of several sequels and remakes of Romero’s films has been quoted as saying that he recreated in that film what he saw with his own eyes in Vietnam (Bishop, 2010: 22). Fear movies – and especially those within the pantheon of horror – clearly reflect socio-political fears, but the historically shifting threat posed in specific variants like zombie movies requires us to pay attention to their singularity. To that end, we consider some key features of zombie movies and explore what they tell us about the cultural politics of fear. Zombie politics: key reiterations First and foremost, zombies are (or, at least, were) human. Moreover, they are not of another place, like paranormal or alien monsters. Zombies are not marked by group differences like race, religion, or ethnicity that sometimes signify the stranger as the enemy outsider. Instead, they constitute a strongly generalised other. Zombies are pointedly familiar (ex-)people. In Night of the Living Dead (1968) a young woman is carried off to her doom by her zombie brother. In the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, Ana Clark, on returning home after a long shift as a nurse, is nearly devoured first by her once-cute 10-year-old neighbour, then by her formerly handsome, loving partner. In Day of the Dead (1985), Dr Logan, a scientist attempting to ‘train’ zombies to be civilised, says, ‘They are us. They are extensions of us. They are the same animal, just functioning less perfectly’ (Cooke, 2009: 166). Even in the more ironic Zombieland (2009), the initial attack on the protagonist occurs when college student, Columbus, is set upon in his own apartment by the neighbour on whom he has a crush. Second, zombies feed on living human (as opposed to zombie or other) flesh. They are characterised and motivated by a driving but unthinking hunger to consume, and to consume without satiety. They need nothing except ‘fresh’ human flesh. Zombies animate specific social and political anxieties about consumption in general, and the consumption of flesh in particular. As Michael Newbury argues,



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contemporary zombie movies play out anxieties concerning the production and consumption of food. ‘[N]o genre,’ he says, is more routinely, even structurally, and disturbingly obsessed with food supply, food chains, and the question of who eats what or whom than the apocalyptic zombie movie. The dislodging of humans from their comfortable place atop the industrial food chain is, in the end, one of the central, even defining features of recent zombie films. (2012: 90) Thus, it might be argued that in zombie movies we see the political problem of population and ‘hunger’ (standing in, perhaps, for the distribution of essential resources more generally) calibrated such that the first-world appetites of the American populace compete against each other, but are simultaneously reflective of the thoroughly backgrounded experience of famine in ‘other’ places. By the late 1990s … corporate food, eating, food marketing, and food choices abound in the zombie film, so much so that visualising the movement of survivors through images of a collapsed commercial/industrial food system becomes something close to a structural imperative in the genre … zombies might be seen as locavores surviving on the landscape around them, but they have, unfortunately and paradoxically, turned eating local into the quintessential act of fast-food consumption. Eating without regard to consequence or cultural tradition is all that zombies do. (Newbury, 2012: 100 and 105) Third, once a person is bitten or killed by a zombie, they join the infected ranks of the walking dead as a newly minted zombie. In this respect zombies are arguably similar to vampires, who also convert by biting. Vampires, however, are relatively few in number, typically individualised, discriminating, elegant, suave, patrician, and almost always dangerously attractive. The movie adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (2008–12) continue the gothic tradition of erudite, romantic, aristocratic vampires. The always 17-year-old vampire Edward Cullen is anything but indiscriminate: he wants Bella Swan

110 Security and only Bella. ‘You’re my personal brand of heroin’, he tells her.6 Vampires and zombies embody similar religious fears such that both are labelled a kind of scourge; both are associated with threats of conversion to evil, to darkness. However, in vampire movies the conversion has its attractions: one pays a price, but the vampire is, in some ways at least, a beautiful monster whose addictive appetites are characteristically discerning and sexual. Among monsters, vampires constitute an exclusive elite. By contrast, zombies are the class antithesis of vampires. While vampires are urbane, sophisticated, and cultured degenerates, zombies are ordinary, imbecilic, indiscriminate consumers entirely without language or taste. Finally – and perhaps most importantly – zombies are dangerous en masse. Unlike singular monsters (such as vampires, poltergeists, or serial killers), zombies are not idiosyncratic or individual, nor particular in their tastes: they are most dangerous as a hungry horde, a mass. We can understand this, in some ways, as a reworking of the desirability of individualism, since individuality is exactly what zombies lack. An alternative or additional interpretation, however, is that zombies represent, in some ways, the threat within democratic systems: the simple but dangerous majority. Zombie movies may be, in this fundamental way, firmly anti-democratic. Those who survive the zombie onslaught become an elite – not by virtue of money, status, or power, but through their mere survival. While this narrative is shared with many disaster movies, zombie movies thus enact a distinct kind of Social Darwinist dystopia, in which the survival of the fit-elite is specific­ally threatened by the hungry horde, the mass of ex-human cannibals. In this respect, zombie movies offer opportunities for survivalist fantasies. As Dendle observes, ‘the zombie holocausts vividly painted in movies … have tapped into a deep-seated anxiety about society, government, individual protection, and our increasing disconnectedness from subsistence skills’ (2007: 54). For all their slow, mindless glory, zombies present opportunities for complex social and political engagement. Their proximity to humanness marks them as simultaneously like yet unlike ‘us’, offering a target for displaced, permissible violence. Zombies might be understood to represent capitalism itself, repeating its continuing exhortations to consume and be consumed, yet may be just as compellingly figured as



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the (stupid, hungry) masses, or even, as Ryan and Kellner (1988: 181) suggest, ‘the silent majority’. They have virtually no power as individual entities, but collectively use their deathly ways to proliferate, convert, and colonise. Given these paradoxical characteristics, it is hardly surprising that interpretations of zombie movies as political commentaries vary (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 182). The politics of fear and the place of zombies The three forms of fear films we outlined in chapter 5 – stranger, disaster, and monster movies – almost inevitably confront anxieties about politics and collective identities, even if (as in some zombie movies) they are not all straightforwardly or uniformly positioned as upholding the security of the existing order. While there are many ways of interpreting fear movies, the question asked most frequently by scholars revolves around whether such films reject or endorse social change. As we noted earlier, if the overt focus of any film is socio-political analysis and critique, then – whether the film involves deployments of fear or not – we would categorise it under the rubric of socially critical films (sometimes called ‘social problem’ or ‘social message’ films).7 Fear films, by contrast, foreground the issue of security and, in particular, threats to security whose result is social disorder. Hence, possibilities for representing social change within fear films rest upon whether they allow an unsettling of dominant power relations rather than always unequivocally affirming them. There is something of an intuitive fit between fear and political conservatism. Indeed, the vast majority of fear films involve plot-lines that contain and disable breaks in the social order, producing conventional, even regressive denouements. Where fear films show human trespasses into the sinful or ‘unnatural’, the result is often depicted as a divine punishment: when hope is futile and ruin inevitable, there is nothing to do but pray. The moral conservatism of the religious right in the USA is often vindicated in fear films, as (at first) ‘old-fashioned’ but also, eventually, a reliable source of salvation (Wright, 2012: 61). We see this not only in occult blockbusters like The Exorcist (1973) or, more recently, Insidious (2010), but also in less overtly religious-themed, disaster-based, fear films, like The Poseidon Adventure (1972, 2006),

112 Security or any number of horror movies in which victimised protagonists seek shelter in a church. In its strongest articulations the message is unmistakeable: as the protagonist, Peter, in the original Dawn of the Dead (1978) says, ‘When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth’, a perspective repeated and elaborated in the 2004 remake by a character reminiscent of a notorious American televangelist: Hell is overflowing, and Satan is sending his damned to us. Why? God is punishing us. You have sex out of wedlock. You kill your unborn. You have man-on-man relations, same-sex marriages. How do you think your God will judge you? Well, friends, now we know. When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth. (as quoted in Muntean and Payne, 2009: 239)8 The familiarity of the idea that disasters and pandemics are a divine scourge was played out pointedly in Contagion (2011). Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is ‘patient zero’, the very first person to bring a deadly and highly contagious virus into the United States. Throughout the film, we are led to surmise that Beth was infected as a result of an extra-marital sexual encounter. The twist in the plot is that this is eventually revealed to be an erroneous assumption: instead, the contagion had been triggered by the combination of a zoonotic virus which migrated from animal hosts to humans, and accidental human contact. A chef preparing pork from a contaminated animal does not wash his hands before shaking Beth’s; Beth almost immediately eats peanuts with that hand, and is thereby infected. Across the gamut of fear films, that which is frightening is that which is ‘other’. The idea that threats on screen stand in for specific socio-political fears – communism in the 1950s, anti-racism, and sexual and women’s liberation in the 1970s, overconsumption beginning in the 1980s, terrorism in the 2000s and since, and climate change in the 2010s – is, perhaps, the bluntest argument that fear movies endorse the political status quo. Simple or allegorical substitution, however, sometimes works paradoxically and can easily become comical.9 When the spectacle of the recently dead feasting on human flesh is experienced as an exercise in irony, whatever ‘threat’ the monsters are supposed to embody drains away like so much fake blood. What tries but fails



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to frighten us is rendered laughable. Yet despite this possibility of the diminution of the threat of disorder, as we noted earlier, many film scholars insist that fear films envision ‘the return of the repressed’ – a psychoanalytic framework which signals the continuing significance of fear in relation to the maintenance of security for both community and identity. The framework supposes that, while we may consciously turn away from that which we find repulsive, abject, and abhorrent, movies work as a screen for the emergence of these sublimated yet ongoing collective fears. In The Twilight Saga vampire-romance-film series, sex and desire become disturbingly aligned with a death-wish, while the zombies in the Romero Living Dead series arouse disgust associated with the primordial power of cannibalistic death. The raison d’être of fear movies precisely revolves around violent annihilation. Fear story-lines obsessively repeat and reinforce this pivotal anxiety. However, as Ryan and Kellner argue, they arise in relation to specific historical moments and hence address varying threats through a range of displaced pretexts: [s]ome idealize solutions or alternatives to the distressing actuality, some project the worst fears and anxieties induced by the critical situation into metaphors that allow those fears to be absolved or played out, and some evoke a nihilistic vision of a world without hope or remedy. (1988: 168) All the same, Ryan and Kellner remind us that ‘visions of a total destruction of social order can sometimes be a way of refusing conservative principles of stability. The refusal of healing, especially of conservative healing, can be a progressive tactic’ (1988: 169). Thus, often fear films are more nuanced and ambiguous than might be expected. At least some zombie movies, or aspects of them, present partial, often complex and even paradoxical responses to shoring up the status quo. On this point, Dendle asserts that ‘[t]he zombie has served variously as a tool of empowerment and social change, as well as one of complacent reinforcement of the status quo, in its 75-year history as a cinematic icon’ (2007: 48). Furthermore, for some critics, the pioneer of zombie films (George Romero) ‘has remained a polemical and insightful critic of American culture’ offering an ‘unswerving critique

114 Security of various tendencies in American culture, from racism to consumerism’ amounting to political critique (Phillips, 2012: 4; Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 179–81).10 Consistent with Phillips’ characterisation of Romero as a renegade voice, Michael Newbury argues that progressively critical elements continue to feature in zombie films. Newbury suggests that recent zombie movies ‘routinely offer a critique far more radical than – and even beyond the imagination of – the public intellectuals and journalists warning of food-related catastrophe’ (2012: 91) and as such firmly situates them as challenging the status quo (2012: 97). This critical tenor may be identifiable in other aspects of ‘fear’ movies. Ryan and Kellner argue that monster figures ‘are immanently critical of reigning social norms, since what cultures project as “monstrous” in relation to “normality” is frequently a metaphor for unrestrained aggression and unrepressed sexuality of the sort upon whose exclusion the maintenance of civility depends’ (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 179). Indeed, in this sense the appeal of gory spectacle in zombie movies becomes clearer. Zombies can be dispatched in all manner of gruesome ways – bludgeoned, hacked, gouged, burned, blown up, and so on – with moral impunity. Though they look somewhat human, zombies are positioned as objects rather than people, making violence against them acceptable (Dendle, 2007: 52; see too Kilbourne, 2010). Clearly, such ‘unrestrained aggression’ can be seen as a critical-therapeutic unleashing of antagonism to social norms only so long as the monster under attack is recognisably differentiated from the human – otherwise, there is nothing to distinguish the carnage of zombie-hunting from the kinds of blood-bath routinely presented in action and war movies. In any case, any measure of critical capacity in monster movies may be a relatively recent development. After all, in ‘classic’ monster movies of the 1950s, order is eventually firmly restored. Yet no such reassurance is routinely available in contemporary examples (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 179; see also Blake and Bailey, 2013: 103). Post-2000s zombie films like I am Legend (2007), Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), and Extinction (2015) may offer some degree of survivalist comfort, but redemptive resolutions are no longer a given (see, for example, Maggie, 2015). Newbury suggests redemption is now scorned in favour of a visually spectacular, radical critique of ‘producers and consumers of



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industrial food’ (2012: 112). We remain rather less persuaded that the cannibalistic horrors of this monster format are quite so progressive as Newbury contends. Though they may offer a degree of politically subversive critique, they continue to rely on grisly shock value.11 As Dendle puts it, ‘[m]uch of the fun in zombie movies … [is] to come up with creative new ways of offing them [zombies] in the messiest way possible’ (2007: 52). Moreover, in keeping with Dendle, we note that the zombie has had a rather mixed history in terms of challenging or reinforcing the status quo. As discussed earlier, for carnage to be digestible as ‘fun’ depends on the monster-targets being figured as inhuman, but sometimes the distinction between monster and human is blurred. Aleksandar Hemon’s (2015) novel The Making of Zombie Wars offers some penetrating remarks on the less progressive side of that slippage when he says the ‘[g]ood thing about zombies is you can kill a million and nobody cares. You just shoot, they explode, nobody cares. It is for Americans to feel better about killing, to make it easy’ (Hemon, as cited in Prose, 2016). Wood (1986) and Newbury (2012) (inter alia) note that zombies, along with other monsters appearing in the broad rubric of fear films, can offer elements of critique that run counter to the more often retrograde and conservative political myths that abound in them. Nevertheless, our preference is to locate the critical element not so much in the figure of the zombie itself, as in the apocalyptic dystopias that they inhabit, an element which suggests that something may be rotten in the existing social order even as the destruction of the security of that order causes chaos and terror. We are less certain than Wood and Newbury that these socially critical elements are truly foregrounded in monster-fear movies, and for this reason, the films we explore as exemplifying socially critical political narratives (to be defined and discussed in chapters 10 and 11) do not include zombie movies. Fear movies represent the ‘disorder’ element in relation to security on film. As we have shown in this and previous chapters, some Holly­ wood movies focus on the nation and its citizens in terms of order, but much more often the emphasis is on order’s underside: ‘other/s’ located within or outside the polity. Indeed, Ken Gelder argues (in relation to horror) that the proliferation of threat in such movies is

116 Security not at all at odds with, and may be considered as inversely affirming, the security of the hegemonic social order: horror, its rhetorics, its narratives, the paradigms and discourses it provides for imagining and classifying the world, inhabits that system—our system—for better or worse. Braver souls might even suggest that the socio-political system needs these rhetorics, narratives and so on—that is, it needs horror itself—in order to be what it is and do what it does. (2000: 1) In this way, a reiterated obsession in fear films with breaches in security, with the relentless generation of narratives of terror and death, is as productive of political messages as those films which offer security narratives attending to order. Conservative impulses and dissenting voices While movies envisioning security in order are often concerned with self-evidently political sites (like the nation) and hence typically depict a binary categorical insider/outsider (citizen/foreigner) distinction associated with the operations of governments and their imperatives, this does not exhaust the political meanings of security. In chapter 3, we showed how the perspectives of Gramsci (1992) and Buzan (1983) can be used to explore these broader meanings. Gramsci and Buzan offer approaches in which the maintenance of an existing social order within nations arises not only through coercion, but additionally through establishing hegemonic consent. The suffusion of security concerns throughout social life – including in cultural products like movies – helps assure consensual support for that order. Both perspectives indicate that security is not simply a matter of direct state involvement or clear boundaries for the locus and imperatives of security. Here, and in the previous chapter, we have identified and explored a number of movies in which hegemonic notions of safety, the good society, and legitimate authority are negatively constructed through their failings, as ‘our’ borders are breached. These movies – that is, fear films – show security in disorder, and in them the categorical coherence of insider/outsider, the divide between us and them, the distinction between what is safe



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and what is not, is destabilised and blurred. We do not always know where zombies are lurking, and we cannot always be sure whether other human beings are our allies or enemies. While the cultural politics of security-as-order films, exemplified in war films, uphold the social status quo and vanquish uncertainty, fear films turn on the spectre of annihilation. The use of fear as a political instrumentality is well established. As Hermann Göring, Hitler’s deputy and creator of the first concentration camps noted, fear is a crucial means to exercising political control over the citizenry: [t]he people don’t want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country. (as cited in Wilson, 2014: 5) Indeed, Maria Helen Moreira Alves describes political repression as intimately linked to the development of a ‘culture of fear’ (Alves, 1985; Smith, 1986). In this context, the rise and rise of Hollywood fear films in recent times is a matter for some concern. Order films have been dominated since the 1980s by largely conservative, patriotic, war films which offer virtually no criticism of the social order. More recently, however, some limited signs of critique of nation, authority, and leadership seem to be appearing in apocalyptic narratives (see for example, Children of Men, 2006; Elysium, 2013; World War Z, 2013; for discussion, see Faludi, 2007; Kellner, 2016). Elements of social critique, or spaces in which such critiques might arise, are neither routine nor prevalent in security films, regardless of whether they focus on order or disorder. Consistent with this, the resurgence of Hollywood fear films does not suggest any straightforward tendency towards social critique. It may, however, convey growing uncertainty regarding ‘us’ and ‘our’ worth, authority, and way of life. Such films demonstrate less confidence in the superiority of American culture and nation, while displaying an increasing emphasis on a sense of imminent violence and chaos, and do not necessarily offer the ‘easy comfort and solace’ of a completely restored status quo (Wright, 2012: 61). Although Hollywood fear films have waned and waxed

118 Security over time, in the post-2000s they may well have found a natural home, a disturbingly comfortable temporality. Bewildering ‘foreign’ evildoers, apocalyptic disasters, and terrifying monsters – from ‘realistic’ to fantastic displacements of prevailing anxieties – now abound. In an era marked by evidence of certain limits on the military, economic, and persuasive soft power of the United States beyond its shores, domestic socio-political instability signalled by the groundswell of support for divisive figures like Donald Trump and the unpredictability of global terrorism, fear films come into their own (Brzezinksi, 2007; Muntean and Payne, 2009; Skoll and Korstanje, 2013). Jason Burke’s description of aspects of this new socio-political reality reads precisely like a fear film formula: [m]any of the places where we usually feel safe—trains, airports, schools—suddenly become danger zones. We extrapolate from the individual attack, and turn it into a general rule. A gunman has attacked a museum so no museum is safe. A classroom, thousands of miles away, has been bombed, and we cannot help but wonder if it could, might, happen here. Our faith in the institutions we have built to protect us is shaken. (Burke, 2015: 217) Fear stokes conservative impulses, and this is certainly apparent in the vast majority of fear films. Very occasionally a dissenting voice is heard. Now and then, potentially subversive strangers/monsters and subversive views regarding global dangers emerge in fear films. However, as we have argued in this chapter, questions remain about how subversive, let alone clearly progressive, these films might be. Do they really offer a glimpse of an alternative to dominant power relations? How do they sit relative to films that explicitly aim not just to unsettle but also to challenge definitively the status quo? We consider such films in chapters 10 and 11. Meanwhile, we turn now to consider movies which foreground more intimate forms of political relationalities, exemplified in gender relations, sexuality, and associated identity categories. Like fear films, these are not always or necessarily viewed as ‘political’. In these more intimate films we shift attention towards relationalities between citizens, as against relations between state and citizen or between threats to the state and citizens, in order to consider



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the political lessons to be learned from investigating how Hollywood cinema represents relationalities in the private realm.

Notes 1 For a detailed history and analysis of zombie movies in general, see Bishop (2010). For a detailed history and analysis of the Romero oeuvre and its remakes, see Wetmore (2011). See, too, Max Brooks’ (2003) highly entertaining Zombie Survival Guide – a satirically serious manual for outlasting the zombie apocalypse. Brooks’ (2006) novel World War Z was the basis for the movie of the same name (2013). 2 See the previous chapter for discussion of the ‘final girl’ trope – that is, the horror/slasher movie convention identified by Carol Clover (1992) in which victims are picked off, one by one, until only one girl or woman (the ‘final girl’) remains to face down her adversary. 3 For a complete filmography, see Wetmore (2011: 231–2). The series includes Night of the Living Dead (1968, 1990), Dawn of the Dead (1978, 2004), Day of the Dead (1985, 2008), Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007), and Survival of the Dead (2009). Spin-offs developed by Dan O’Bannon and John Russo include The Return of the Living Dead (1985), Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988), Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993), Children of the Living Dead (2001), Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005), and Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005). While George Romero was an independent filmmaker, the Living Dead films and remakes are so germane to the Hollywood zombie movie that they cannot be set aside. 4 For analyses which reflect this association of consumption, status, and taste, see Bourdieu (1984), Lee (1993), Corrigan (1997), and Lizardo (2006). 5 ‘Star wars’ was a nickname (deriving from the 1977 movie) given to the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which comprised orbital and ground-based missile systems supposed to protect the United States from nuclear attack (Guertner and Snow, 1986; Payne, 1986). 6 This treatment is entirely consistent with discourses that position women (and young women in particular) as the dangerously desirable embodiment of addiction (Brook, 2008). 7 These more critical movies are discussed in chapters 10 and 11. 8 Muntean and Payne (2009: 239) juxtapose these quotes, as does Kevin J. Wetmore (2011: 148). Indeed, Wetmore goes on to quote Jerry Falwell’s post-9/11 tirade, in which ‘the pagans, and the abortionists,

120 Security and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians’ are blamed for that day’s events. 9 If human hands can be seen at work behind the representation of a monster, what is supposed to be frightening can morph into parody. Thus B-grade horror is often enjoyed for its humour, and has spawned a number of genre-crossing variations – including 2009’s ‘zom-rom-com’ Zombieland, and ‘zom-coms’ like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016). 10 Even though Romero himself worked mostly as an independent filmmaker, and even though the genre continues to change and evolve, his story-lines and characterisation of zombie monsters remain highly influential in mainstream Hollywood (Couch, 2016). 11 We distinguish here between subversive and progressive possibilities, along the lines we have developed in relation to gender and sexuality in other research. ‘Subversive’ in this context refers to some element of conscious challenge to the orthodoxies of the existing social order, but a challenge which may well be oblique and an appeal largely to those familiar with it, rather than one which is more clearly and explicitly intended to positively question and/or confront that order (Beasley, Brook, and Holmes, 2012; 2015; Beasley, 2015).

PART II RELATIONALITIES

7 Gender and intimate relationships Our overriding purpose in this book is to mine the stories presented to us in Hollywood movies for their historically situated political myths and meanings. In the preceding chapters, we focused on the citizen–state relationship, exploring how political order and disorder are mythologised on screen. In the three chapters to follow, we turn our attention to how our identities and relationships with others are represented in Hollywood movies. Here we focus not so much on the citizen–state political myths of Hollywood but the citizen-to-citizen political myths of intimate relationalities. In movies, we see intimate relationalities embodying and materialising political myths regarding self, sociality, and society. Over and over again these on-screen relationalities present and endorse conceptions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity as fundamentally internal, set, universal, and natural. The reiteration of particular forms of relationalities as legitimate, natural, and normal – as axiomatic – locates these seemingly individual and personal modes of relationship as implicated in cartographies of power that are just as effective as explicit prohibitions and laws. In this chapter, we begin by reprising the ‘cultural politics’ approach adopted throughout this book as it applies in the specific context of intimate relationalities. We consider what (or who) is visible in Holly­ wood film. Using Allan G. Johnson’s (2014) exposition of male domination, male-centredness, and male identification we consider, by degrees, the sidelining and devaluation of women’s experience relative to men’s. Our contention is that popular movies both reflect and produce gendered meanings. In the latter part of this chapter, we consider how fairy tales

124 Relationalities – readily understood as myths, but less often considered to be political – inflect the ways that highly gendered heterosexual (and heteronormative) love relationships are represented in Hollywood romances. We demonstrate how romantic movies and especially romantic comedies construct templates for what is usually assumed and unmarked in gendered intimate relations. While almost every movie presents some aspect of interpersonal relationship, these relationships are generally investigated in psychologic­al and/or psychoanalytic terms. This is particularly evident in scholarship on, for example, family relationships, which are usually considered through the lens of their internal meanings and impact.1 Our approach departs from this important mode of scholarship in that we turn away from pointedly subjective, personal, and individual approaches to explore human interconnections as fundamentally socio-political. This is not to deny that psychologically/psychoanalytically informed research is bereft of political meaning. For many cultural studies and film studies scholars, the psycho-sexual realm is by no means removed from (social) power relations (Williams, 2014, for example). Nevertheless, as we pointed out in chapter 1, such scholarship sits firmly on the ‘cultural’ side of the culture/politics distinction, and most often conceives power and the political in intra-personal and inter-personal terms. The political potential of this body of work is more or less repudiated by those on the ‘politics’ side of the culture/politics distinction, for whom familial relationships, love, and romance, are decidedly not the stuff of politics. The most recent edition of Ernest Giglio’s Here’s Looking at You: Hollywood, Film, and Politics (2014), for instance, considers ‘family fare’ only in relation to movie ratings systems designed to protect immature eyes from sex and violence on screen. In other words, his focus is the regulatory apparatus defining what constitutes acceptable family viewing, as opposed to the political weight representations of families might bear (2014: 69–93). Giglio notes ‘disconcerting’ imbrications of sex and violence on screen, but does not consider these in relation to the political impact of the women’s movement or other sexual politics. Similarly, Phillip L. Gianos’s Politics and Politicians in American Film (1998) conceives of politics as so tightly equated with government that the civil rights, feminist, and other activist movements are barely mentioned. In the nearly fifty chapters of David L. Robb’s



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(2004) book, Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, relationships do not figure at all – no doubt because love, sex, and romance are assumed to be outside the Pentagon’s field of ‘political’ interest. Of course, gender performance, sex, and sexualities are of interest to policymakers. Consider the infamous ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of the United States military,2 former President Bill Clinton’s extra-marital activity, or the fact that the United States has not yet elected a woman as president.3 These matters are obviously sites of political interest, yet the intimate relationalities of family, gender, and sexuality are excluded even from a long and nominally comprehensive book about film and politics. Ironically, these two very different bodies of work – those that do and do not attend to cinematic relationships – coalesce, in that neither considers what a cultural politics approach might enable. The terrain of cultural politics is more adequately explored in scholarship addressing gender questions. There is a substantial body of research on gendered power relations in film.4 Mostly emerging from interdisciplinary feminist and gender studies, such work covers the gendered production of culture, the representations of gender they offer, and the (gendered) ways movies are consumed (Milestone and Meyer, 2012; Kaklamanidou, 2013; Kelly and Robson, 2014), among other concerns. While this work is, in our view, distinctly political, not only is it often ignored completely by those leaning towards the capital-P understandings of the political on film but it is also frequently sidelined in mainstream research into film. As distinct from both psychologically/psychoanalytically oriented cultural studies and capital-P politics approaches, we endeavour, here, to examine representations of interpersonal relationships in movies as a way to consider political relationalities. This, we argue, is a thoroughly gendered cultural politics – especially when it comes to the meanings of love and romance on screen. In what follows, we also take a somewhat different direction from those contributions to film theory and scholarship which do offer more politically oriented accounts of gender in cultural politics. Such contributions often emphasise the limits of gender roles (stereotypes) and assess the differential numbers of men and women on screen.5 While these approaches attend to power relations, their focus is on equal citizenship, in line with the liberal feminist tradition.6 Consequently, they present

126 Relationalities a critique of the different cinematic treatment of women as compared to men, and look for the calculable presence of women. Such investigations of gender bias are epitomised by studies gauging the active presence of women in Hollywood films against the limits of what Gabrielle Kelly and Cheryl Robson (2014) call the ‘celluloid ceiling’. This and similar approaches offer a useful starting point, as we will see, but present a somewhat restrictive framework for a cultural politics agenda. As will by now be clear, throughout this volume we investigate ‘the political’ in more expansive terms.7 We set the scene by initially considering gender bias in Hollywood in terms of visibility and exclusion, and consider the usefulness and limitations of the Bechdel-Wallace test in this context. Visibility and invisibility: gender in Hollywood The cultural politics approach offers an understanding of the political which includes but exceeds the state, and also includes governmentalities associated with political myths of normalcy – that is, those historically situated ‘truth claims’ that deploy identity, belonging, status, and meaning, while positioning other modes of conduct as beyond the legitimate.8 Effectively, myths of normalcy render that which departs from the common-sense or naturalised norm as invisible, or even unimaginable. This invisibility can take a number of forms. Hollywood movies are patently male-dominated, male-centred, and male-identified. Sociologist Allan G. Johnson uses these terms to describe key components of ‘the patriarchal legacy’, by which he means enduring patterns of gendered power relations that generally work to subordinate women (Johnson, 2014). The concept of ‘patriarchy’ has a complex and much debated history in feminist political thought.9 Johnson’s simplified adaptation offers a relatively concise introit. He distinguishes male domination (the simple exclusion of women from positions of prestige and power), male-centredness (the assumption that the most important stories, events, and knowledge are about men), and male identification (for our purposes, where the viewpoint of the film presumes a ‘male gaze’ and hence that typical viewers are men).10 In the context of Hollywood movies, each of these elements of the patriarchal legacy can illuminate questions of gender and visibility.



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Analysing gender as a mode of power relations is useful in that its close attention to relationalities links with our interest in and focus on cultural politics. The ongoing constitution and legitimation of male domination – the legacy of power relations to which Johnson refers – entails the endorsement of a particular understanding of the nation/ community (consistent with Joseph Nye’s [2004] account of ‘soft power’), and the garnering of consent to this order (in line with Antonio Gramsci’s [1992] analysis of hegemony). As we have suggested, the politics of relationalities is often not connected to the politics of the collective social fabric – including the state. And yet any understanding of ‘the patriarchal legacy’ arises in specific collective contexts. In considering that continuing legacy in Hollywood film, the contextual framework of the American nation-state is not insignificant and informs our reading of Johnson’s approach. Indeed, we suggest that Johnson’s formulation of the three elements of the patriarchal legacy (male dominance, centredness, and identification) are closely aligned with our reading of Nye’s account of American ‘soft power’ – that is, the promulgation of an appealing presentation of national power – and Gramsci’s explanation of consent as critical to the legitimation of power relations. Male dominance, for instance, may be viewed as consistent with the (softpower) dissemination of representations of a potent and commanding nation/community, while male-centredness and male identification are implicated in the generation of (hegemonic) complicity with the gender order within that nation/community. In this chapter and the two that follow, we therefore employ Johnson’s framework (alongside theoretical work by Carole Pateman and Raewyn Connell) as a shorthand means to continue and extend our engagement with those central concepts of Nye and Gramsci. In this section, we put such ideas to work in an exploration of the nuances of political relationalities concerning gender and its interactions with sexuality. Hollywood is male-dominated (Milestone and Meyer, 2012: 54; Kaklamanidou, 2013: 12). Despite the limitations of simple observations of ‘gender bias’, the large-scale omission or exclusion of women both behind the scenes and off-screen is politically salient. Moviemaking usually begins on the page. In the early days of the film industry, female screenwriters were well represented in the field but over time – as writing for the movies gained prestige – men entered the profession,

128 Relationalities and now dominate (Bielby, 2009: 240–42). Men’s over-representation in screenwriting is now entrenched. Denise D. Bielby’s research suggests that ‘from 1982 through 2005 there was no perceptible change in the gender composition of … screenwriting; women accounted for about 18% of employed screenwriters throughout this period’ (2009: 243). She makes the further observation that, across the same period of time, men’s screenwriting earnings increased dramatically relative to women’s (2009: 243). It is predictable, then, that between 2000 and 2014 men accounted for 88 per cent of Oscar nominees for best original screenplay, and over 90 per cent of the winners. The story is similar with regard to producing and directing movies. As cultural sociologists Katie Milestone and Anneke Meyer report, [m]en have not relinquished their dominance in terms of producing and directing. Very traditional gender rules seem to operate within the film industry landscape with the majority of technical roles being undertaken by men and hyper-feminine roles such as costume and make-up artistry being undertaken by women. … Women have made notable inroads into the male-dominated cinema industry, but women in positions of power and control are still the exception rather than the rule. (2012: 54) In other words, it is mostly white men who exercise power and control in Hollywood. Women, including and alongside people of colour and other marked categories, are typically under-represented or entirely excluded from positions of power. It is to be expected, then, that Hollywood narratives tend to be male-centred – that is, presented through men’s eyes. Indeed, this situation, and feminist responses to it, are so entrenched as to have become arguably boring (Whelehan, 2010). Though the story of male-centredness has been told many times, such critiques remain germane, even if their applications are limited. One of the more recent revivals of the critique of male-centredness is popularly known as the Bechdel test – or, more accurately, the BechdelWallace test.11 The prevalence of stories by, about, and ‘for’ men has been made more visible to many through the application of this test. In her 1985 comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, American graphic artist Alison



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Bechdel draws one character explaining her criteria for movie-going to another. She says, ‘I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it… who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man.’ In the original cartoon (and on many occasions since), Bechdel credits the idea of the test to her friend Liz Wallace. In interviews and blogs about the ‘viral’ uptake of the test in the mid- to late 2000s (see Bechdel, 2013), Bechdel notes that Wallace was herself drawing on Virginia Woolf’s observation in A Room of One’s Own. Woolf writes, ‘I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends … They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men’ (1928: 82). The Bechdel-Wallace test is a relatively blunt analytical instrument, and was never intended by its creators to be taken up in the way that it has been. Its genesis was as a joking commentary on male domination and male-centredness in popular culture. Nevertheless, its simplicity – and the failure of so many movies to pass it – has seen the test popularised and extended not just in feminist media analysis but also more broadly. The evidence supplied by large-scale applications of the Bechdel-Wallace test and similar measures is clear. Even applying just the first criterion suggests that women are not offered anything like equal screen-time with men. In a study of more than 800 popular movies produced from 1950 to 2006, Amy Bleakley and her colleagues show not only that male main characters outnumber female main characters by ‘more than two to one’, but also that this pattern of women’s under-representation has remained consistent over time (Bleakley et al., 2012: 75). In short, the Bechdel-Wallace test reveals in broad terms that Hollywood film presents an axiomatic masculinism, depicting the American culture that it delivers to the world as both beguiling and almost entirely male. While Nye (2004) demonstrates the significance of America’s soft power, he fails to recognise that this cultural exposition of national influence is deeply implicated in gendered power relations. The Bechdel-Wallace test does not pretend to offer any indication of a movie’s æsthetic, cultural, or political value. There are superficial, anti-feminist films that pass the test. The first Die Hard (1988) movie,

130 Relationalities for example, is awarded a pass only because it includes a very brief conversation between Jack’s (Bruce Willis) wife and her secretary. Bratz (2007) passes easily despite being saturated with objectionable feminine stereotypes. Even the entirely formulaic rom-com What Happens in Vegas (2008) passes – thanks to a pointedly homophobic exchange between two female colleagues. Similarly, there are critically acclaimed movies featuring interesting, feminist roles and/or ideas that fail the Bechdel-Wallace test. Gravity (2013) features only one named woman, Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), as an astronaut whose experience drives the entire film. The Bechdel-Wallace test cannot measure any individual film’s appeal or value even to feminist sensibilities. Rather, it works best as a tool of broad-scale analysis.12 The Bechdel-Wallace test’s second and third elements – that the two female characters must have a conversation about something other than a man – illustrate how most movies are not only male-dominated, but also male-centred and male-identified. Male-centredness reflects the assumption that (white, able-bodied, Judæo-Christian, heterosexual) men’s ideas, experiences, values, and perspectives are obviously or inherently more important than women’s. Dallas Buyers Club (2013) presents an interesting illustration of this idea. This film tells the story of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a straight, white, Texan, rodeo rider and electrician who contracts HIV and develops AIDS in the 1980s. He is a hard-drinking, hard-living, ‘bad boy’ character who stands up to the ineffective and slow medical bureaucracy, helping himself and forming solidarities with gay men and the gay men’s community along the way. The only named female character is a sympathetic doctor, Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner). While she is not presented as a love interest in any emphasised way, the movie would look quite different if Garner’s role were played by an older or less stereotypically beautiful woman. Other women do appear in Dallas Buyers Club – mostly as sex workers. The overarching story we are left with is that in the early days of the HIV epidemic, AIDS was a problem only for gay men, and that when macho straight men who had sex with intravenous drug-using sex workers started to be affected, a (straight, white, male) hero stood up and fought, and everyone benefited. The movie’s treatment of the developing friendship between the macho, erstwhile homophobe and transgendered Rayon (played by Jared Leto,



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and positioned in the movie as a gay man) is at times managed with appealing tenderness, but we are left to infer that the AIDS epidemic barely touched women at all. Some might argue that Dallas Buyers Club passes the Bechdel-Wallace test thanks to Dr Saks’ conversations with her patient, Rayon. While we agree without reservation that transgendered people’s needs and identification preferences must be respected, the historically homophobic and transphobic context of the film forbids the easy identification of Rayon as a woman – especially, perhaps, given that the role is played by a male actor. Indeed, part of the film’s great pathos lies in the social and personal obstacles standing between Rayon and an authentic, self-determined life. Our point, for the time being, is that while Dallas Buyers Club is in many ways a beautifully thoughtful movie, its starting point is a (straight, white, homophobic) man’s dismissal of AIDS as having anything to do with him. The narrative follows Ron Woodroof and his struggle against bureaucracy as he realises his own thoroughly corporeal implication in the AIDS crisis. Indeed, it is precisely the film’s salutary element – namely, the idea that one man’s experience can easily become another’s – that makes its male identification so pronounced. By this we mean that the movie speaks, first and loudest, to other men. Of course, many female moviegoers enjoyed Dallas Buyers Club too. Male identification does not prohibit women’s watching or enjoyment – indeed, women are expected to take an interest in men’s ideas, values, and experiences. It is a one-sided transaction, however. Women are encouraged and even applauded for taking an interest in the activities men value – especially if that interest is limited to a kind of sideline or support role. Men who take an interest in pursuits identified as feminine, however, are likely to be mocked for doing so. We might easily imagine a group of young women gathered in a cinema foyer to watch an action or superhero movie, but the prospect of a group of young men lining up for popcorn at, say, Beaches (1988), or the Sex & the City movies (2008, 2010), seems both unlikely and liable to evoke more discordant responses. As Rob Schaap suggests, ‘men do not go to see ascribed “chick flicks” in nearly the numbers women go to see action movies’ (Schaap, 2011: 156). This phenomenon is not limited to movies, or even cultural artefacts more broadly. It is evident in all sorts of human

132 Relationalities arenas, from scholarship (knowledge about gender and feminist analyses is assumed to be of interest to women more than men) to sport (men’s sports make prime-time television viewing and are assumed to appeal to everyone, while women’s sports rarely attract equal time, are routinely considered inferior, and are not usually expected to interest men). Male identification, then, invokes a male standard: movies made by men, about men, and for men are just ‘movies’ – ostensibly for everyone – but women’s movies are ‘chick flicks’ – for women (and only women). To put this another way, men’s interests, values, and experiences are assumed to hold universal appeal, but women’s interests, values, and experiences are assumed to be particular and limited – in short, to appeal mostly if not exclusively to other women (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 149). That this arrangement is so entrenched as to be hardly noticeable speaks not to its inevitability, but to our willingness to excuse it. In this sense, the male-centred and identified character of Hollywood movies shows how the constitution of complicity in gendered power relations is enacted. While Gramsci’s account of power relations provides an invaluable focus on the importance of cultural legitimation rather than sheer force or coercion, he does not note the gendered character of that legitimacy. Hollywood’s almost exclusively ‘male gaze’ provides an exemplary instance of the cultural instantiation of hegemony – a hegemony which is not just conditionally legitimate but rather axiomatically legitimate, because it is simply given.13 Gendered genres Even discounting the effects of male domination, male-centredness, and male identification, it is clear that movies are gendered and gendering – that is, they both reflect and produce meanings and effects associated with being a woman or a man. Popular culture, including film, ‘both reflects and influences … the most immediate and contemporary aspects of our lives’ (Delaney, 2007: 3). Some stories are told and retold over and over again, while others are dismissed. Stories about love and interconnectedness appearing on cinema screens are not politically inconsequential, despite being routinely marked as cinematic dross or fluff. Women’s real lives are shaped by the expectation that they should be more interested in romance and relationalities than men; similarly,



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it is hardly coincidental that romantic cultural products are often – perhaps routinely – devalued.14 Ever since the early days of cinema, some movie genres – most notably, the sweep of ‘romantic’ films – have been deemed ‘for’ women. In general terms, what is deemed ‘for’ women or ‘about’ women are iterations of that which is other than rational: the excess emotionality of the melodrama, the screwy world of romantic comedy, and the darkly psychological realm of ‘noir’ (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 138). Where women do appear in movies, it is likely to be in fundamentally ancillary relational roles (mother, wife, girlfriend) and, especially, as a potential or actual ‘love interest’. It is not surprising, then, that women might understand such movies as more relevant than genres in which they are generally absent or appear as mere and minor accessories. Historically, melodrama, or the ‘weepie’ (Modleski, 1991: 8; Turim, 2008) was deemed ‘the women’s genre’, and certain kinds of movies centred on relational sadness – grief associated with the illness, loss, or death of a partner, child, or friend, such as Dying Young (1991), My Sister’s Keeper (2009), or The Fault in our Stars (2014) – continue to attract mostly female audiences. Today, we tag those movies intended to appeal to women and which focus on or at least give significant attention to women – regardless of their genre category – ‘chick flicks’.15 ‘Chick flicks’ are typified by romantic comedies but are certainly not limited to romantic genres. While there are good reasons for distinguishing chick flicks from romance movies, we have pragmatically employed the more usual designation of them as inclusive of but not restricted to romantic films.16 There are many examples of movies with broad appeal to female audiences across a range of genres – including The Hunger Games series (2012–15), the ‘feminised’ remake of Ghostbusters (2016), and the classic Thelma & Louise (1991). In fact, there are many ‘chick flicks’ – or, at least, movies featuring central female characters whose role is not merely decorative – whose appeal is not limited to women. Indeed, although men may report a preference for action movies, this does not mean that men in general do not enjoy ‘chick flicks’ and romantic movies. Although there is not a lot of scholarship on gendered movie preferences, the research on dating, movies, and gender conformity by Harris et al. (2004) is germane,

134 Relationalities here. While the men they interviewed did report enjoying romantic movies, those men (and their heterosexual partners) underestimated the appeal of romantic movies to men in general. It follows then, that women, more than men, are expected to enjoy romance. Despite some men’s apparent enjoyment of romantic movies, the term ‘chick flick’ is often used pejoratively (Schreiber, 2011: 177). Bride Wars (2009), for example, was described by Rolling Stone magazine’s movie critic as ‘chick flick hell for men’ (Travers, 2009). As Deborah Jermyn observes, ‘If Hollywood still lies as the bottom of the Film Studies food chain, then the bottom feeder lying at the bottom of Hollywood is arguably … “chick flicks”: films which often, though not necessarily, explore the romantic lives of women protagonists’ (Jermyn, 2015: 365). In short, if popular culture in general is seen to be intellectually and politically inconsequential, women’s popular culture is likely to be understood as even less important, and is tagged ‘simplistic and pointless’ (Jermyn, 2015: 365; see also Abbott and Jermyn, 2009: 2; Todd, 2014: 8–9). While romance is strongly associated with female audiences and derogated as such, romantic interests are in fact represented across a range of movie genres and styles. Indeed, romance is an inter-generic element. As Erica Todd observes, ‘love is an element of nearly all filmic texts’ (2014: 9). It is not always central, however. The ‘love interest’ angle in, for example, action movies is peripheral but important, even though its contours are rarely examined in this context. Performances of heteronormativity are necessary to nearly all action movies. Holly­ wood action movies almost inevitably feature a (white, able-bodied) male lead who encounters a female love interest, who in turn serves to normalise the hero and stave off any possibility of homoerotic interest. The invariably beautiful and sexy woman becomes another kind of accoutrement for the action protagonist, alongside his athleticism, weaponry, and ingenuity. Hollywood generally identifies its leading character as heterosexual even if this is not necessary to further the plot. For example, the female ‘love interest’ in movies like The Bourne Identity (2002) seems to emerge more or less randomly from the situation or environment, rather than as anyone in particular. Women’s roles are often ‘field-dependent’ in this way (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 146). Such romantic elements are ubiquitous in Hollywood movies, but are



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rarely examined or analysed outside of the most identifiably romantic genres. We turn our attention to these now. The two faces of romance There are two main categories of romance: drama and comedy (Dowd and Pallotta, 2000). Romantic dramas play out the more ‘serious’ side of relationships, and often invite us to consider the experience of loss, suffering, and personal sacrifice (Todd, 2014: 15). Romantic dramas sometimes draw on taboos concerning love and marriage – the classic example here is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in which two members of feuding families fall in (forbidden) love (Andrews, 2015; see also Sanders, 2016). The Romeo and Juliet theme is both ancient and enduring, and as such is mythological. The story has been adapted and retold in many ways on screen – sometimes directly, as in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), and sometimes less directly, as in The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (1998), or Warm Bodies (2013). Typically, there is considerable and sustained tension around the viability of the lovers’ relationship – it is threatened with disintegration by disapproving parents or other authorities. Romantic pairings transgressing racial, class, religious, and (occasionally) sexual divides fall into this category, and can be seen in movies like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), Jungle Fever (1991), Titanic (1997), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and David & Fatima (2008). Sometimes it is not a social taboo threatening the viability of the couple, but illness or death. The seventies’ classic, Love Story (1970), for example, shows us two attractive, smart, Ivy League college students, who fall in love despite their class differences, and live happily ever after until tragedy strikes (in the form of leukemia). The Descendants (2011), Restless (2011), and The Fault in our Stars (2014) present more contemporary versions of losing love, but address similar themes, focusing on the price of love in its eventual loss. Romantic dramas are not played for laughs, even though they may include wryly humorous episodes. Instead, they ask us to consider grief and love as two sides of one somewhat mawkish coin. An apposite example here is The Notebook (2004), in which love is awakened, lost, and found again, and ends with the lovers dying, together, as a kind of nursing-home Romeo and Juliet.

136 Relationalities Romantic drama remains a tried-and-true genre, but its popularity has been eclipsed in contemporary times by its more light-hearted counterpart, the romantic comedy. The rise of rom-coms in the 1990s and beyond saw them exceed the popularity and box-office takings of romantic drama for the first time, but since 2011 the box-office appeal of romantic comedy seems to have been in sharp decline.17 The popularity of romantic comedy at the turn of the millennium rode on the crest of increasing personal and sexual freedom over the previous fifty years, especially for women. While conventional, expected, or arranged marriage continues to feature in many cultures, it has nevertheless waned in authority and appeal in Hollywood movies, opening the way for movies showing people finding love in less formal ways. Tragic romances have become the stuff of another place, another time; in the highly urban and technologised West, they are other-worldly (Todd, 2014: 21–3; Schreiber, 2010). Romantic dramas in which the relationship cannot succeed, and/or one or both lovers die, now tend to be about the past (The English Patient, 1996; Titanic, 1997; The Reader, 2008), and/or connected to nostalgically rural or exotic settings (The Horse Whisperer, 1998; The Shipping News, 2001). Romantic comedies, by contrast, are more likely to be located in highly urban settings, and in ‘the present’. Indeed, New York City is the default setting for numerous romantic comedies (Jermyn, 2009; Tasker, 2011: 67) – from Annie Hall (1977) and When Harry Met Sally (1989), to Sex & the City (2008) and New Year’s Eve (2011).18 The decreasing significance of inflexible social rules is clearly one reason for the gradual decline of romantic drama relative to romantic comedy. Nevertheless, other connections between the rise of comedic versions of romance and the socio-political zeitgeist have also been mooted. Claire Mortimer (2010) argues that post-war romances sought to restore the gender order after women took on men’s occupations during World War II. She identifies several films featuring ‘independent career women who are represented as deviant and unnatural, yet who are redeemed by the power of love, returning them to their natural state in respecting male power and primacy’ (Mortimer, 2010: 26). Mortimer goes on to suggest that the nascent influence of 1960s feminism is apparent in the ‘nervous comedies’ of the 1970s, particularly in Annie Hall (1977), and proposes that, as a genre, romantic comedies



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stumble over the women’s movement: ‘Hollywood seem[ed] nonplussed as to how to tackle the themes of love and relationships in the wake of feminism’ (Mortimer, 2010: 29). She argues, after Steve Neale (1992), that in recent times there has been a ‘return’ to ‘anxiety about not being married and missing out on traditional domestic stability that was very much the propelling concern behind earlier romcoms’ (Mortimer, 2010: 29). The return may not be as complete as this proposal implies, since a number of scholars identify specifically ‘postfeminist’ deviations from the classic rom-com formula (Hersey, 2007; Genz, 2009; Garrett, 2012). After all, in the twenty-first century, marriage (or even ‘partnering’ more generally) is hardly the destination or life goal it once was, particularly for women, even if it remains a heavily weighted expectation. Indeed, explanations for the rise and fall of the rom-com (as distinct from romantic drama) remain thin. Romance is still taken seriously in some circles – consider independent offerings such as Blue Valentine (2010), or French features like Amour (2012). Yet Hollywood seems to find it hard to take romance seriously without descending into sentimentality or the slickly formulaic. There is probably no sufficient single reason why Hollywood’s approach to romance shifted from the dramatic to the comedic. Ryan and Kellner suggest that feminist critiques of romantic drama forced it into decline (1988: 136, 149–50), but their analysis was completed before the rise of the rom-com, and certainly pre-dates the idea of postfeminism.19 While the box-office reliability of upbeat romantic entertainment no doubt drives the number of rom-coms produced, their popularity cannot be divorced from social and political phenomena, and their relationship to real-life courtship. The very recent decline in box-office takings associated with rom-coms could be linked to younger people’s movement towards online media; similarly, the growing number of rom-coms featuring older couples (Something’s Gotta Give, 2003; Last Chance Harvey, 2008; Mamma Mia!, 2008; It’s Complicated, 2009; Hope Springs, 2012; The Big Wedding, 2013; Ricki and the Flash, 2015; The Lovers, 2017) perhaps reflects the changing demographics of the divorced-and-dating population.20 Whatever the case, watching movies remains an activity strongly associated with dating and romance; however, there is surprisingly little research on cinema-going as a dating activity (Harris et al., 2004). This is despite the incorporation of strongly

138 Relationalities self-conscious intertextual references to earlier or ‘classic’ romance movies within contemporary narratives which directly acknowledge and signal the impact of romance movies upon dating couples (Schreiber, 2010: 364). In The Wedding Planner (2001), for example, the protagonists watch classic romance movies in the park; When Harry Met Sally (1989) opens with the tune ‘It Had to Be You’ (from the eponymous 1947 film); and Friends with Benefits (2011) begins with a reference to Pretty Woman (1990). Sleepless in Seattle (1993) is almost entirely scaffolded around the memorable tryst at the top of New York’s iconic Empire State Building in An Affair to Remember (1957). Such references constitute multiple iterations of dating nostalgia and produce a kind of mirror effect: the dating couple watches a movie together in which an on-screen romantic couple watches a movie. Indeed, the play between the dating couple sitting in the cinema and the on-screen romance has the effect of an ‘infinity mirror’ in which doubled images create the sense of a series of infinite reflections over time. The reiterative nostalgia of romantic films reinforces the idea that there is something deeply familiar, timeless, and traditional in heteronormative narratives of romance. Intertextual nostalgia informs the key features of romantic comedies. Like romantic dramas, rom-coms focus on the development of a central, almost uniformly heterosexual, love relationship. Their narratives chart the journey of falling in love, or rekindling love, and the ride is inevitably, comically, bumpy. Obstacles impeding the lovers are likely to be farcical and situational rather than the darker, more morbid situations associated with romantic drama. As rom-com audiences, we are privy to the knowledge that the leading man and woman are totally ‘right’ for each other, even if each is clueless about their counterpart’s suitability. Narrative impetus is generated through the hero and heroine’s failure to see what is obvious to us – that they are made for each other, and should be together. In this way, audience knowledge is more complete than that of the romantic protagonists.21 The central characters – but not audiences – are often misled by crucial misunderstandings. One of the lovers may mis-hear a fragment of conversation, be deceived by a malevolent, careless, or jealous friend, misinterpret actions or relationships, and so on. Typically, sexual tension develops alongside



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romantic awakening, and the protagonists’ destiny as a couple is eventually fulfilled. In keeping with these associations with timelessness and comfort, romantic comedies are strongly associated with fairy tales (Dodd and Fradley, 2009; Jermyn, 2009: 23–4; Mortimer, 2010: 42). Fairy tales are themselves unquestionably associated with psycho-sexual narratives (Zipes, 2006; Greenhill and Matrix, 2010), but are less often considered to have ‘political’ weight – except, perhaps, in relation to gendered power relations and the feminist critiques that explore them.22 One rom-com convention suggestive of fairy tales begins, once-upon-a-time style, with evocations of childhood. In Definitely Maybe (2008) the entire story is framed as a divorced father (Ryan Reynolds) recounting his romantic history to his small daughter. She makes herself comfortable in her bed, he sits beside her and begins ‘Once upon a time…’. He’s just not that into You (2009), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), 500 Days of Summer (2009), Bride Wars (2009), and Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009) all open with nostalgic, ‘back-story’ snippets of one or more of the leads as children. In addition, many romantic comedies feature a central ‘Cinderella’ character who has been orphaned or who is motherless (Cavell, 1981: 18; Rowe, 1995: 50). Kate Hudson’s ‘Liv’ in Bride Wars (2009) is an orphan, while Rachael Leigh Cook in She’s all That (1999), Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner (2001), Katherine Heigl in 27 Dresses (2008), and Amanda Seyfried in Letters to Juliet (2010) all play motherless women. Like fairy tales, romantic comedies present mythologies of family construction and reconstruction, and deliver their narratives in formulaic, predictable ways. As an oral tradition engaging children in particular, fairy tales provide acculturating lessons: they speak to enduring social expectations and fears. One of the most obvious of these is that women should care about and take responsibility for maintaining intimate relationships, and thus fear the possibility of missing out on romance. Another effect is that women are culturally likened to or aligned with children, entailing the assumption that, like children, they should defer to the supposedly natural authority of men. These are not the only myths circulating iteratively in rom-com movies, and gendered love relationships are not their only targets.

140 Relationalities Movies have long offered a vehicle for the ableist gaze, for example. Disabled people are very often represented in Hollywood movies as freakish, malevolent, and thoroughly unattractive (Shakespeare, 1994; McRuer, 2006; Garland-Thompson, 2009). Indeed, the legacy of the freakshow spectacle collapses ugliness, undesirability, and disability almost completely, reiterating the damaging myth that love is not ordinarily for or about disabled people. This is just one of many axes of collective and intersecting identity along which the mythologies of Hollywood romance can be investigated. Love is routinely ‘for’ the able-bodied, the slim, the beautiful, the heterosexual. Where love stories feature protagonists with ‘other’ characteristics, the story takes on the weight of social critique – that is, the story becomes ‘about’ ableism, racism, homophobia, and so on. Such films are beyond the scope of this chapter, but illustrate all too clearly the political nature of romantic movies. Although cinematic romance offers many pleasures, it also shapes our expectations about real-life love and romance (Caperello and Migliaccio, 2011). As noted earlier, women are largely excluded from positions of power and prestige in Hollywood filmmaking, and movies tagged as by, about, or for women are typically derogated. Hollywood continues to exhibit what Johnson (2014) describes as its ‘patriarchal legacy’: movies are male-dominated, male-centred, and male-identified. One effect of this is that ‘gender’ is perceived to be ‘about’ women, or women’s business, but this does not mean that men are not gendered – rather, it means that men’s gendering is typically unmarked.23 There are movies (for ‘everyone’); and then there are chick flicks. Women are supposed to care about romance and shopping, to be fearful of missing out on love, and are led to understand that ‘the happy ending’ really does involve a wedding. Exactly how these expectations and associated cinematic mythological prescriptions are managed and reiterated will be explored in the following chapter. Notes 1 Family relationships are regularly explored through the staple format of ‘family’ movies – that is, movies whose plot is firmly anchored to a family situation (see for example Mrs Doubtfire, 1993; Marley &



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Me, 2008; Daddy’s Home, 2015), but such explorations are not confined to this format. Films about familial relationships also feature across genres as diverse as children’s animations (Finding Nemo, 2003; Storks, 2016), action movies (Spy Kids, 2001, 2002; see also Tasker, 2012), drama/suspense (Cape Fear, 1991; Mystic River, 2003) to horror (Psycho, 1960; The Visit, 2015). There is a substantial body of scholarship on such films – especially in relation to the horror genre – which exhibits a strong preference for psychoanalytically oriented approaches. These approaches to familial horror are often informed by the work of Barbara Creed on the monstrous mother (Creed, 1993, 2005; see also Allen, 1999; essays in Schneider, 2004; and Williams, 2014). ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ was an American policy (in place from 1994 to 2011) that proscribed discrimination against closeted gay, lesbian, or bisexual military personnel, while actively barring openly homosexual or bisexual people from military service. See Britton and Williams (1995); Belkin and Bateman (2003). See, too, Guerrero (2011). ‘Mainstream’ work on the politics of film very rarely includes feminist perspectives. Ryan and Kellner (1988: 106–35) occupy an exceptional place in this respect. Of course, there is a great deal of specifically feminist work on the gender politics of film and popular culture. For useful examples, see Ferris and Young (2008a); Radner and Stringer (2011a); Milestone and Meyer (2012). For analyses of gender stereotypes, screen-time, and roles available to men and women, see Smith and Cook (2006); Bleakley et al., (2012); and the New York Film Academy Blog (2013). On the range of feminist traditions and their orientations, see Whelehan (1995); Beasley (1999); or Tong and Botts (2018). For other instances of this broader conceptualisation of ‘the political’, see chapter 1. See also Kellner (1995; 2010); Kaklamanidou (2013); and Masters (2016). ‘Governmentality’ here refers to Foucauldian and related understandings of power relations and rationalities of government as manifest in the informal and private realms of social life as well as in formal regulatory apparatuses of the state (Macleod and Durrheim, 2002; Pickett, 2005: 32). The term patriarchy ‘has [had] a slippery and imprecise meaning’ in recent times, according to Bridges and Messerschmidt (2016), but nevertheless also has a long history of detailed debate in feminist thinking. It is used much less commonly now than in the heyday of its feminist usage, the 1970s and 1980s, because of critiques concerning its universal, trans-historical, and trans-cultural scope. Such critiques

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raised concerns that the term flattened out the meaning of male domination to render it the same everywhere and at all times, failed to differentiate experiences by different groups of women and men, and entailed a limited understanding of power solely as top-down oppression. The advantage of the term is that it has a sharply political focus upon domination and inequality which, as Joan Acker noted, is a focus that is not easily assimilated or co-opted. For an introduction to the term, see Pilcher and Whelehan (2017: 99–101). Each of these elements has its own history in feminist thought. The concept of ‘male identification’, for example, draws heavily on Laura Mulvey’s (1975) pivotal work on ‘the male gaze’ (to be defined later in this chapter – see note 13). On terminology, we defer to Alison Bechdel herself, who prefers ‘the Bechdel-Wallace test’ (Bechdel as quoted by Jusino, 2015). The Bechdel-Wallace test has been extended to explore other identitymarkers, including ethnicity and sexual orientation (Johnson, 2009; Kagan, 2015; Kapoor et al., 2015). Predictably, there are also those who insist on applying a ‘reverse’ test to examine movies that underrepresent men. Of course, such movies do exist, but highlighting them rather misses the point, since the industry is clearly and heavily male-dominated and male-centred. As Imelda Whelehan observes, while men do seem to be disappearing from ‘classic women’s texts [including chick flicks], these texts themselves remain colonised by a “male” logic of heteropatriarchy’ (2010: 170). Indeed, Whelehan suggests that the perhaps temporary, and certainly partial erasure of male characters from chick-flick romantic comedies is counterbalanced by the advent of the ‘bromance’ (to be explored in chapter 9) telling ‘their side of the story’ (2010: 170). On the uses and limitations of the Bechdel-Wallace test and other, similar tests, see Rughiniş et al. (2016); and Van Raalte (2015), who also discusses the ‘reverse-Bechdel test’. The concept of the ‘male gaze’ refers to the camera adopting a position and point of view associated with the male protagonist and the presumed male heterosexual audience, so that men dominate and drive the narrative. This in turn affects what we see and how it is seen, as well as frequently enabling the sexual objectification of women on screen. For example, in heterosexual pornography it is very common, indeed almost ubiquitous, for the sexual scenes to be shot over the shoulder of the male lead to focus on a comparatively passive and often prone woman. The male gaze is also found throughout mainstream films. One classic instance arises in the first of the Transformers franchise (2007), in which the female love interest (Megan Fox) is depicted



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bent over a car engine. The concept was coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey (1975). The devaluation of what women do extends, unsurprisingly, to academic analyses (across a whole range of fields, including film studies and politics), where male-centredness and male identification also prevail. On this, consult the substantial and rigorous scholarship on Women’s Studies and feminist epistemology, e.g. Hawkesworth (1989); Alcoff and Potter (1993). See too, the quotation by Deborah Jermyn (2015: 365) later in this chapter. On chick flicks, see Ferriss and Young (2008b); Radner (2011); Radner and Stringer (2011b). Distinctions between chick flicks and romance movies are somewhat loose since some commentators position romantic comedies under the generic rubric of chick flicks. Chick flicks in this schema are understood as providing an overarching category referring broadly to all films considered to be appealing to women. We suggest that, while many describe chick flicks in this generalised way, it is also possible to opt for a rather more narrow use of the term – chick flicks might designate films not just ‘for’ women but centrally about relationships between women. Using this framework, most romance movies would not qualify as chick flicks. In short, the term chick flicks would then refer to the ‘wo-mance’ other of the ‘bromance’ format to be discussed in chapter 9. We draw attention to some uses of the language of ‘wo-mance’ in this later chapter, but for the most part adopt the looser and more prevalent usage ‘chick flicks’ as simply ‘for’ and about women (and thus inclusive of many romantic movies). On the diminishing appeal of romantic comedies, see ‘The Numbers: where data and the movie business meet’ (website) www.thenumbers.com/market/genre/Romantic-Comedy. Other romantic comedies set in New York City include Maid in Manhattan (2002); How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003); Along Came Polly (2004); PS I Love You (2007); The Backup Plan (2010); Something Borrowed (2011); among others. Ryan and Kellner suggest that in the early 1970s, and perhaps as a response to feminist critiques of romantic movies, ‘men got the wagons together in a circle of buddy films’ (1988: 136). We will consider contemporary iterations of buddy films as ‘bromance’ in chapter 9. Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton (and, to a lesser extent, several other mature female actors) feature heavily in these ‘autumn years’ romances. Perhaps, in this respect, they throw back to the Hollywood ‘star system’ (see chapter 2), offering a vehicle for the guaranteed box-office return of established stars such as Streep.

144 Relationalities 21 This knowledge adds to what might be called the ‘comfort factor’ of nostalgic familiarity identified in the intertextual elements mentioned earlier. 22 On feminism and fairy tales, see Rowe (1979); Zipes (1989); Bacchilega (1997); Joosen (2004); Pershing with Gablehouse (2010); Williams (2010). 23 We follow up this line of enquiry in chapter 9. See also Greven (2010), among others.

8 Romance

In the previous chapter, we explored some of the ways that gender politics informs Hollywood movies, attending to ‘chick flicks’ and romance films in particular. We argued that practices of exclusion and invisibility are produced by male domination, male-centredness, and male identification, and that these have politically salient effects. Women and girls are represented as caring about and taking pleasure in (almost exclusively heterosexual) romantic relationships, investing in the fairytale happy ending typified by the wedding, and by implication deferring to the supposedly ‘natural’ superiority of men. In both the production and the consumption of Hollywood movies, women’s perspectives and preferences are derogated, and the relevance of feminist thinking regarding gender equality and critical reflection on gender identities is misappropriated or dismissed. In this chapter, we continue our exploration of intimate relationalities on screen, and consider interactions between gender, romance, and sexuality. Our focus turns to how contemporary, mainstream movies present a politics of social interconnection in terms of desire, love, and romance. What political myths do Hollywood romances deliver to us about the meanings and power relations inhering in romantic relationalities, including attraction and attachment? What stories, experiences, and lessons about love and power are iterated in the multiplex? Our argument, in this chapter, is that romantic movies mobilise myths that inform our expectations of what is desirable, normal, and enjoyable about intimate relationships. In Hollywood romances, we see hetero­ normative and hypermonogamous imperatives prevail. Such imperatives

146 Relationalities are politically significant, not least because they invoke collective and interactional identities, meanings, and effects. How do movies accomplish this? It is not a simple matter of discrimination or exclusion – although these certainly play their part, as we saw in the last chapter. Like gender, romance is ‘policed’ on screen to produce a particular and appealing account of the legitimate community or nation (in keeping with Joseph Nye’s [2004] conception of ‘soft power’) and to incite complicit identification with that construction of the collective social fabric (following Gramsci’s [1992] analysis of hegemony). In the case of romantic relationships, reiterated formulations in Hollywood movies which police the generation of a normative ‘us’ and an outsider ‘them’ are fundamentally heteronormative and hypermonogamous. Heteronormativity ‘Heteronormativity’ is, broadly, the (mythical) assumption that all people are naturally and normally, exclusively and exhaustively, either men or women, and naturally and normally heterosexual. To truncate Judith Butler’s (1990) famous paradigm, heteronormativity can be conceived as a kind of matrix spanning three axes: male/female embodiment; masculinity/femininity; and hetero-/homo-sexuality. The ‘correct’ alignment requires males to be men who are masculine, and to desire women; while females should be women who are feminine, and desire men.1 The social preference for alignment along the heteronormative matrix is reiterated insistently, but is also contested at various sites of sexual politics. The idea of the heterosexual matrix allows us to consider embodiment, gender, and sexuality as distinct yet connected elements of political subjectivity. Knowledge about the nature, impact, and experience of embodied love and sexuality draws on the vast, complex, and often interdisciplinary scholarship of feminism as well as critical men and masculinity studies,2 sexuality, and queer studies. Increasingly, scholars understand that the dichotomous categories marking all people as either male or female, men or women, and heterosexual or homosexual (never unproblematically both, neither, or moving from one to the other) are insufficient to describe people’s diverse and changing experience of sexuality (Lorber, 1996; Dean, 2014; Schultz, 2015). In Hollywood movies, however, love and romance tend to

Romance 147 be treated in predictable and even formulaic ways, and the myth of heteronormativity is repeated and endorsed. At the movies, ‘normal’ romance and desire are thoroughly heteronormative, and validate heterosexuality in a number of ways. First, in romantic comedies, we are shown time and time again that men and women are different; and such difference is presented as naturally and normally magnetic. Moreover, heterosexual attraction is cast as so deeply natural that it is endorsed beyond the human realm. This endorsement carries a corollary: the experience of true love marks mature adults as fully human, and changes us for the better. Finally (for women, in particular) love is to be preferred and privileged over any other concern. We explore and illustrate each of these tropes in the context of Hollywood romantic comedies. Hypermonogamy Elizabeth Emens coined the term ‘supermonogamy’ to describe the idea that there is one (and only one) uniquely perfect soul-mate for every human being (Emens, 2004). We prefer an alternative term, hypermonogamy. While Emens’s ‘supermonogamy’ stresses the overarching social approval attached to the ‘one and only one’ idea, the ‘hyper’ in hypermonogamy suggests an emphasis that is simultaneously endorsed and elevated, yet anxious. This anxiety is evident in the strongly instructional elements of many rom-coms, wherein the narrative moves beyond merely showing an aspirational or proper way to ‘do’ love and romance. Explicitly instructional rom-coms include How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), Hitch (2005), and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), but a premier example is He’s just not that into You (2009), a movie based on a self-help guide for single women looking to find true love (Behrendt and Tuccillo, 2004).3 Book and movie share the same hypermonogamous key message: if a partner is not shaping up as ‘the one’ (according to a range of specific and explicit criteria), women looking for love should cut their losses and move on. The ideology of super- and hypermonogamy is fundamentally myth­ ical. The notion that there is one and only one true love for every human being defies most people’s experience. The vast majority of people find at least one loving mate from a relatively restricted pool of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, as well as, more recently,

148 Relationalities from similar people online. If it were really necessary for us to sift through millions and millions of contacts in order to find love, we would never have time for anything else, and perhaps only a small percentage of people would ever happen to meet their ‘one and only’.4 In any case, some people are happier single than coupled; for some people (even ‘true’) love doesn’t last; for others, love turns into a kind of intimate terrorism (Marcus, 1994). Hypermonogamy is patently not for everyone, yet we are encouraged to believe that it is. The premise of Something Borrowed (2011), in which Dex (Colin Egglesfield) cannot resist revisiting his enduring attraction to his fiancée’s best friend, Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin), illustrates hypermonogamy in excruciating ways. The movie invites us to imagine that in a world of more than seven billion people (and counting) Rachel’s one true love, her only soul-mate, is none other than her best friend’s fiancé. Predictably, new heterosexual love trumps years of loyal, same-sex friendship. The fact that such love tangles are relatively (if unfortunately) common in real life as well as on screen gives the lie to the claims of hypermonogamy, even as this reinforces its anxious underbelly.5 Despite its tenuous connection to lived realities, hypermonogamy constitutes a cornerstone of romantic comedy. In what follows we consider how the myth of hypermonogamy is articulated to four repeated and enduring tropes of romantic comedy: gender polarity as complementarity, destiny, transformation, and the prioritising of romantic love. The first of these, ‘complementarity’, instructs us as to the proper gendered relational ‘fit’ required for successful romance, whereas the second, ‘destiny’, details a relational command including guidance as to who or what ‘drives’ romantic relationships. ‘Transformation’ concerns how love changes us (and yet, perhaps ironically, also emphasises the importance of authentic individuality), and, finally, ‘priority’ signals the transcendent importance of a meaningful romantic relationship, particularly as compared to money. Two kinds of people: gender polarity and complementarity ‘There’s only two kinds of people in the world: there’s women, and there’s men.’ —500 Days of Summer (2009)

Romance 149 Romantic comedies almost inevitably see ‘different’ individuals pairing up. ‘Difference’ must be understood, here, as strongly gendered (and thus heteronormative) and also strongly individualised. The leads in any romantic comedy are usually both white, of similar age, able-bodied, and often from similar social, ethnic, and religious backgrounds.6 If the romantic protagonists are not socially similar, their difference tends to figure as a narrative fulcrum, becoming the difference, or the (social) obstacle to the lovers’ happiness. Consistent with Cinderella stories, difference is sometimes manifest in terms of class or wealth, as in Pretty Woman (1990), Maid in Manhattan (2002), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), and many others (Shary, 2011). The focal difference, however, is almost always presented as the (gendered) polarisation of individual personalities: if the female lead is neat, the male lead is messy; if the male lead is conventional, the female is non-conformist; and so on. Thus, in What Happens in Vegas (2008) the female lead, Joy (Cameron Diaz), is controlling and ambitious; the male lead (Ashton Kutcher) lacks drive and discipline. In Letters to Juliet (2010), Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is sentimental and romantic, while Charlie (Christopher Egan) is a hard-nosed pragmatist. Katherine Heigl’s ‘Jane’ in 27 Dresses (2008) is a kind and helpful friend, but her destined partner Kevin (James Marsden) is cynical and shrewd. Julia Roberts’ Pretty Woman (1990) is a gauche sex worker and Richard Gere a sophisticated, millionaire businessman. The characters portrayed do not inevitably occupy traditional gender stereotypes – women can be ambitious, driven, high-earning professionals like New York equity trader Joy (Cameron Diaz) in What Happens in Vegas (2008), Reese Witherspoon’s fashion designer Melanie in Sweet Home Alabama (2002), or Kate Hudson’s corporate lawyer Liv in Bride Wars (2009). Less often, male rom-com leads are presented in non-traditional gender roles – Ben Stiller plays a nurse, for example, in Meet the Parents (2000). Perhaps the clearest example here comes from How to be Single (2016). This movie (based on Liz Tuccillo’s 2008 book) presents a series of couple vignettes, including the pairing-up of a pregnant doctor, Meg (Leslie Mann), who is older, wealthier, and less interested in relationships than her romance-loving, receptionist boyfriend. The movie’s purported message – that it can be great to be single and self-reliant – is thoroughly undermined by its final lesson. Embracing singledom, it seems, is

150 Relationalities necessary precisely in order to avoid exuding the reek of desperation and thus remain attractive to a potential soul-mate. Many rom-coms present narratives strongly consistent with the gender norms of the Cinderella myth, offering poor but decent women a ‘night at the ball’ opportunity (Moonstruck, 1987; Pretty Woman, 1990; Ever After, 1998; She’s all That, 1999; Miss Congeniality, 2000; My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2002; Maid in Manhattan, 2002), a ‘special’ night usually combined with the make-over magic of transformation (to be discussed in more detail shortly). However, variations – stories featuring a ‘stuck-up’ woman brought down to earth, or a man who is transformed for a night – also appear, and these typically invoke another form of gender polarity and complementarity. In Fever Pitch (2005) Drew Barrymore is a high-performing executive who finds her Prince Charming in the guise of a humble Boston Red Sox (American baseball team) fan. Their date with destiny is at a ball park rather than a ball. In Wedding Crashers (2005), Owen Wilson’s character masquerades as a waiter in order to attend the society party at which the object of his affections – the daughter of a wealthy and powerful senator – is a guest. In fact, it seems that young women who are otherwise successful, driven, and disciplined are as likely to be rom-com fodder for a dressing-down, as they are to be also offered possibilities for dressing up. Whether the ‘Cinderella’ magic serves to glamourise the dowdy woman, or bring the high-flyer down to earth, such narratives put love and relationships at the centre of successful femininity, and simultaneously naturalise gender polarisation. In romantic comedy, it does not matter whether a woman is this or that; what matters is that she is one thing and the man she meets is another. This is the core political mythology of the romance movie, and is critical to its construction of (naturalised, universalised, and eternalised) political relationalities. In this way, romantic comedies appear to merely reflect gender polarisation, but in fact also produce it – indeed insist upon it. Gender polarity and complementarity in romantic comedy simultan­ eously naturalises and celebrates heterosexuality. Rom-coms endorse the idea that ‘opposites’ attract, and iterate gendered polarisations relentlessly (Voytilla, 1999: 210–13). The message that the heterosexual couple is a necessary, natural unit is repeated in rom-com treatments of single people as pitiful and unhappy. Adrienne Rich’s (1980) account

Romance 151 of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ remains relevant in relation to these movies. Rich argues that if heterosexuality were really as naturally and normally widespread as is claimed, there would be no need to systematise the series of material and symbolic punishments directed at women who fail or refuse to comply. In rom-coms, protractedly single female characters are represented as almost inevitably desperate. Consider for example Lisa Kudrow’s character, Denise, in PS I Love You (2007). Denise asks every man she meets the same series of stock questions: ‘Are you single? Are you gay? Do you have a job?’ If the ‘correct’ responses are forthcoming (yes, no, and yes, respectively), Denise immediately launches into a ‘test’ kiss. The same logic portrays some single people as fat, ugly, hypersexual, or otherwise unlovable (Melissa McCarthy’s character Megan in Bridesmaids, 2011; Rebel Wilson’s Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect, 2012; Zach Galifianakis as Alan in The Hangover, 2009). Those who are ‘happily’ single are represented as the victims of false consciousness – playboys/playgirls who are shallow, irresponsible, or immature.7 In the hypermonogamous world of romantic comedy, everybody wants to be successfully paired-off. Gender difference is recreated and reiterated, and naturalised as necessarily yoked to the human condition. People are divided into (exclusive and exhaustive) male or female categories, and their differences (whatever they may be) are repeatedly figured as naturally magnetic. As we have argued above, a range of differences (including class, personality, and so on) can be yoked to gender, but stereotypical heroes and heroines of romantic comedies are nevertheless easy to identify. The female lead in any number of rom-coms is a woman who is successful in every way except in love, and her failure in this respect thoroughly undermines her success in the rest of her life.8 A woman who fails at love fails at proper womanhood. Claire Mortimer identifies a classic example in Woman of the Year (1942), in which Katherine Hepburn, as Tess Harding, succeeds at everything but the domestic duties of wifehood (Mortimer, 2010: 21). In an iteration of the Shakespearean Taming of the Shrew plot, ‘[n]atural order is restored as the heroine submits to the hero’s sense and strength of will’ (Mortimer, 2010: 25).9 Rom-com heroes, however, are not unfailingly ‘masterful’. Rather, a number of more complex characteristics tend to be brought into play.

152 Relationalities Male leads are supposed to offer ‘a plausible object of desire for the woman, and for the audience’ (Mortimer, 2010: 45) – and, as such, are routinely white, clean-shaven, tall, and blessed with a good head of hair – but the æsthetic margins of what constitutes a plausibly attractive person seem to be significantly more elastic for men than for women. Consider Gerard Depardieu in Green Card (1990), Jack Black in Shallow Hal (2001), or Seth Rogen in Knocked Up (2007) – none of whom is obviously or conventionally handsome.10 Male rom-com stars often present a markedly ‘softer’ masculinity than their action hero counterparts. In The Holiday (2006) Graham (Jude Law) admits to being easily moved to tears, for example (an admission later somewhat ameliorated by the fact that he is a widower with two young daughters). Kathleen Rowe labels this softer, more sensitive version of masculinity the ‘melodramatised man’, arguing that his softening actually serves to supplement rather than undermine masculine authority by rendering him better equipped to ‘“instruct” women about relationships, romance and femininity itself’ (1995: 196–7).11 Certainly, the male lead in romantic films is typically different from, say, action heroes. For example, in Moonstruck (1987) and Serendipity (2001) there are pivotal speeches by men regarding the necessity to relinquish rationality, to embrace emotionality in order to truly experience love – a far cry from the controlled authoritativeness of action heroes. In Serendipity, Dean announces that he is in awe of his best friend, John (the romantic lead, played by John Cusack). He is inspired by John’s obsession for a woman (Kate Beckinsale) he met briefly many years previously. Dean (Jeremy Piven) finds his own failed relationship and feelings wanting in comparison: You are a jackass. You’re my hero. You’re like my oracle. Courtney moved out. We just let it slip away. It died; we died. Do you remember the philosopher Pinititus? He said if you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid. That’s what you’ve done. Now I want to be a jackass!12 Romantic movies, despite their insistence upon gender polarities, provide space for masculinities which are attentive to intimacy, emotion, and interconnection with others – a distinctly different gender representation

Romance 153 from that available in most action narratives. In keeping with this, male romantic-lead actors need not have (and most often do not have) the heavily muscular physique associated with action heroes; and, because romance is more dialogue-driven than many other genres, romantic leads must demonstrate some degree of conversational skill. Indeed, the challenge to speak authentically and truly is often an integral element of romance, as we will see. Destiny ‘You don’t have to understand. You just have to have faith … Faith in destiny.’ — Serendipity (2001). ‘You don’t find [love]; it finds you.’ — Definitely Maybe (2008). ‘It feels like, I dunno, fate wants us to hang out.’ — Playing it Cool (2015). We have argued that (compulsory) gender polarity and complementarity police a naturalised (heterosexual) hypermonogamy. This also allows love to be characterised as magnetic, as an irresistible – perhaps supernatural – force of ‘opposites’ attracting, something that moves us inevitably towards that one-and-only.13 Romantic comedies generally present love as a powerful human need whose shape is (to some extent, at least) figured as beyond human control. If a couple is ‘meant’ to be together, fate will bring them together. Destiny’s servant in Hollywood rom-coms is the ‘meet cute’. The ‘meet cute’ is an important early contrivance in which the romantic leads first encounter each other (Neale, 1992: 287, citing Bygrave, 1991), and usually occurs when either or both protagonists are precisely not looking for love. For example, in the first of a series of fateful coincidences in Serendipity (2001), the couple-to-be meets in a department store when both reach for the same pair of gloves. In The Holiday (2006), Graham (Jude Law) appears at his sister’s door, needing somewhere to stay overnight, not knowing that she has house-swapped with Amanda (Cameron Diaz) for a week’s holiday. In The Wedding Planner (2001), the ‘meet cute’ also recalls several fairy-tale elements – evoking the sense of

154 Relationalities familiar inevitability associated with destiny. Crossing the street, Mary’s (Jennifer Lopez) shoe gets stuck in a manhole cover (echoing Cinderella’s lost slipper); this causes a traffic accident in which a dumpster hurtles towards her. At the last second, a passer-by staves off disaster. In shock, Mary faints. Like Sleeping Beauty, she awakens to see her rescuer, Steve (Matthew McConaughey). Steve is a pædiatrician, and has monitored Mary’s condition at the children’s hospital where he works. Mary awakens in a pædiatric ward: like Snow White, she is surrounded by a merry clutch of small people. The ‘meet cute’ (and other manufactured coincidences) are situational catalysts for the plot: in romantic comedies, lovers are destined to meet and fall in love. One flipside of destiny’s apparent power to bring people together is that those who do not experience a ‘happily ever after’ romance may feel cheated or somehow defective. Romantic attachment is strongly idealised yet presented as available to everyone (perhaps especially when they least expect it). Single people are represented as inherently, necessarily sad and lonely (Cobb, 2012). The assumption is that single people, and especially single women, are constantly searching for love – and constantly disappointed. A good example here is Kirsten Wiig’s character Annie, in Bridesmaids (2011). In the opening scene, Annie is engaged in comically gymnastic sex with her ‘fuck buddy’ – for whom Annie is one of several sexual partners. That she is his ‘number three girl’ and not his ‘one and only’ marks her as exploited or a little desperate – she is not valued or respected, not truly loved. We can see that Annie’s sanguine attitude masks a deeper desire to be adored, and the futility of this desire in her current circumstance characterises her as needy, used, and self-delusional. The person who is open to love yet uncoupled seems bound in romantic narratives to ask himself or herself, ‘Why has fate not engineered a “meet cute” for me? Is hypermonogamy reserved for the blessed, the lucky, or the good?’ In other words, the incessant focus on the desirability of love, and the insistence that there is surely one special person for each of us, constitutes those who are alone as likely to feel decidedly undesirable. In romantic comedies, fate may engineer love, but missing out on romance is not attributed to destiny, but to personal inadequacy. In the American independent movie Kissing Jessica Stein (2002), Jessica (Jennifer Westfeldt) discusses her recent dating experience with friends,

Romance 155 and rues the lack of decent single men. Her former boyfriend responds by launching an excoriating attack on Jessica, insisting that it is she who is the problem rather than the men she meets. This scene illustrates perfectly the sting that inevitably inheres in hypermonogamy’s tail. The policing character of political myths, which relentlessly reiterate the norm (‘us’) and the problematic other, is not a feature only of ‘security’ films. Fear and anxiety are not reserved for horror and disaster movies alone, but also underpin romantic genres as the fear of abandonment, loneliness, or being unlovable.14 Transformation: make-over magic and making moves ‘You feel all these things, but you’re not doing anything!’ — Playing it Cool (2015) ‘When you find the one, you never give up.’ — Crazy Stupid Love (2011) Romantic comedy’s reliance on fate, however, is matched by a paradox­ ical insistence that the protagonists acknowledge and act on their attraction. The romantic leads are presented to each other as tinder but the spark must be lit by a human hand. Love demands individualist will power and action – we are required to recognise the magical as opposed to the merely contingent effects; we have to be prepared to take risks, ‘turn up’, be authentic, and often ‘fight’ for the person we love. Sometimes, this means rejecting second-best or refusing to ‘settle’ for someone less than perfect.15 In Bride Wars (2009) ‘settling’ is repeatedly disparaged, reinforcing the idea that love and comfort are by no means identical (Brook, 2011). In rom-coms, love almost always requires courage and some attendant risk of humiliation or rejection. In Two Night Stand (2014), for example, the male lead, Alec (Miles Teller), engineers the arrest of Megan (Analeigh Tipton). Delivering someone to a jail cell is not typically understood as a romantic gesture, but is presented as a necessarily desperate measure in order for the protagonist couple to be reunited. Often, one or both romantic protagonists must find the courage to reveal some truth about their lives or feelings. In Maid in Manhattan (2002), for example, Marisa (Jennifer Lopez) eventually confesses that she is not the wealthy socialite

156 Relationalities would-be-Senator Chris Marshall (Ralph Fiennes) supposes her to be, but is in fact a humble maid. In this movie, like countless others, the lead female character undertakes a make-over (Ferriss, 2008), and struggles (like Cinderella) with the truth of her identity. Rom-com transformations are heavily gendered: for women, the ‘magic make-over’ often involves improving her appearance, while for men the transformation is usually one of emotional maturation. The ‘winning’ change for women is to become appropriate objects of (men’s) desire, while for men it involves learning to become more responsive to women and more accepting of the demands of adulthood. Whether attendant on male or female protagonists, emotional transformations are a typical feature of romantic comedy.16 For men, especially, the challenge is usually cast as a journey towards emotional maturity (Mortimer, 2010: 62–5). However, for women in rom-coms the emotional transformation is more frequently bound up in ‘letting go’ of control and accepting a supposedly fundamental feminine need. The male lead in Fever Pitch (2005) is not asked to relinquish the game he loves but to temper his baseball obsession by putting away such childish things as a bedroom decked out in team merchandise. The female lead, by contrast, must put her partner’s pleasure first, and learn to enjoy the lowbrow, male-dominated entertainment of baseball. Reining in her occupational ambitions in order to advance her need for a romantic relationship is a price she willingly pays. Gender opposition is once again produced (and naturalised): women must abandon themselves to the power of love (and ‘the’ man) and be swept along by its demands, whereas men must more typically take some decisive but risky action or challenge. Similarly, while single women are routinely depicted as pathetically uncoupled (Kirsten Wiig in Bridesmaids, 2011) or obsessed with finding a man (Ginnifer Goodwin’s character in He’s just not that into You, 2009), men are rarely portrayed as actively or naturally interested in love. Rather, love finds them, taps them on the shoulder, and invites them to reconsider what they have, as compared to what is promised. Single men are represented as subject to a different kind of loneliness than women. In Wedding Crashers (2009), Jeremy (Vince Vaughn) and John (Owen Wilson) are first presented as joyously single, consuming ‘easy’ women at weddings like food from a buffet. As the narrative

Romance 157 progresses, they become aware how much more meaningful and rewarding their lives might become if they were to find – and keep – true love.17 In a range of ways, we learn that their wedding pick-ups are juvenile and ultimately unsatisfying: what they really, truly, need is full-blown, grown-up, love. Single men may be presented as ‘happy bachelors’, but their happiness is shallow or illusory. Like the eponymous lead in Shallow Hal (2001), bachelors need true love as much as anyone else. For men, the journey to love demands forgoing the sexual consumption of women as objects: for men to become completely human, they must recognise that women are (or, at least, that one particular woman is) human, too.18 Love is presented as written in the stars – it is fateful, destined, and (at least partly) beyond our control.19 It shapes the protagonists but they must in turn shape up. Love cannot reach its resolution by the machinations of fate alone; it requires human co-operation. In rom-coms, love tests us. The promise is that if we meet the challenge, the reward will be substantial. As Michele Schreiber asserts, romance ‘mythologizes the redemptive qualities of love and heterosexual coupling’ (2014: 27). Reiterating the desirability of gender opposition, the necessary action almost always demands that the lovers recognise and correct an imbalance. Often, a third party or ‘fairy godmother’ figure helps identify the imbalance,20 and assists one or both of the lovers to make the right choice (or at least avoid making the wrong choice, even if it means a humiliating flight from the altar, as in Playing it Cool, 2015; Bride Wars, 2009; and Sex & the City, 2008, for example). It is not enough to be physically transformed: in addition, the improving nature of the transformation and its source must be acknowledged. Thus, the ‘meet cute’ beginning is typically matched by an earnest but happy ending: a scene of declaration in which one of the leads reveals how they have been changed (always for the better) by love. Eleanor Hersey associates such speeches with a turn towards what she calls the ‘professional comedy’ (2007: 158), citing movies in which the romantic heroine undertakes public speaking as part of her working life (including The Princess Diaries, 2001; Legally Blonde, 2001). Given that announcements and declarations are standard fare in the realm of movie weddings, the shift, if the pun can be forgiven, is perhaps not as pronounced as Hersey asserts. It may be argued that the ‘professional’ speech is not

158 Relationalities so much an alternative to the romantic declaration as a variation on it. In most rom-coms (sexual) love – and not friendship, work, community, family, religious faith, duty, or any other cause – is presented as the mightiest of life’s enrichments, an alchemy in which the union of lovers is represented as far greater than the sum of its parts. In this way, both heterosexuality and gender polarisation/complementarity are reiteratively endorsed. Privileging love: postfeminist priorities ‘I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.’ — Shakespeare in Love (1998). ‘Girls are girls. If you have a vagina, you’re emotionally invested in sex.’ — Friends with Benefits (2011). One of the most ubiquitous political myths informing chick flicks in general, and romances, including rom-coms, in particular, is the idea that sexism no longer presents a problem, or that ‘feminism’s work is over’ (Whelehan, 2010: 158). Popular movies addressing women seem to assume that in the twenty-first century we have moved beyond restrictive gender roles to a new world in which men and women live as (fundamentally different) equals. The contention that we live in postfeminist times is frequently aired, but even the very meaning of that term is contested (Genz, 2009; Budgeon, 2011; Gill and Scharff, 2011; Tasker, 2011). We adopt Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra’s broad definition, in which ‘[p]ostfeminism broadly encompasses a set of assumptions, widely disseminated within popular media forms, having to do with the “pastness” of feminism, whether that supposed pastness is merely noted, mourned, or celebrated’ (2007: 1). Sometimes scholars use the term ‘postfeminist’ to acknowledge that second-wave feminism inspired activism and research that peaked over several decades – roughly, the late 1960s through the 1980s. Various elements of the women’s movement that flourished during that time are now conceived of as historical or even canonical, and in this very

Romance 159 limited usage the term ‘postfeminist’ is perhaps less contentious. However, to use the term even in a cautious and limited sense may invite misleading inferences – for example, that there is no longer any robust women’s movement, that once upon a time feminism was singular and homogeneous (Butler, 2013: 38), or that young women’s experience of sexism has nothing in common with older women’s. The idea that feminism is properly identified with contemporary women’s mothers and grandmothers has gendered connotations in and of itself. In a world in which women, much more than men, are exhorted to maintain a youthful appearance, and are effectively punished if they dare to reject such imperatives, the stakes in a ‘historicised and generationalised’ women’s movement are high (McRobbie, 2004: 258). Indeed, labelling feminism as long in the tooth, ‘post-’, or belonging to the past, are strategies that accomplish decidedly anti-feminist ends (Modleski, 1991: 3). In this way, the very term ‘postfeminism’ wrongly implies that feminist work is no longer required. Contemporary romantic comedies are strongly ‘at home’ in the postfeminist universe, whether we understand this realm as mythical or real. The postfeminist idea that men and women are now equals is a myth iterated at the movies, albeit in superficial and often flimsy ways (Whelehan, 2010: 163). Most obviously, women on screen are often represented as committed to meaningful careers. In a range of movies, but especially in romantic comedies, it is not unusual for female characters to occupy roles in traditionally male-dominated jobs and industries. Consider, for example, Kate Hudson’s corporate lawyer Liv in Bride Wars (2009); Cameron Diaz as a stock exchange floor broker in What Happens in Vegas (2008); and Sandra Bullock in almost all her roles – FBI agent, lawyer, doctor, publishing executive, astronaut, and so on.21 Such ‘valorization of female achievement within traditionally male working environments’ (Tasker and Negra, 2007: 1) is typically aimed not at men but at women – as if all that is necessary for women to achieve career objectives and workplace equality is to visualise them. More than any other genre, romantic comedies feature career-conscious women. There is a less than subtle hint here that women who have succeeded in male workplaces are special women and thus appropriate objects of romantic desire. They are ‘special’ in other ways, too. Even where female roles in romantic comedies appear

160 Relationalities vaguely character-driven, they are almost inevitably also young, white, slim, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle class, and conventionally beautiful. In short, they offer the aspirational ideal of traditionally successful femininity recast as empowerment.22 Once again the ‘everyone’ of romance movies is decidedly not an everywoman. This parallels an overarching point we made in chapter 2 in which we noted that the political technology of contemporary Hollywood films resides in the presentation of a story of evident social asymmetry wrapped in an account of freedom and social equality. Mythologised, ‘postfeminist’, social equality plays out in the way that blonde box-office drawcards like Rachel McAdams, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Hudson, and Cameron Diaz are rendered cute and ‘feisty’ in their apparent willingness to ‘match it’ with men. (Such roles are obviously gendered: when do we ever hear a lead male role described as ‘feisty’, ‘cute’, or ‘sassy’?) Postfeminist rom-coms present movies in which women stand up for their choices and, for the most part, expect (‘good’) men to respect them. The feisty heroine is a beautiful pseudofeminist, accepting challenges and refusing to settle for ‘second best’ as she traverses a thoroughly neo-liberal individualist world characterised by deregulation, privatisation, and government from a distance (Kaklamanidou, 2013).23 In this world, ‘men’ and ‘women’ as political categories are thoroughly erased; instead, there are only unique individuals – who nevertheless seem to enact the same gendered roles, scenarios, and choices over and over again. Alongside these visions of empowered, beautiful women, the myth reiterated is that while (young, white) women today have the world at their feet, satisfaction and respect cannot be found in work alone. Indeed, in rom-coms, love is represented as always and inevitably more worthy than anything else. It is sometimes claimed that comedy, and romantic comedy in particular, present opportunities for exploring social transgression – particularly for the ‘excessive’ or otherwise ‘unruly’ woman (Rowe, 1995; Mortimer, 2010: 21, 122; see also Alberti, 2013a). It might be argued, similarly, that the valorisation of love over money in movies offers an opportunity for a critique of capitalism and capitalist power relations. While we would not wish to overstate these potentially transgressive elements of contemporary romantic comedies, they do at least offer character-driven roles for women, and generally present

Romance 161 love (and not money, power, or violence) as the most important human need. In What Happens in Vegas (2008), for example, Joy (Cameron Diaz) and Jack (Ashton Kutcher) marry on a drunken impulse. The morning after, they agree to divorce. Before leaving, Joy gives Jack a coin for a slot-machine, and Jack wins a $3 million dollar jackpot. In typically unlikely rom-com fashion, the divorce judge orders that if each wants an equal share of the money, they must undertake six months of marital cohabitation and counselling in an effort to make their rash marriage succeed. Eventually (honourable, mature) love trumps the prospect of wealth. In this respect, we might understand What Happens in Vegas as an implicit critique of contemporary consumer materialism. The critique is, of course, limited in many ways: we know, for example, that the lead actors, Diaz and Kutcher, earned twenty times more money making this single movie than the characters they portrayed won on their once-in-a-lifetime jackpot. According to IMDb,24 the movie itself has grossed nearly US$220 million worldwide, on a budget of about US$35 million. As such it can hardly challenge the privilege attached to wealth, regardless of its on-screen message. The myth and the message remain typically gendered, too. It is usually women cast in the Cinderella role, alongside a Prince Charming who can always afford to ‘keep’ her. A prime example, here, is Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), in which journalist Rebecca (Isla Fisher) is undone by crippling credit card debt. She learns that compulsive shopping is ultimately unfulfilling even as her problems lead her into the arms of her wealthy but hard-working boss. Her hyperfeminine consumption presents, all the while, a fantastically attractive cinematic spectacle. The unlovable limits of love We have asserted that the myth of hypermonogamy is presented as if it is available to everyone, and that those who remain unmatched are characterised as sad, lonely failures. This seeming paradox rests upon the myth constructing ‘everyone’ in certain ways. That ‘everyone’ is not in fact an inclusive category is obviously inconsistent with hypermonogamous ideology, but Hollywood movies seem to manage such contradictions. Disabled people, for example, are rarely fodder for

162 Relationalities romantic comedy. Gallows humour and the occasional slapstick gag aside, in romance narratives illness and disability are firmly situated in the realm of darker, serious drama – examples here include Restless (2011), The Sessions (2012), and Me before You (2016). Me before You, a British-American co-production, has been the subject of protests by disability activists. Their charge is that in this film (as in the earlier, critically acclaimed Million Dollar Baby, 2004), disability is represented as, literally, a fate worse than death. In the male lead, Sam Claflin portrays a wealthy paraplegic man, Will Traynor, who is determined to be euthanised rather than live as a ‘burden’ to others – including his new carer (and love interest), Louisa (Emilia Clarke). Louisa tries but fails to convince Will that his life is worth living, and in the end inherits enough money from him to ‘live well’. In this movie, love means having the will, so to speak, to kill oneself in a conveniently altruistic manner, and the possibility of Will and Louisa living happily ever after is eschewed for the more tragic satisfaction of Will’s ‘ultimate sacrifice’. In this way, while love and heterosexual coupling are routinely mythologised as redemptive, opportunities for such redemption are clearly circumscribed. While illness and disability are enduring themes in Hollywood, representations of sick or disabled people in romantic drama, however, are anything but inclusive. Disabling illnesses or injuries are generally represented as obvious points of crisis that love may or may not surmount. At the movies, cancer is almost inevitably terminal. It is usually represented as a young person’s disease (Love Story, 1970; Restless, 2011; The Fault in our Stars, 2014) and is never really unsightly. Headscarves stand in for a great deal. Similarly, people with congenital disabilities very rarely feature in romantic movies as leads. Both acquired and existing conditions, however, are represented as adding an extra degree of narrative tension. Disability is presented as, self-evidently, an obstacle to be overcome (by the disabled person or their potential soul-mate, if not through some scientific-medical rescue). In these ways, disability is mythologised as inevitably tragic (Rozengarten and Brook, 2016; Rozengarten, forthcoming). Romantic comedies are usually spectacles of beauty in which there is no place for ‘disfigured’ people. Shallow Hal (2001) is, in some ways, the instructive exception to this rule, pivoting precisely on the improbability of ‘inner’ beauty’s cinematic

Romance 163 appeal. Indeed, the ‘stretch’ required for good-looking actors to play disabled people is an opportunity for accolades, as if disability necessarily involves an entirely foreign, difficult, and less beautiful way of being. In these ways, representations of disability – and their omission from romantic comedy – frame people with disabilities as inherently un­appealing.25 Disabled people are marginalised if not entirely excluded from romantic movie culture, and they are not alone. Even though homosexuality and other queer orientations are (in the United States and many other places) no longer so strongly proscribed, gay characters rarely appear as romantic leads. Instead – like a number of other ‘marked’ categories – they are either excluded altogether, or relegated to ‘sidekick’ roles – such as the male lead’s brother in I Love You, Man (2009), Woody Harrelson’s character in Friends with Benefits (2011), and Michael Caine as the ‘fairy godmother’ stylist in Miss Congeniality (2000). These (usually male) ancillary characters are fundamentally comic figures: their main function is to steer the heterosexual protagonists towards their inevitable fate.26 Marginalisation is also to be found in the typical pairing of romantic ‘leads’. While older men have never seemed to experience age as a barrier to being cast as a romantic lead, even when their female co-star is twenty years their junior (as in Shopgirl, 2005; or Get Smart, 2008), for women the story is different. Age is part of the familiar heteronormative order insisting that men (as a category) are taller and stronger than women (as a category). Thus, even though many women are taller/stronger than many men, we very seldom see them paired in romantic comedies. Similarly, we rarely see an older woman paired with a younger man. Indeed, the expectation that in any heterogendered couple the man must be older than the woman is sometimes taken to extremes when older actors appear as male romantic leads with a co-star who would more believably be cast as their daughter. Moreover, romance, in general, is usually presented as young people’s business. A flurry of exceptions, however – including Hope Springs (2012), It’s Complicated (2009), and Ricki and the Flash (2015) – is consistent with recent box-office findings that older people constitute a significant proportion of moviegoers (Ge, 2015). Nevertheless, the hypermonog­ amous myth is that ‘everyone’, eventually, finds love – and that it only really happens once. Given the ubiquity of divorce, the representation

164 Relationalities of true love and marriage as a once-in-a-lifetime event may be changing. In The Five-Year Engagement (2012), for example, the bride’s sister says ‘This is your wedding; you only get a few of these.’ The moment, however, is comic, and failed marriages are usually presented as miscalculations, errors, or a kind of rehearsal for the real thing, rather than as potentially challenging the political mythology of the one-and-only-one. In any case, pairing off – whether towards a wedding or not – continues to signal the ultimate ‘happy ending’. Happy endings The ‘happy ending’ persists as a key feature of romantic comedy whether or not it is invoked in a ‘postfeminist’ context, and serves to remind us that representations and injunctions regarding happiness do have political weight. Despite feminist scholarship’s long-standing reiteration that the personal is (still) political, romantic genres are, nevertheless, unlikely to be routinely understood as ‘political’ movies (Lapsley and Westlake, 1992; Kaklamanidou, 2013: 8). Relationality, however, is thoroughly vested in cultural politics. In popular movies, this is most obvious in relation to gender and heteronormativity. The myth of gender equality is presented as a fait accompli in the romantic-comedy universe, but in fact represents an alignment of postfeminist and neoliberal values not so far removed from Hollywood’s (continuing) male-dominated history. Relationality (in the form of ‘true love’) is presented as simultaneously destined and chosen, and is thoroughly mythologised as hypermonogamy. Love and romance are presented as universal pleasures, yet are represented as accessible only to young, white, beautiful, able-bodied, urban-dwelling, ‘postfeminist’, career women, who are expected to fall in love with one and only one man. We have argued, in this chapter, that the ‘patriarchal nature of the film industry’ (Mortimer, 2010: 20) is evident in romantic comedy’s hierarchical arrangement of gender polarity and complementarity along with heteronormativity. The organising myth of hypermonogamy reflects this, not just in the ‘opposites attract’ trope, but also in the ways that ideologies of destiny and transformation are mobilised in strongly gendered ways. The familiar and nostalgic positioning of love as a priority over other needs nevertheless presents opportunities for pleasure,

Romance 165 and even for small subversions. Various retellings and reworkings of standard stories do offer some challenges to gender, sexuality, and capitalist relations, albeit on a small scale, even as racism, ableism, homophobia, and (gendered) ageism remain tightly embedded in their structures. Romantic comedy is strongly characterised as ‘chick flick’ territory. Indeed, romantic comedy is so closely associated with female audiences that the two are sometimes used interchangeably, and new words, like ‘bromance’, have had to be coined in order to describe those romantic comedies that proceed from the point of view of the male lead (or leads). In the next chapter, we explore the comparatively small, new world of bromance. Notes 1 The matrix underpins ‘the established cultural discourse that assumes that feminine behavior in a man is indicative of homosexuality’ (Shugart, 2003: 77). 2 Critical men and masculinities studies is a relatively new field of interdisciplinary research. Its focus is on men, boys, and masculinities, usually – though not always unproblematically – in theoretical and/ or empirical contexts informed by feminism. For an introduction to the field, see Kimmel et al. (2005); for more on the relationship between feminism and men/masculinities studies, see Beasley (2015b). 3 One of the authors of the book on which He’s just not that into You (2009) is based, Liz Tuccillo, repeated this success with How to be Single (2016), a movie based on her 2008 book of the same name. 4 Hypermonogamy is inconsistent with homogamy. Homogamy – or the partnering-up of socially similar people – is strongly prevalent. Most people marry someone of the same nationality, ethnicity, religion, and class as themselves (Burgess and Wallin, 1943; Brook, 2015a: 76). 5 In Moonstruck (1987), Loretta (Cher) falls for her fiancé’s estranged brother (Nicolas Cage); in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Julianne (Julia Roberts) realises she is in love with her friend, Michael (Dermot Mulroney), only as he prepares to marry Kimmy (Cameron Diaz). The same plot resurfaces in Made of Honor (2008), in which Tom (Patrick Dempsey) realises he is in love with his best friend Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) only as she prepares to marry another man. 6 The couples in When Harry Met Sally (1989), Made of Honor (2008), and Something Borrowed (2011) first meet as college students; the romantic pair in No Strings Attached (2011) meet at summer camp; the protagonists in And so it Goes (2014) are next-door-neighbours.

166 Relationalities

7

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This kind of social proximity or sameness offers a platform for juxta­ posing the romantic leads’ (individualised, gendered) differences. Male leads (and increasingly, female leads, too) often start off as irresponsible, hypersexual playboy types: consider Ryan Gosling in Crazy Stupid Love (2011), or all four leads in the strongly similar movies Friends with Benefits (2011) and No Strings Attached (2011). Examples of rom-com heroines who are successful in every aspect of their lives except love include Violet (Emily Blunt) in The Five-Year Engagement (2012), Jane (Katherine Heigl) in 27 Dresses (2008), and Mary (Jennifer Lopez) in The Wedding Planner (2001). This story of the headstrong woman tamed by love, like the triedand-true Cinderella tale, has been told many times – see for example, Kiss Me Kate (1953), 10 Things I Hate about You (1999), and many more. The disparity is one of a number of gendered double standards. One of the most obvious of these is that male rom-com protagonists (and indeed male stars in general) are thought to have much more enduring romantic appeal than women, whose ‘shelf-life’ is markedly shorter. Amy Schumer’s (2015) ‘The Last Fuckable Day’ sketch satirises this wonderfully. See also Mortimer (2010: 49), who cites and explores Rowe’s argument with reference to the character Kevin (James Marsden) in 27 Dresses (2008). Rowe, in keeping with Janice Radway’s (1991) analysis of romance novels, stresses the softening of masculinity through romance, though of course the hero must not become ‘too’ soft. Dialogue condensed. There are parallels here with the tendency in war movies to venerate unthinking, loyal brotherhood/community/nation (see chapter 4). In the case of romance, faith in the mythologised heterosexual couple provides the equivalent, unquestionable collectivity. As we pointed out in chapter 2, political myths have particular resonance in relation to their ‘solidary aspect’ – their role in generating belonging and self-image or identity arising from group membership. It is hardly surprising, then, that (as noted earlier) there are many intertextual references between rom-coms and the self-help publishing industry – the most obvious of which is the 2009 film adaptation of Behrendt and Tuccillo’s (2004) self-help bestseller He’s just not that into You. However, some rom-coms also caution against holding unrealistic expectations, and insist that love means embracing your one-and-only’s imperfections. Such moments parallel those in security films when, for example, soldiers or those pursued by monsters must face their fears and become agentic.

Romance 167 17 In this context, it would appear that men, more than women, can ‘have it all’. 18 Perhaps this is a generous reading: it may be that the male rom-com protagonist is merely required to acknowledge that women ‘complete’ hetero men (as illustrated by Tom Cruise as the eponymous Jerry Maguire [1996]). 19 See, for example, Serendipity (2001) and Moonstruck (1987). In both movies, the protagonists fall in love despite explicitly wishing that it were not so. 20 In Bride Wars (2009), Vera Wang is an invisible but pivotal fairy godmother (Brook, 2011). In The Proposal (2009), Grandma Annie (Betty White) performs as an eccentric fairy godmother to Margaret (Sandra Bullock). Sometimes the fairy godmother is a man: consider Hector Elizondo as the hotel manager in Pretty Woman (1990), or Michael Caine’s beauty pageant coach in Miss Congeniality (2000). 21 The corresponding movies are Miss Congeniality (2000), Two Weeks Notice (2002), The Lake House (2006), The Proposal (2009), and Gravity (2013), to name just a selection. 22 If ‘raunch culture’ passes off traditional, sexualised objectification of women as the new empowerment in contemporary cultural mediums (Levy, 2005), romantic comedy provides its more respectable doppel­ ganger. Both rejig traditional valuation of women in terms of their attractiveness as a marker of women’s supposed new freedom and gender equality. 23 On the shape and character of neo-liberalism, see Hindess (2002; 2004). 24 IMDb is a popular internet movie database, www.imdb.com/?ref_= nv_home. 25 On this, and the visual reception of disabilities in general, see Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (2009). For more on the discursive representation of disabled people as abhorrent and asexual, see Rozengarten (forthcoming) and Rozengarten and Brook (2016). 26 On heteronormativity and homosexuality at the movies, see Gross (2001); Walters (2001); Barrios (2003); Kirkland (2007); Evans (2009); Moddelmog (2009); Pullen (2011); Demory and Pullen (2013); among others.

9 Bromance

We have argued throughout this book that political myths run deeper than the most obvious government, military, and civic agendas. Political concepts and conventions shape and influence our deepest emotional connections: power relations inform our identities even in intimate relations of intense intersubjectivity, marking what is visible and representable from the invisible and unthinkable. In the preceding two chapters, we considered how gendered power relations and romantic relationships are represented in Hollywood movies. More specifically, in chapter 7 we discussed how gendered power relations are both produced and reflected in Hollywood movies, and extended this critical analysis in chapter 8, where we considered how romantic comedies perpetuate myths of heteronormativity and hypermonogamy. Our task, in these chapters, has been to focus on those political myths pertinent to citizen-to-citizen rather than citizen–state relationalities. As will by now be clear, in most (non-feminist) scholarship, such intimate relationalities continue to be quarantined from the realm of the political, even though feminism has gained sufficient intellectual traction that it is no longer so radical to suggest that the gendered/sexual identities and relations are political. It nevertheless warrants mentioning that the realm of the personal is politically salient for men as well as women, although it is less likely to be assigned as much critical attention, let alone significance.1 In what follows we consider masculinities in the context of homosocial political relationalities. Homosociality ‘describes and defines social bonds between persons of the same sex’ (Hammarén and Johansson,

Bromance 169 2014: 1; after Sedgwick, 1985), excluding primarily sexual relationships, and often referring especially to bonds between men. We discuss how homosocial relationalities between men are represented beyond the heroic action movie and, in keeping with the previous chapter’s focus on heterosexual rom-coms, how men’s friendships, or ‘bromances’, play out in comedic settings. Bromance, as distinct from several related neologisms,2 is a sub-genre in which relationships between men are treated in ways more typically associated with ‘chick flicks’ and romantic comedies. The term ‘bromance’ is a neologism first listed in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013. A portmanteau of ‘brother’ and ‘romance’, it is defined as ‘intimate and affectionate friendship between men’;3 and is also used to refer to films about such relationships (OED online). While the older term ‘buddy movie’ can cover similar terrain to bromance, buddy movies traverse a much broader range of genres than bromance does.4 As Karen Boyle and Susan Berridge point out, ‘there is a long cinematic history to men’s friendships which cuts across a variety of genres’ (2012: 365). Indeed, movies featuring male-to-male friendships are almost ubiquitous. As noted in chapter 7, there is no need for a masculine Bechdel-Wallace test. As Walt Hickey (2014b) quips, ‘[y]ou’d be hard pressed to think of a single film that doesn’t have a scene where two men have a conversation that isn’t about a woman. Plots need to advance, after all.’ What distinguishes bromances from the broader representation of male-to-male friendships in movies is that the bromance connotes an overt demonstration of intimacy. It is this recent twist towards specifically intimate relationality that captures our attention in this chapter. We argue that, even though the influence of the ‘patriarchal legacy’ (Johnson, 2014, as discussed in chapter 7) means there are opportunities for a wide variety of ‘masculine’ roles to be presented in Hollywood movies, the numerical over-representation of men is not matched by a similar diversity of masculine styles. Further, despite some progress in the representation of sexualities, mainstream masculinities in Holly­ wood strongly endorse heteronormativity and its conservative norms of gender and sexuality. This endorsement can be imagined as a kind of agreement between men, but the terms of this agreement require further analysis. Opportunities for men’s participation in and identification with

170 Relationalities masculinity at the movies continue to be informed by the overarching operations of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ – that which is deemed to be esteemed manhood – and, by association, the looming threat of inadequate manliness (Connell, 1995: 77, 79; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). Hegemonic masculinity thus reflects the taken-for-granted power of pervasive heteronormativity and its fearful flipside, homophobia. We identify and explain how these frameworks are represented on screen using a number of relatively recent bromance movies that both reinforce and challenge myths about masculinity – particularly as these intersect with gendered power relations and the politics of sexuality. The ‘bro’ in bromance: fraternal politics Before turning our attention to recent Hollywood bromance movies, we consider the political weight of ‘brotherhood’ or fraternity. The term has a range of political resonances, but for our purposes we draw attention to just three. Firstly, there are perspectives which depict fraternity as a form of friendship among citizen-subjects and emphasise the political importance of interpersonal (but non-sexual) human bonds. Secondly, the gendered nature of brotherhood (as distinct from relationships between sisters or siblings) has been problematised, prompting feminist scholarship that calls into question whether ‘fraternity’ can be in any sense rehabilitated to allow the advancement of gender equity. Finally, the notion of hegemonic brotherhood has particular valence in critical men and masculinity studies. We consider each of these aspects of fraternity in turn to bring into view the political myths that might be associated with bromance films. Once again we dispute the notion that films featuring intimate relationalities should be dismissed as mere entertainment, sentimental dross, or crassly adolescent nonsense. Movies centred on such relationalities, including those between men, are indeed narratives of cultural politics. The famous tripartite motto of the French republic is ‘liberté; équalité; fraternité’. The first two terms have spawned entire libraries of political philosophy.5 While ‘fraternity’ is arguably a more troublesome term, it too has attracted a strong share of scholarly interest. In political theory, ‘fraternity’ usually stands as a synonym for deeply bonded and arguably homosocial friendship. One of the more notable treatments

Bromance 171 of the idea of fraternity is Derrida’s (1997) The Politics of Friendship, a work that revolves around Aristotle’s paradoxical vocative ‘O my friends, there is no friend’. For Derrida, ‘the figure of the friend … seems spontaneously to belong to a familial, fraternalist and thus androcentric configuration of politics’ (1997: viii, emphasis in original). Derrida (following Freud and many others, including Coole [1994]) conceives of fraternal politics as a rejection of patriarchy – in its most literal sense, the rule of the father – and as fundamental to democratic politics. For Derrida and other deconstructionists, friendship is politically interesting in no small part because it mobilises relations between the self and others, and is thus implicated in (broadly conceived) politics of identity, relationality, and community. However, the term ‘fraternity’ is clearly not gender-neutral, and its capacity to include women is the subject of long-standing and continuing debate. Feminist political theorists like Iris Marion Young (1989; 1990) and Carol Pateman (1988; 1989) have generated thorough critiques of the gendered contours of political citizenship, arguing that ‘fraternity’ is not merely a gendered word, but a key concept in political theory accomplishing strongly gendered effects. They suggest in different ways that ‘fraternity’ cannot be amended in any simple way to include women, because women stand in a different relation to homosocial friendship than men do.6 In Derrida’s account, fraternal politics involves a rejection of patriarchy, understood specifically as brothers (not as siblings, or brothers and sisters) defeating the rule of the father, and establishing suffrage for men (but not women). As such, Derrida’s work reflects a well-established tradition within Western political thinking more generally – including political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, as well as other theorists of the liberal social contract. This foundation myth of the overthrow of feudal paternal/ sovereign authority and the rise of egalitarian (sibling-based) liberal democracy necessarily gives rise to critiques of structural constraints on women’s political participation. On this, Pateman notes, ‘[t]he general acceptance that “fraternity” is no more than a way of talking about the bonds of community illustrates how deeply patriarchal conceptions structure our political theory and practice’ (Pateman, 2006: 78). Pateman’s analysis of the intrinsically gendered character of social contract theory offers an alternative reconsideration of the fraternal

172 Relationalities and the fraternal civic polity. What it suggests is that bonds between men be reconsidered, not as equivalent to non-specific friendship, community, or polity, but rather as precisely resting upon the ongoing promulgation of gender inequality as women’s systematic yet unrecognised marginalisation and subordination. Such an understanding of fraternity, and men’s homosociality, generates perspectives on how Hollywood bromances might be conceived as political narratives. Pateman’s approach, we suggest, can be explored alongside Joseph Nye’s (2004) analysis of national interest secured through the ‘softpower’ workings of beguiling cultural forms. Cinematic representations of fraternity as a mythologised, normative community (the ‘us’, as against outsiders) demonstrate Pateman’s analysis of the invisible yet fundamental limits of fraternity, while also enabling recognition of how that fraternal polity can be trafficked to market the nation-state in attractive terms. In this way, the mythology of fraternity is intimately connected in Hollywood film with the construction of a collectivity whose (gendered) asymmetries are buried in the ‘soft power’ appeal to mythologised solidary. Pateman’s critical approach to fraternity will be employed again a little later. The concept of fraternal ‘homosociality’ also has a significant history in critical men and masculinity studies. ‘Homosociality’ is a central concept in this body of scholarship, and is examined in a range of ways apposite for analysis of Hollywood film. Scholarship in this field notes that non-sexual bonds between men are sometimes figured as relationships at the edge of homoerotic desire, simultaneously similar to yet distinct from (and usually disavowing any similarity to) homosexuality (Sedgwick, 1985; Flood, 2008). The privileging of homosocial but not homosexual relationships among men is often linked to Raewyn Connell’s formulation of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell, 2015 [orig. 1990]; Donaldson, 1993; Flood, 2008; Arxer, 2011). Connell draws directly on the Gramscian concept of hegemony (as outlined in chapter 1) to argue that masculinity shores up social privilege and domination by endorsing and rewarding particular, preferred modes of masculinity. Masculine hegemony secures a kind of agreement, or semblance of agreement, as to what men should properly be. Her analysis clearly connects with our attention to Gramsci’s (1992) account of the cultural production of complicity in the hegemonic collectivity. What counts as hegemonic masculinity may change in style across time and space; the

Bromance 173 social substance of hegemonic masculinity, however, remains robustly elevated over the feminine, despite being subject to contestation. Thus, any particular embodiment of hegemonic masculinity may differ across various social contexts, but is inevitably associated with power and its rewards. Connell describes this association as the ‘patriarchal dividend’, to indicate that all men benefit from male dominance at some level, even if most are merely complicit in upholding it rather than actually embodying the highest standard of manliness (Connell, 1995: 79). The honoured male standard encapsulated in the term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ has been the subject of considerable debate, and has dovetailed in interesting ways with the theorisation of masculinities as multiple and intersectional (Connell, 1998; McCall, 2005; Beasley, 2008; Beasley, 2012; Hearn, 2015). Racism, ableism, and homophobia, for example, tend to reinforce (and are reinforced by) hegemonic masculinity (Bird, 1996; Cheng, 1999; Awkward, 2002; Shuttleworth et al., 2012). In the context of mainstream Hollywood movies, hegemonic masculinity is arguably evident across a trajectory of ‘ideal’ types (see Beasley, 2008). The top-earning American actors across the board, over time, are almost universally white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cis-men who can expect more opportunities to work, a greater range of roles, and greater longevity in their working lives than their female counterparts (Lincoln and Allen, 2004; Keegan, 2011). It is therefore not surprising that bromance movies might feature some less hegemonically masculine types alongside the conventional hero (Alberti, 2013a). Such representations, however, do not necessarily serve to diversify the range of acceptable contemporary masculinities but rather reinforce the hegemonic as they devalue and deride (often feminised) difference. Repudiations of (even slightly) non-hegemonic masculinities are evident in bromances, as we will see. Bromances exhibit and mobilise political myths relating to fraternity as a basis for masculine citizenship and belonging. Narratives turning on the fortunes of a band of brothers are already familiar to us: in chapter 4 we encountered war movies in which homosocial bonds are presented as fundamental to political order. In security-as-order movies, the fraternal bond often charges men to trust in masculinist hierarchies of authority. In bromances, we see fraternity in a different context. ‘Different’, here, has several meanings. First, bromances differ from security movies in that they focus on intersubjective bonds – the

174 Relationalities protagonists are not usually thrown together as they are in security movies, but rather choose their association. This mobilises a second meaning of ‘different’ – that which is not identical, one who is ‘other’ than oneself. Establishing which differences can be accepted or tolerated as against differences that characterise outsiders is a crucial task of homosociality. In this second sense, bromances rehearse the boundaries of who or what is (fraternally) ‘other’.7 In short, the ways in which homosocial friendship is represented in bromance movies speak to who belongs (the masculine ‘us’), and who does not (the masculine ‘them’), a differentiation which reiterates the inclusions and exclusions around nation/community/society we outlined in relation to security and relational romance films. In their iterations of meaning and behaviour, bromances – like war films and rom-coms – highlight and simultaneously naturalise notions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity that are usually cast into the background. Not surprisingly, the modes of relationship addressed in the apparently unique and diverse narratives of men’s inter-relationality do not merely illustrate gendered power relations, but also, axiomatically, idealise fraternal/masculine bonds as fundamentally human bonds. Because bromance is a relatively recent genre, the social patterns and political myths they reflect and produce are perhaps not as immediately or easily discernible as for many other movies. Indeed, even the identification of bromance as a distinct genre is rather more tentative than for movie styles with longer histories and denser provenance.8 In the remainder of this chapter we focus most of our discussion on three popular and readily recognisable bromances: Wedding Crashers (2005), The Hangover (2009), and I Love You, Man (2009). The questions we ask correspond, broadly, to the same concerns about the politics of fraternity we identified earlier. Do bromances mobilise fraternity/brotherhood as a politically salient category and, if they do, what is the nature of the fraternal bond? If admission to or exclusion from hegemonically masculine brotherhood plays a driving part in the narrative, who is ‘othered’ or excluded? Do bromances offer any possibility of siblinghood as human bonding – that is, can women be ‘brothers’? If, as Jenna Weinman asserts, women are ‘shoved to the wayside, reduced to empty shells, or forced into excessively maternal roles while bromance flourishes’ (2014: 47), perhaps bromance can

Bromance 175 tell us something about the gendered nature of fraternity. Finally, in similarly crude terms, can ‘homos’ be bros? It is sometimes suggested that the boundary between homosociality and homosexuality is not always clear, and that the proximity of the two sees heteronormative sexualities and identities becoming more fluid and blurred. Maria San Filippo, for example, argues that bromances like Wedding Crashers (2005) offer ‘queer-friendly, feminist, and sex-positive’ conceptualisations of sexuality (2013: 153, 193). If this is so, perhaps there is room to celebrate as well as challenge the political myths of bromance. Bromance at the movies: three examples The Hangover (2009) was a huge box-office hit for director Todd Phillips, sparking several sequels. Its story centres on Doug Billings’ bachelor party. Doug (Justin Bartha), his two friends Stu Price (Ed Helms) and Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper), along with his fiancée’s brother Alan (Zach Galifianakis) go on a road trip to Las Vegas. The morning after their big night out, Stu, Phil, and Alan awake to the realisation that the groom is missing. None of the men has any memory of what transpired, but it is obvious that the night was eventful, to say the least. In order to find Doug and get him back to his LA wedding on time, Alan, Stu, and Phil must reconstruct the night’s events – which include a wedding (Stu marries a stripper/escort), an abandoned baby, and $80,000 stolen from gangsters. As an ensemble piece, its bromantic elements are not limited to the dyadic, man-to-man form typical of bromance (Boyle and Berridge, 2012: 353), but also construct masculine interrelatedness as fundamentally group-oriented. The Hangover is not quite a ‘rom-com for boys’ (Jeffers McDonald, 2009: 147) – it has more in common with films like Pulp Fiction (1994), or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) than it does with ‘standard’ romantic comedy.9 Above all, The Hangover presents a comedic treatment of male friendship and, in particular, of intersubjective masculine bonds – a theme to which we will return. A second movie to consider is Wedding Crashers (2005). This movie follows the exploits of best friends Jeremy (Vince Vaughn) and John (Owen Wilson), who gatecrash weddings for fun, food, and sex. Their highly successful partnership is threatened when John falls for Claire

176 Relationalities Cleary (Rachel McAdams) – a senator’s daughter already engaged to another man. Meanwhile, Claire’s sister Gloria (Isla Fisher) pairs up with Jeremy who, despite not wanting to take Gloria seriously, ultimately falls in love with her. The overarching narrative is of John and Jeremy’s transformation from carefree but selfish hedonists into mature, marriageable, men – or, from ‘cynical Lotharios to devoted monogamists’ (Jeffers McDonald, 2009: 157). While both are ultimately prepared to relinquish casual sex with an apparently unending line of eager partners for their ‘one special girl’, they are less willing to face marriage without each other. Jeremy advances his engagement to Gloria without John’s knowledge, let alone his blessing, and in so doing positions hetero-romance above bromance, but finds in the end that he needs John’s love. In parallel fashion, John recognises that his friendship with Jeremy is worth salvaging, even if this means compromising its fraternal exclusivity. Indeed, the moral of the story is that entering a long-term (hetero-)romantic relationship does not have to mean leaving close male friendships behind. In I Love You, Man (2009), rom-com stalwart Paul Rudd plays a Los Angeles real estate agent, Peter Klaven. Peter is a man without a best man. In the opening scene, Peter proposes to Zooey (Rashida Jones). The two already live together, and it quickly becomes apparent that, while Zooey enjoys a number of strong same-sex friendships, Peter has none. We learn that Peter habitually directs his social energy to women, especially his girlfriend. He dotes on Zooey, but gets on well with women in general – and his mother in particular. Peter overhears Zooey and her friends talking about how ‘weird’ it is that Peter has no long-standing same-sex friendships, conceiving this as abnormal and potentially damaging. The narrative rides on Peter’s quest to find a male friend – a best man. And because this is a comedy and must end well, he succeeds. After a series of false starts with various comically unsuitable contenders – a device consistent with heterosexual rom-coms – affable Sydney Fife (Jason Segel) turns out to be ‘the one’ for Paul. The movie is, in fact, a bromance within a rom-com: Peter and Sydney’s developing friendship constitutes the obstacle looming large against Peter and Zooey’s happy-ending wedding.10 Zooey asks ‘So when am I going to meet this guy [Sydney] who’s stolen you away from me?’ It is Sydney and Peter’s nascent

Bromance 177 friendship that threatens to derail the hetero-romance. Of course, by the end of the movie, the danger is averted, the crisis resolved, and the wedding goes ahead with order restored. All three of the movies introduced here centre on relationships between men, and involve estrangement and reconciliation in the style most familiar as heterosexual romantic comedy. In addition, each revolves around a wedding narrative.11 How might this be assessed in terms of political relationalities? On one hand, romantic comedy may be argued to occupy an entrenched position as ‘one of the most conservative of genres … rooted … in a celebration of the formation of the heterosexual couple’ (Stevens, 2009: 132).12 On the other hand, as same-sex marriage becomes more widely available, the institution of marriage may be being divested of some of its heteronormative impact. In this context, what can we make of bromances in wedding settings? Are they anxiously homophobic efforts at restoration, aimed at producing ‘recuperative masculinity’ (Mills et al., 2007)? Do they present male friendship in ways designed to distinguish or quarantine it from the homoerotic? Does bromance present any kind of alternative or even simply altered vision of masculinities and gender relations, even in glimpses? If such a strongly feminised genre as romantic comedy (Abbott and Jermyn, 2009) can be extended and ‘sold’ to men, does progressive political potential inhere in that genre-bended shift? Fraternity at the movies Each of the bromances discussed here exhibits features associated with gendered power and privilege. Connell’s (1995) account of the ‘patriarchal dividend’ and Johnson’s (2014) notion of the ‘patriarchal legacy’ are useful here, in identifying how bromances venerate homosociality among men. While Connell draws attention to the benefits of complicity in fraternal bonds, Johnson outlines how these benefits are put into play. Johnson suggests that gendered power relations continue to turn on male domination and control, male-centredness, and male identification. Male domination and control abide in the exclusion of women from positions of authority and influence, and the punishment of those women who step outside their place.13 Male-centredness means that men’s perspectives, achievements, and experience are central: men’s

178 Relationalities business is assumed to be more worthy and valuable than women’s activities. Male identification occurs when the ‘default’ or apparently neutral position is in fact masculine. Movies by, for, and about men, for example, are not generally labelled as such: they are just ‘movies’; whereas ‘chick flicks’, as we have seen, are simultaneously differentiated (and derogated) as a category of limited interest to men. All of these elements are strongly evident in the bromantic comedies under discussion here. Male domination and control are apparent wherever positions of power are monopolised by men. In The Hangover, most of the leading male characters are identified, in one way or another, by their occupations – Stu is a dentist, Phil is a teacher. Doug’s occupation is less clear, but he is obviously wealthy and respectable. By contrast, women in The Hangover are largely absent. As Boyle and Berridge observe, the opening scene of The Hangover starts ‘with a woman on the end of the phone, establishing a literal distance between women and men’ (2012: 360–1). Women in The Hangover are – quite literally – either wives or strippers, and sometimes both.14 Doug’s impending marriage is barely touched upon, but the woman Stu lives with is represented as controlling, uptight, and even violent. Stu’s ‘accidental’ marriage to Vegas stripper, Jade (Heather Graham), is presented as a more attractive choice: she is better looking, less demanding, and incorporates the promise of sexual power and pleasure for Stu. Jade’s partial inclusion in the fraternal group hinges on her role in displacing Stu’s existing, unsatisfactory partner. The message to women is clear: a girlfriend who makes demands of her partner is punishable by replacement. As in The Hangover, women in Wedding Crashers are either potential sexual partners, or wives, or both. The Bechdel-Wallace test can be usefully applied, here. John and Jeremy (the two male leads) repeatedly discuss their situation; but Claire and Gloria Cleary (the two female leads) never once appear in conversation with each other. The Cleary sisters are typical of women in bromance roles in that they are ‘essentially passive, if ultimately enabling or catalytic’ (Radner, 2014: 56). The idea that two sisters could be romantically involved with two best friend ‘bros’ and not discuss this fact is improbable, but in any case their views are irrelevant to the advancement of the plot. In I Love You, Man Peter’s search for bromance occurs directly in response to Zooey’s endorsement of the need for men to have homosocial

Bromance 179 friendships. Zooey is, however, the sole female character of any substance in the movie, and even as such she is (both literally and figuratively) thinly drawn. Overall, each of the bromances under scrutiny in this chapter displays elements of male domination, male-centredness, and male identification (I Love You, Man in less overt – and arguably less offensive – ways), marking bromances as vehicles for celebrating men’s power and privilege, even if their fraternal politics are not always obvious or straightforward. We consider the boundaries of fraternity on screen in the following examinations of the place of women and homosexual men. ‘Can hos be bros?’ Some film scholars celebrate the arrival of the bromance as an effect of a ‘new climate of social and sexual equality between men and women’ (Deleyto, 2003: 181; Alberti, 2013b: 159). Our view is that the celebration may be somewhat premature.15 In The Hangover, masculinity and femininity are strongly differentiated (just as they are, typically, in rom-coms). Moreover, as we have seen, women are largely irrelevant to the action. When the gender order is transgressed (and, in the movie, it is) the result is disordered and unattractive, but ‘funny’. Gender transgression is evident most strongly in the character of Alan, the bride-to-be’s brother, and newcomer to the group. Alan is feminised in explicit and sometimes heavy-handed ways (Harbidge, 2012: 7). In the first place, he is the character who appears most often in various stages of undress. In an early scene in which Alan is being fitted for his wedding suit, he appears in a jockstrap; in the same scene, Alan’s father remarks to Doug that Alan ‘has his mother’s legs’. When the sun rises in Vegas after the night no-one remembers, Alan is (again) in his underwear, and towards the end of the movie, when the groom and groomsmen are changing into their wedding suits on the side of the highway, Alan appears once again sans trousers. It is Alan who carries the mystery baby around in a harness against the front of his body; and Alan is the only male character with no discernible or implied occupation. The group’s amnesia (a key part of the hangover of the movie’s title) is explained when Alan reveals that he spiked everyone’s drinks – not with ecstasy (MDMA), as he had planned, but with ‘roofies’ (tranquilisers, sometimes also referred to as a ‘date rape drug’).16 He

180 Relationalities explains that his actions were intended as a kind of bonding ritual; an effort to secure his inclusion in the group as a sufficiently masculine member of the ‘wolf-pack’ (fraternity). In this sense the movie is exactly ‘about’ masculinity and belonging; it is the story of men’s willingness to embrace friendship, adventure, and difference – up to a point. All of the main characters are white, middle class Americans. Juxtaposed against their homogeneity are a villainously camp Chinese gangster (Ken Jeong) and former heavyweight boxer (and convicted rapist) Mike Tyson, playing himself. In The Hangover, it would seem that if a man cannot be hegemonically masculine, he is cast as hypermasculine (violent) or hypo-masculine (an object of fun/derision).17 Wedding Crashers centres on a more dyadic bromantic relationship in which gender normativity is just as strongly endorsed. The men are good-looking, white, middle to upper class types who enjoy leisure, privilege, and power; the women are good-looking, white, middle to upper class types who are slim and pretty. Gloria Cleary and her mother Kathleen (‘Kitty-Kat’ – an unsubtle ‘cougar’ reference) are kooky (Gloria) or bitter (Kathleen, played by Jane Seymour) but beautiful nymphomaniacs, and both Gloria and her eldest sister are represented as vacuous. Claire, the middle sister, is more like her father: she is wealthy but responsible; she is smart; she does not want to marry her fiancé ‘too soon’ while there are still ‘a lot of things we want to accomplish’. Tellingly, Claire is the only woman who participates in the family football game. If Claire is masculised, it is in these subtle, acceptable ways. John (Owen Wilson) is not exactly feminised, but exhibits an appealing ‘softness’ at various points – most of which relate to his doubts about the ethics of wedding crashing.18 Early in the movie, in a moment of regret or self-doubt, he turns to the naked woman beside him, and apologises. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ he says. ‘I feel like I don’t even know you.’ ‘It’s Vivian,’ she replies. John is arguably feminised in a more structural way. Wedding Crashers features one or two elements strongly reminiscent of fairy tales – a trope we know is closely associated with ‘chick-flick’ romantic

Bromance 181 comedy. John Beckwith is a Cinderella figure: first, he is an orphan; second, he and Jeremy attend the Cleary manor under false pretences, passing themselves off as people they are not; and third, John disguises himself as a waiter to attend a ball at which (rich, charming) Claire is an invited guest. If he were subject to any kind of make-over, the fit would be perfect. (Alas, he is not; the actor Owen Wilson, who plays John, is no doubt understood to be sufficiently attractive as he is.) Needless to say, in chick-flick romantic comedy, it is much more often the female lead who is the Cinderella figure (Radner, 2011; Brook, 2015b). Can we say that John’s position as the Cinderella figure feminises him? Claire, the prize he secures, is the daughter of American aristocrats, but the potential class and cultural differences between Claire and John are not pronounced. Part of John’s appeal lies in his ability to mix confidently with any social set. We have only to compare this with the classic Cinderella movie Pretty Woman (1990) (Radner, 1993; 2011), to see that John is not feminised or subordinated in any strong sense, nor is Claire the gallant and powerful Prince Charming. Claire certainly is appropriately rich, smart, and attractive, but she remains vulnerable rather than powerful. The power contrast that would be needed to cast John as Cinderella and Claire as his prince(ss) is not evident. In this comparison we see the strongly gendered nature of political relationalities through a different lens (class); the view changes but the gender picture remains the same. Indeed, class becomes yet another gendered polarity (such that if the male lead is one thing, the female lead must be the other). Individual men may differ, but their power (as a group) over women (as a group) seems constant. In I Love You, Man, bromance emerges as both an obstacle and an achievement, and in this respect it resembles both The Hangover and Wedding Crashers. The bromance between Sydney and Peter threatens to displace Peter’s relationship with Zooey, who is the only key female role in the movie. Zooey has many female friends, and Peter’s willingness to fraternise with the girlfriends, as ‘one of them’ – rather than in a parallel, male homosocial group – is the problem demanding resolution. Gender transgression thus partly drives the narrative, but there are several additional elements that involve interesting representations of gender.

182 Relationalities The first is that a number of the male characters perform what are, for Hollywood, at least, somewhat unusual versions of masculinity. Peter (Paul Rudd) is feminised and straight, while his brother, Robbie, is masculine and gay (indeed, ‘masculised’ rather than simply masculine).19 The question that obviates the premise of the movie – why doesn’t Peter ask his brother to be his best man? – is never asked or answered. We must infer that they are not very close, or perhaps that a gay man cannot be a heterosexual man’s bestie.20 Robbie works at a gym, and embodies a back-slapping, beer-drinking, meat-eating, ‘regular guy’ style of masculinity – or ‘macho vulgarity’ (Feil, 2014: 180). Moreover, Robbie challenges himself to ‘turn’ straight guys. This is represented as a testament to Robbie’s go-get-em personality and hypermasculinity rather than a seriously problematic or even dangerous undertaking.21 Peter, by contrast, embarrasses himself trying to keep up with other men’s drinking at a poker game, rejects the macho competitiveness of his male co-workers, expresses a preference for loyal monogamy, and in a number of ways is represented as willing to ‘serve’ women.22 His feminisation, however – in contrast to Alan in The Hangover – does not render him pitiable or ridiculous. On the contrary, Peter seems well liked (by women in general) and well loved (by Zooey). Peter’s version of masculinity is thus somewhat more complex than some others, and positions him, bromantically, as someone whose homosocial bonds might conceivably stretch to the homoerotic. Perhaps in response to this, the film works hard to ‘reassure’ viewers that not hating gay men and homosexuality is not the same as being gay. Can homos be bros? We have seen how The Hangover presents Zach Galifianakis’s character Alan as less than hegemonically masculine. Alan’s feminisation extends to one or two vaguely homoerotic moments. As the group checks in at Caesar’s Palace, Alan says ‘If we’re sharing beds, I’m bunking with Phil’ – the inference being that he has a (sexual) preference for one man over the others. Similarly, when Alan says ‘Next week is no good for me, the Jonas brothers are in town’, he exhibits a liking for the kind of entertainment more usually preferred by very young women. In these ways, Alan is feminised and arguably (very tenuously) queered. Given the tight associations between gender and sexuality in such

Bromance 183 films, perhaps the simultaneity is unavoidable. However, any transgressive potential inherent in Alan’s character is ‘managed’ and defused as humour. Alan is the shortest of the men; he is the least athletic; he is the only bearded man; he is the only man who lives at home with his ‘folks’; and he is the only unpartnered man. He is, in fact, an object of pity (if not full-blown scorn and ridicule) whose saving grace is that he is (weirdly) amusing. Alan is, for all these reasons, no threat to the (heteronormative) social order. He precisely stands in for the unattractive unmanly, the fearful possibility against which ‘real’ (and ‘better’) men are judged. Indeed, when it transpires that the cause of the drama is that Alan has surreptitiously drugged the men, no-one is particularly surprised. Alan’s role may exhibit aspects of homoerotic transgression, but it is transgression as imbalance; transgression to be corrected and restored to a heteronormative stasis. As such The Hangover offers little if any space for subversion in either gender performance or sexual orientation. The political myth it endorses is that while men may and indeed should enjoy each other’s company (homosociality), they are naturally, thoroughly, normally, heterosexual. Indeed, while it is sometimes suggested that masculine homosociality’s proximity to the homoerotic presents opportunities to subvert heteronormativity, in bromances like The Hangover ‘the homosocial and homophobic typically go hand-in-hand’ (Boyle and Berridge, 2012: 356). In its treatment of sexualities, Wedding Crashers is arguably more troublesome than The Hangover, even if its representation of heterosexuality is plural, and not always glorified. Senator and Mrs Cleary, for example, are partners in an obviously unhappy marriage in which fidelity – on the part of the wife, at least – is barely feigned. Nearly all the women – from the smorgasbord of single women bedded by John and Jeremy, to Gloria and Kathleen Cleary, are sexually available, thoroughly and continuously. More than this, both Kathleen Cleary and her daughter Gloria are represented as sexual predators. Mrs Cleary objectifies John, suggesting that he should play football in his underwear. Later, she pounces on him, exposing her breasts to his bemused gaze as she literally stands over him. Despite his protestations, she insists that John touch her breasts. The scene is gratuitous in the sense that it does nothing to progress the narrative. Sexually agentic

184 Relationalities women, especially older women, remain ‘crazy’ and a source of anxious laughs. Gloria, meanwhile, is represented as an emotionally unstable nymphomaniac. At the Clearys’ formal evening meal, she masturbates Jeremy under the table. Jeremy is somewhat alarmed by Gloria’s attention, but endures it as if he has no choice in the matter. Later that night, Gloria ties the sleeping Jeremy to his bed, gags, and assaults him. The attack is not treated as anything serious, but rather as amusingly intrusive, greedy, or vexatious. The myth, perhaps, is that men cannot help enjoying sexual attention, whatever its source – that they cannot, by definition, be raped. Indeed, the only women who are anything other than thoroughly sexualised are Claire Cleary and her crotchety, homophobic grandmother. At dinner, Grandma Cleary describes Eleanor Roosevelt as ‘a big dyke’ and ‘a real rug-muncher’. Claire protests, saying ‘Grandma, you can’t talk like that, okay? It’s not right.’ Grandma Cleary’s homophobia is mostly targeted at Todd, the Cleary sisters’ only brother. When Todd declares, at dinner, that he doesn’t eat meat or fish, Grandma explains that ‘[h]e’s a homo’. Claire intervenes again, saying ‘Actually, Todd is an amazing painter.’ The dinner table discussion proceeds to consider whether Todd’s homosexuality would be a public relations liability or an opportunity for empathetic connection should Senator Cleary ever run for President. Grandma’s homophobia is presented as old-fashioned and politically incorrect; ostensibly, she is amusingly gauche. Her homophobia is rendered utterable because she is out of step and oldfashioned, but she is, nevertheless, a mouthpiece for homophobic sentiments that may be more prevalent and contemporary even as they are represented and challenged (Dean, 2014). Neither Grandma nor Todd Cleary, however, is an attractive or sympathetic figure. Todd is lank-haired, brooding, and inarticulate: his queerness is framed as ‘vulgar, ridiculous, grotesque’ (Feil, 2014: 177).23 Following in Gloria’s footsteps, he too assaults Jeremy, who is still tied to his bed. Jeremy completely rejects Todd’s amorous attentions, but talks his way out of the encounter. When Senator Cleary is alerted by noise coming from Jeremy’s room, Jeremy urges Todd to ‘[g]o get in the closet!’ This episode is no doubt intended as a kind of camp farce, but the potential for humour is undermined by both the unlikeliness of the encounter, and the contrivance necessary to deflect the possibility of homophobic

Bromance 185 violence. As the bigger, stronger (straight) man, any threat of violent reprisal towards Todd is obviated only by Jeremy being effectively restrained – he is tied to the bed, helpless. The following morning, Jeremy complains about his ‘midnight rape … and the nude, gay art show’, but simultaneously trivialises his victimisation: ‘I’m a little too traumatised to have a scone … I felt like Jodie Foster in The Accused last night.’24 Jeremy’s distress amounts to nothing more than pique. Despite being pummelled in the football game, tied up and raped by Gloria, sexually assaulted by Todd, and even being ‘accidentally’ shot by Sack, Jeremy defies victimisation. Like the ‘hard-man’ action hero, nothing truly injures him. In his robust refusal to embody fear or be incapacitated by injury, Jeremy remains thoroughly hetero-masculine. In this troubling sense, heterosexuality and homosexuality are not exactly or entirely opposed or dichotomised. Jeremy seems hardly more perturbed by Todd’s attack than he is by Gloria’s. Indeed, blatant homophobia has no place in Jeremy’s emotional repertoire, if only because his is a hegemonically fearless (hetero)masculinity. Underlining this, in one scene Jeremy refuses a priest’s handshake. ‘Come in for the real thing’, says Jeremy, and kisses the priest on the mouth. ‘I love ya … You’re a sweet man.’ There are several declarations of bromantic love between the two leads. When Jeremy supports John in his initial play to get to know Claire, John says ‘Can I tell you something without you getting angry? I love you. Yeah you, big guy.’ Responding through a mouthful of food, Jeremy replies ‘I love you too.’ Does this constitute a moment of other-than-heteronormative and hegemonic masculinity? Not a chance: the source of the friends’ regard for each other lies in their facilitation of each other’s properly manly, predatory, heterosexual exploits, and their bromantic utterances underscore rather than contest their masculinity. While we may see arguably ‘softer’ characterisations of hegemonic masculinity, in which men are permitted to make emotional disclosures or even kiss each other, there is no attendant vulnerability; rather, John and Jeremy’s homosociality extends into a demonstration of manly fearlessness. In Eric Anderson’s terms, their masculinity may be somewhat ‘inclusive’ – that is, enabling homosocial physical and emotional proximity between straight men – but, against Anderson, we suggest that in this incarnation

186 Relationalities it is no less dominant, and no less sexist (cf. Anderson, 2009). Thus, while Wedding Crashers exhibits key characteristics of bromantic comedy, it offers no real space for anything other than heteronormative representations of gender and sexuality.25 We saw earlier that in Wedding Crashers homophobia is used as a prompt for humour (through Grandma and Todd) and serves as a foil for Jeremy’s hetero-masculinity. In I Love You, Man opportunities for homophobic humour are not indulged or, at least, they are not so thoroughly mined. In Wedding Crashers, Todd’s homosexuality is marked as a potential source of embarrassment for Senator Cleary, whereas in I Love You, Man Robbie reports that he has recently made his beaming, best-friend father ‘an honorary homo’. Mr Klaven confirms ‘What’s wrong with that? My son is gay, and I embrace his lifestyle.’ Peter turns to his brother, his mother, and the internet to help find (male) friends. Mrs Klaven sets Peter up on a blind (man-)date with bisexual Doug, who assumes Peter is bisexual or bi-curious, and kisses him. This homosocial encounter turns into (unrequited) homoerotic attraction, but Peter’s response is neither hysterical nor angry. The bad taste left in his mouth is ascribed to Doug’s breath, rather than a self-evidently unpalatable incident.26 Peter laughs it off with Zooey, who is similarly untroubled, once she realises that Peter is not embarking on an affair. Eventually, however, Peter’s burgeoning friendship with hetero-bachelor-boy Sydney (who is repeatedly marked as a ‘womaniser’, despite appearances to the contrary),27 threatens to destabilise Peter and Zooey’s engagement, and Peter returns his emotional energy to his fiancée, rejecting Sydney. Like John and Jeremy in Wedding Crashers, the hetero-marriage relationship is elevated as the most mature and meaningful, to be preferred over all others. In both movies, the narrative resolution requires that others recognise this preference, and in respecting it equilibrium is restored. Thus, while homosexuality is not treated as especially loathsome or abhorrent in I Love You, Man, heterosexuality remains thoroughly privileged and central. Even though I Love You, Man presents a somewhat more progressive take on sexualities and gender than either The Hangover or Wedding Crashers, its potential to challenge stereotypes is limited. In its maintenance of gender mores, the political relationalities of gender polarity and hierarchy are kept relatively firmly in place. In

Bromance 187 what follows, we will identify the heteronormative barricades enabling this maintenance of political relationalities that shield bromance from more subversive meanings. The fraternal contract? All three of these bromantic comedies feature narratives in which weddings are involved.28 As such, they revolve around what political theorist Carole Pateman (1988) argues is a hidden but necessary aspect of the social contract myth of political fraternity: the sexual contract. The social contract is the pre-eminent ‘origin’ story of liberal democracy that emerged in the Age of Enlightenment.29 In the work of social contract theorists like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (and, earlier, Thomas Hobbes), we learn that to understand how we are governed, we must imagine a (mythical) exchange of absolute and anarchic freedom for a number of rights guaranteed by government and legitimised by consent. The move is from patriarchy, or rule of the father, to a more egalitarian fraternal system. Pateman posits that this is a myth about and for men, and that the foundation myth of liberal democracy clearly excludes women – even beyond the struggle for suffrage (Pateman, 1989). The means by which women are brought into fraternal governmental relations is the sexual contract – one aspect of which includes the supposed protection of marriage. For Pateman, marriage disguises women’s subordination to men with a cloak of symbolically contractual consent (Pateman, 1988). If marriage is a cornerstone of (gendered) political theory, weddings can be understood not just as an intense rite of passage, but also as a site at which gendered, performative power relations are more broadly figured (Brook, 2015a). As such, in popular culture weddings are points of narrative and political anxiety – emotional, relational crossroads ostensibly offering failure and despair (on one hand) or happy-ever-after success (on the other). As Claire Mortimer says, ‘[j]ust as in the fairy tales, the modern romantic comedy concludes with a wedding, reinforcing the importance of tradition and conformity’ (2010: 31). What is rarely suggested, but always implicit, is the possibility that the terms on which ‘success’ or ‘failure’ rest might change, or that the very shape of the choices on

188 Relationalities offer might be subverted. In this sense, movie weddings evoke personal, social, and political anxiety. In standard rom-coms, those anxieties are grist for feminine fantasies. Since both wedding culture (perhaps even more than marriage as such) and romantic comedy continue to be strongly feminised, the vast majority of wedding-themed romantic comedies are considered ‘chick flicks’. As we saw in chapters 7 and 8, chick flicks are mainstream movies, supposed specifically to appeal to and foreground women (Ferriss and Young, 2008b: 2).30 Bromance, however, purports to extend the appeal of the rom-com across gendered lines. Perhaps it is salient, then, that in bromances exhibiting ‘wedding’ themes, the site of anxiety is not focused on the bride/groom dyad, but on the sphere of fraternal masculinity, and by implication the broader community/polity. The proximity to weddings apparent in all three of these films points to a neglected aspect of bromance. While the possibility of romance (of a kind) between men is examined not just in the films but also in popular and critical commentary, the ‘bro’ in bromance has not attracted the same attention.31 It is, we would suggest, highly significant that the feminised and/or gay man in each of the movies discussed here is tethered to the narrative through kinship. As noted earlier, in The Hangover, Alan (Doug’s fiancée’s brother) is feminised. He is positioned as a man without homosocial bonds, but desperate to establish them. His entry to the friendship group is literally fraternal: Alan is about to become Doug’s brother-in-law. In Wedding Crashers (gay) Todd is Claire and Gloria’s brother: he is set to become John and Jeremy’s brother-in-law. Moreover, having affianced themselves to sisters, the ‘bros’ of the Wedding Crashers bromance, John and Jeremy, end up brothers-in-law to each other. In I Love You, Man (gay) Robbie is Peter’s brother. In each case, less normative masculine identities are bound to more hegemonic masculinities through kinship and its linchpin: (heteronormative, heterosexual) marriage. The nuptial mise-en-scène of these bromances thus reiterates the importance of marriage as foundational to kinship (Butler, 2000; 2002). There are several ways to interpret this. It may be that while the limits of who might be a ‘bro’ have expanded a little, this has occurred in the context of conventional and conservative markers of kinship, in which marriage continues to work as a heteronormative catalyst.32

Bromance 189 Unlike chick-flick rom-coms, which sometimes position gay men as the ‘natural’ allies of (heterosexual) women,33 straight men’s connection to anything other than hegemonic masculinity must be mediated: by law, by kinship.34 It almost goes without saying that while the ‘gay best friend’ and sometime fairy godmother is a stock character in chick-flick rom-coms (Shugart, 2003: 67), the corresponding lesbianconfidante figure standing alongside her hetero-masculine male bestie has yet to appear in either conventional rom-coms or bromance. In the bromances discussed here, heteronormative structures of kinship and marriage operate as a kind of prophylactic buffer, desexualising the queer characters: one’s ‘brother’ can never be one’s lover. Thus, the heterosexual relationship – especially if it is constituted as marriage – is not just an ‘alibi’ (Boyle and Berridge, 2012: 364), but also a strongly hierarchical organising framework. In this way – thanks to familial duty and its mostly hetero-conservative order – ‘homos’ can (sometimes) be ‘bros’. However, as Boyle and Berridge suggest, this reflects the anxious recuperation of heteronormativity (2012: 360) rather than, as San Filippo (2013) would have it, a more promising representation of diversity in sexual orientation. Being positioned in an anxiously heteronormative order of genderpolarised kinship is arguably better than being thoroughly cast out, and perhaps reflects the significant social and representational progress achieved by gay and lesbian activists (Gross, 2001). Such positioning is certainly characteristic of what James Joseph Dean (2014) calls ‘post-closeted culture’. It was not so long ago, after all, that families almost routinely disowned their queer sons and daughters. It may be that within the conservative recuperation evident in Hollywood bromance there remain fissures that might expand. The increasing availability of marriage to same-sex as well as different-sex partners could present a real opportunity for such leverage. However, if marriage as such provides a narrative context for romance, its contours remain thoroughly asymmetrical even as the acceptability of marriage equality spreads. This is immediately apparent if we try to reimagine I Love You, Man as a story about (gay) Robbie’s wedding; or Wedding Crashers as a romance (or even a bromance) between Jeremy and (gay) Todd Cleary. While we may be seeing, in these movies, certain effects of both homophobia and activism to eradicate it, their gender constructions

190 Relationalities are as thorough and limiting as ever. What is more, while in the three movies discussed here we see feminised and/or gay characters in various incarnations, this does not amount to a challenge to heteronormativity, because hierarchically organised power relations around gender and sexuality remain strongly fixed. In our view, Doty (2000: 81) and Hines (2009: 119) are overly optimistic in suggesting that there is something fundamentally queer about romantic comedy.35 On the contrary, in order to ‘sell’ the rom-com genre to men, its most heteronormative and hegemonically masculine elements are exaggerated even as they remain largely unnoticed. Bromances of the kind discussed here do not present visions of strongly alternative masculinities, but this is not to say that thinking about their transgressive or even subversive potential is not worthwhile. At the very least, these movies show us how homosociality and homophobia swivel on a fulcrum myth of male superiority. Incarnations of masculine hegemony can disavow, tolerate, or embrace challenges to gendered norms, but in any case represent these possibilities as the exercise of a masculine prerogative exercised largely in isolation from women and others. In the contemporary bromances discussed here, we see fraternity mobilised as hegemonically masculine solidarity. In The Hangover and Wedding Crashers, women occupy very limited roles: they are either bodies for men’s sexual pleasure, or impediments to accessing such pleasure. As Michael DeAngelis says, ‘women in the bromance narrative are often represented misogynistically as loving yet controlling and annoying interferences whose demands must always be “dealt with” … [o]r disavowed’ (2014b: 12). In I Love You Man Peter’s female friends are part of an invisible back-story: we know he has friendships with women, but these mark Peter as ‘weird’, and female friends will not do in the role of attendants at his wedding.36 In all three movies, men as men enjoy alliances that render them more powerful than they can be alone, recalling the ‘band of brothers’ theme discussed in chapter 4. However, while in war movies men are thrown together, in bromances the story of admission or exclusion from informal but powerful fraternal relations pivots on the choices men make, and on social structures of kinship. Those men who might be excluded if hegemonically masculine criteria were all that mattered can be brought into fraternal relations

Bromance 191 through marriage and family relationships, and thus ‘included’, even if at a price.37 While bromantic representations of masculinity are not inevitably heteronormative, their potential to subvert norms of gender and sexuality is tightly constrained. Bromances may hint at the possibility of diverse masculinities and masculine homoerotics (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 151), but only in order to repudiate the queer. They may appear to valorise gender-equitable intimacy, but only through the embrace of a naturalised gender polarity which precisely rests upon the fraternal ‘patriarchal dividend’.

Notes 1 The notion of ‘work–life balance’, for example, continues to be more strongly associated with working women than with men, partly because of the understanding that women undertake more unpaid care work (especially childcare) than men. Similarly, women’s reproductive health, for example, is readily understood to have political aspects (abortion, the availability of contraception, etc.) but men’s reproductive health is rarely understood to be ‘political’. Exceptions arise, predictably, where a men’s health issue intersects with homophobia or racism – as in AIDS prevention, for example. Conveniently, straight white men are not deemed political but rather as standardised personhood or as individuals. 2 Tamar Jeffers McDonald (2009) tags male-focused romantic comedies ‘homme-coms’, and identifies key features as including ‘gross’ bodily humour, and explicit, sometimes slapstick, sex scenes. Hansen-Miller and Gill (2011) distinguish ‘lad flicks’ from ‘homme-coms’. ‘Lad flicks’, they say, are a masculised counterpart to the ‘chick flick’, in which ‘masculinity itself is the central object’ (p. 36, emphasis in original). 3 On ‘bromantic’ relationships more generally, see Chen (2012) and DeAngelis (2014a). 4 On the emergence of bromance from the buddy movie tradition, and for similarities and differences between the two, see DeAngelis (2014b: 6–11); see too Radner (2014: 52–3). However, some much older commentaries on ‘buddy movies’ remain strongly relevant to the more contemporary ‘bromance’ – see, for example, Ryan and Kellner, who say that in buddy movies, female characters are peripheral, and ‘the real romance is between the men’ (1988: 150). 5 There are too many to mention, but consider the impact of canonical texts like John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859) or Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1755) Discourse on Inequality.

192 Relationalities 6 Such critiques target not just patriarchal political systems, but also the typically liberal feminist strategy sometimes referred to as the ‘add women and stir’ approach. 7 Difference can be complicated further by the concept of différance (Wood and Bernasconi, 1988; Lüdemann, 2014) and French feminist treatments of sexed/gendered difference (Irigaray, 2004; Stone, 2006). These usages are politically significant and may be productive, but tend to steer us away from politics into philosophical distinctions. 8 However, it has perhaps recently come into its own – see DeAngelis (2014a). 9 Lesley Harbidge (2012) classifies The Hangover as a ‘screwball’ bromance. Indeed, in keeping with its intimate, homosocial, group orientation, The Hangover might be better said to resemble more closely its gendered parallel – that is, those ‘wo-mance’ chick flicks whose comic action centres upon strong relationships between a small group of women (see for example, The First Wives Club, 1996, and The Other Woman, 2014). By contrast, the dyadic homosociality of Wedding Crashers is a closer equivalent to sisterly wo-mance films like In her Shoes (2005). 10 In male-centred comedies, the ‘happy ending’ tends to involve money. Jenna Weinman observes that ‘the brom-com’s last-minute economic redemption for the white male lead has become as routine, necessary, and seemingly implausible as the heterosexual coupling’ (2014: 49). I Love You, Man offers Peter Klaven’s character gender-simultaneous happy endings: there is a wedding (for Peter and Zooey) and wealth (for Peter and Sydney). 11 Hilary Radner (2014: 52) suggests that the heterosexual wedding as resolution is a key feature of bromance; see too John Alberti’s (2013b) discussion of marriage as a more ‘ambivalent’ device. 12 Compare with Alexander Doty, for example, who argues that ‘comedy is fundamentally queer, since it encourages rule-breaking, risk-taking, inversions and perversions in the face of straight patriarchal norms’ (Doty, 2000: 81). 13 In this respect, male domination begins, in these movies, at the level of production. Credits for the three movies’ most crucial and prestigious categories (director, producer, writer, star) list thirty-two men and seven women. 14 The exception is one of the police officers, played by Cleo King. 15 In the context of this part of this chapter, ‘hos’ (slang for ‘whores’) stands for women in general (Radner, 2014: 55; after Kimmel, 2008). The phrase ‘Can hos be bros?’ is, according to Michael Kimmel, the motto of ‘Guyland’ (2008), and epitomises both the value of male homosociality and the derogation of women. Hilary Radner adopts

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24 25 26

the phrase in her exploration of bromance as, in part, a vehicle producing and reflecting women’s exclusion from ‘what really counts in life’ (Radner, 2014: 54). The bromantic response to the possibility of sexual assault victimisation is to ridicule and dismiss it – sexual assault is downplayed (and tempered with the hint of there being some enjoyment for the victim in it) in both The Hangover and Wedding Crashers. This dismissal is, in effect, another way of excluding and derogating women. On the politics of feminism and its engagement with gendered victimisation more generally, see Stringer (2014). This is a variation, perhaps, on the more familiar contrast between violence and victimisation attending gay characters on screen. On this, and the representation of gay and lesbian characters in American media in more depth, see Gross (2001). John enacts precisely the soft-but-not-too-soft masculinity required of the male rom-com protagonist, as discussed in chapter 8. This permutation complicates but by no means negates Helene Shugart’s analysis of flamboyantly feminine, gay ‘sidekick’ characters as foils by which the (straight) lead’s masculinity might be exaggerated (2003: 79). Similarly, the perfectly reasonable solution for Peter to ask one of his female friends – or even his mother – to be a groomsperson or ‘best (wo)man’ is never countenanced. This conceit is necessary in order for the narrative coherence of the plot – which, as Alberti observes, is driven by Zooey’s ‘desire to “fix” Peter’ (2013b: 167). Bear in mind the continuing cultural – and, in some jurisdictions, legal – logic of ‘the homosexual panic/provocation’ as a defence for murder (Tomsen, 1994, 2002; Lee, 2008, 2012). The idea that violence is a reasonable response to an unwanted (homo)sexual advance sits disturbingly alongside the gendered politics of (hetero)sexual assault and victim-blaming more generally. Peter’s readiness to serve includes several references to his willingness to go down on (or perform cunnilingus on) Zooey. In this instance, Feil refers not to Wedding Crashers, but to I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007). The same compensatory representation is nevertheless strongly evident in the Todd Cleary character. The Accused (1988) is a dramatisation of the gang rape of a young woman (Jodie Foster) in a bar. The movie is based on a true story, and depicts the assault in a strongly realistic fashion. See San Filippo (2013) for an alternative (and somewhat tendentious) reading. For an alternative reading of this incident, see Feil (2014: 179).

194 Relationalities 27 Sydney’s interaction with Zooey’s friend at their engagement dinner is a disaster, and is the only time Sydney so much as speaks to a woman. The subtext, perhaps, is that Sydney is in fact lonely. 28 While we reject Maria San Filippo’s interpretation of Wedding Crashers as either queer-affirming or feminist, her discussion of the importance of contemporary marriage debates (2013: 156–9) and her observation that ‘[i]n one way or another, marriage is at the center of cinematic crises of male bonding’ (2013: 159) are salient. 29 On social contract theory, see Locke et al. (1960); Morris (1998); Boucher and Kelly (1994). 30 Many also appeal to men, of course. 31 The exception is Peter Forster’s (2014) engrossing exploration of I Love You, Man (2009) and Humpday (2009). 32 The increasing incidence of same-sex marriage, however, is likely to exert some influence here. 33 See Shugart (2003). The most notable example is My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997); but see too The Object of My Affection (1998); Miss Congeniality (2000); Sweet Home Alabama (2002). 34 See Brookey’s (1996) discussion of Philadelphia (1993); see too Walters (2001: 18) who argues that ‘gay identity is made legitimate only through assimilation into the dominant heterosexual gestalt’. 35 This is not to deny that queer readings abound (Burston and Richardson, 1995; Benshoff and Griffin, 2004; Demory and Pullen, 2013; San Filippo, 2013). 36 Indeed, a man’s female friends do not seem to count as any kind of friend. Colin Carman’s (2010) description of Peter Klaven (in I Love You, Man) as a ‘friendless protagonist’, a person who ‘has not a friend in the world’, is ironically apt. 37 Helene Shugart concludes that the price of visibility and a measure of acceptance for gay men on screen is their active or complicit sexism (2003: 89). It is less clear that the trade-off might also work in reverse – namely, that the price for inclusion of anti-sexist modes of masculinity might be homophobic, racist, or ableist complicity.

PART III SOCIAL CRITIQUE

10 Against the grain? Socially critical movies In this book, we offer a broad understanding of the political, asserting that mass-cultural products like Hollywood film are necessarily political in one way or another. Our perspective, in this sense, is somewhat novel. As we argued in the Introduction to this book, the more usual approach is to consider as ‘political’ only those films overtly about politicians, current events, or politically controversial movies, and to consider them on an individual basis. Even where the domain of the political is extended to include social problems, the majority of researchers select a single social issue (drugs, divorce, disability, for example) and look at films dealing with that issue for what they might reveal about the problem or its potential solution, rather than the circumstances or effects of its cinematic problematisation in the first place. Movies that explicitly address the wider sweep of inherently political social problems are not often considered en masse. Our endeavour, in this first of two chapters on ‘socially critical’ popular movies, is to consider their broad, collective shape. What, for Hollywood, constitutes seriously critical engagement? Do some themes or types of social problem dominate, while others are sidelined or ignored? What do the characteristics attached to the diverse range of socially critical offerings tell us about political myths and power? Until now we have discussed how Hollywood films reflect and produce prevailing political myths regarding the social order, citizens and communities, relationalities, and identities. Using a ‘cultural politics’ approach, we have explored how power relations shape and are embedded in popular movies. In examining security films (typically showing

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us how order is to be properly maintained, and what threatens social and political stability) and relationalities films (which scaffold myths about power relations within the citizenry), we argued that they generally endorse the status quo. ‘Security’ and ‘relationalities’ films both tend to reiterate dominant political myths, offering narratives which confirm and/or return us to existing power relations. Nevertheless, we also considered whether these films might sometimes offer glimpses of alternatives to dominant power relations. While we have noted occasionally subversive or partly critical elements in them, these elements are for the most part minor variations on a strongly consistent and conservative theme. In this chapter we discuss movies more closely aligned with, though by no means limited to, capital ‘P’ political themes: films that might be ordinarily understood as specifically or overtly ‘about’ political people, ideas, or events. Even here, however, our purview is broad. The category of fictional films to which we now turn is marked by questions regarding social justice and power relations and, in this respect, they seem likely to offer more critical perspectives than most. We target films which express some degree of doubt about dominant political myths serving the existing social order.1 These films that appear socially critical are variously termed ‘social commentary’, ‘social justice’, ‘social consciousness’, ‘social message’, or ‘social problem’ films.2 For expediency, we will employ the label ‘socially critical’ to refer (for the most part) to the broadest, most inclusive meaning of the category.3 By contrast with all we have considered so far, socially critical films have a more evidently political focus: they explicitly announce a foregrounded engagement with social issues. Unlike other Hollywood films, this engagement is central rather than contingent or peripheral. Phillip Gianos notes a crucial distinction in this regard when he says ‘[w]hile overtly political subjects have always been present in films, they have never predominated … In largely avoiding political themes, films deliver their first political message: politics is neither interesting nor important’ (Gianos, 1998: 3). This observation is complicated, for us, in that we do see politics on screen – even in romantic comedies or zombie movies. We take Gianos’s point, however, that the selection of ‘important’ topics for ‘serious’ treatment in Hollywood films is itself politically loaded. An instance of this may be found in relation to



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gender issues on screen. As Ryan and Kellner (1988: 137) contend, while it is easy to see engagement with myths about gender and gender equality in all sorts of movies, and there are a range of films evidently informed by feminism (including Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974; The Stepford Wives, 1975; 9 to 5, 1980; Yentl, 1983; Ghostbusters, 2016),4 there are very few Hollywood movies about or directly dramatising feminism or the women’s movement. Indeed, only Iron Jawed Angels (2004) comes to mind, though earlier films like Norma Rae (1979), Private Benjamin (1980), Places in the Heart (1984), and Swing Shift (1984) reference what might be seen as proto-feminist struggles.5 In short, the drama of feminism and the women’s movement as such are not understood to be fodder for Hollywood, even though violence against women certainly is (see for instance, Canadian-American film The Accused, 1988; Copycat, 1995; Mystic River, 2003; The Lovely Bones, 2009). This rather aptly demonstrates that the selection of issues to be understood as ‘important’ by Hollywood is neither simple nor straightforward. The category of films that is the subject of this chapter stands apart from Gianos’s observation that Hollywood disdains the political: what we term ‘socially critical’ films claim a clear intention to at least unsettle and sometimes even actively challenge the existing social order. That said, as will be discussed later in this chapter such movies comprise a spectrum rather than constituting a category which is clearly demarcated and homogeneous. Some films claim social commentary as their entire raison d’être, as their primary or even sole intention, while others address it as an important though not necessarily singular, part of their purpose. In either case, we also describe these films as seeming to be socially critical because this, too, is a matter to investigate. In order to examine the question of what the category of socially critical films might comprise and, more specifically, whether and to what degree such films undertake social criticism, it is necessary first to characterise the category itself, including providing some context­ ualisation of its development. We undertake this by identifying some typical features of the category in relation to format (tone, genre), as well as key topics over time and within particular historical periods, before reviewing the socially critical spectrum in terms of cardinal and peripheral agendas. In other words, to be able to consider the ways

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in which socially critical films might challenge the typically Americacentric soft power and hegemonic features we have identified so far in this volume (in relation to ‘security’ and ‘relationalities’), it is important not to take this heterogeneous, ‘socially critical’ category as self-evident. Indeed, the intention of the overview perspective outlined in this chapter is to interrogate the definition of the category, its forms, topical and historical variety, scope, and limits. This groundwork enables a more detailed analysis – one that can more precisely probe and clarify the boundaries of what is deemed ‘the political’ in socially critical Hollywood films – in the next chapter. What are socially critical films? Characterising the category Hollywood films that are definitively attentive to socio-political agendas are relatively few in number but nevertheless speak to a range of social problems and concerns, and appear in a range of forms. Their common thread is that they seem to query, criticise, doubt, dispute, or protest some aspect of existing socio-political relations. Socially critical films are, ostensibly, counter-hegemonic – that is, unlike the films explored so far, they purport to question existing power relations. Throughout this volume we have invoked concepts of ‘soft power’ and ‘consent’ to hegemony, associated with the works of Joseph Nye (2004) and Antonio Gramsci (1992), as a means to analysing films promoting and constituting acquiescence to dominant power relations. However, it is important to keep in mind that hegemony is not simply a given or constant. Rather, it is produced through an ongoing battle of ideas in which, as Gramsci noted, popular culture and mass media have a significant role to play (Strinati, 2004: 156–7; see also Murphy, 2003). For this reason, we now turn to films which may be considered alongside Gramscian accounts of counter-hegemony. Nicola Pratt (2004) and Theodore Cohn (2016: 112–13) describe counter-hegemony as the creative generation of alternative ethico-political perspectives which challenge dominant understandings, values, institutions, and practices, thereby enhancing the means within civil society to prepare for political change (Dhakal, 2011). Socially critical films can be seen as a popular-culture contribution to what Gramsci describes as a ‘war



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of position’ – that is, such films may be regarded as contributing to counter-hegemonic attempts, through persuasive promotion and/or active advocacy, to advance social critique and movement for change (see for example, Miliband, 1990; Mouffe, n.d.). Thus, in contrast to other Hollywood movies, socially critical films aim to provoke rather than reassure and have an agenda of challenge as a central aim. In so doing, they lay claim to social importance, and shape themselves as beyond the æsthetic of mere entertainment which is typically construed as central to Hollywood productions (Maland, 1989: 157–8). They present ‘lessons’ or serious messages supposed to be carried out of the cinema and into one’s life; they bid us to think. Charles Maland goes so far as to assert that the focus on social problems in these films invites the inference that the issue at hand is capable of amelioration (1988: 308–9). One implication of this orientation is that it acknowledges and perhaps even mobilises socio-political agency – even if that agency is constrained. Nevertheless, just as we have disputed whether the apparently superficial entertainment of Hollywood froth is really as politically insignificant as is often assumed, so we might also have some doubts about the notion that socially critical films offer straightforward political lessons which set them apart from the usual imbrication of Hollywood movies with soft power and hegemonic imperatives. Our contention throughout this book is to insist that all movies produce and reflect ideas about power relationships. What differentiates socially critical movies is not that they are more political than other, mainstream, Hollywood movies, but rather that in offering a degree of critique they necessarily acknowledge their own political weight or, at least, their political pretensions. This acknowledgement appears to go ‘against the grain’ of the great majority of Hollywood films,6 and against the grain of how Hollywood is typically understood (and understands itself). ‘Hollywood’ is routinely considered to be synonymous with commercial entertainment. When the industry was criticised about its (supposedly) morally ambiguous content in the 1920s, the first President of the Motion Picture Association of America, Will Hays, was anxious to insist on its recreational function, saying ‘American motion pictures continue to be free from any but the highest possible entertainment purpose’ (as cited in Maltby and

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Craven, 1995: 363). Ernest Giglio notes that ‘[t]o this day, Hollywood continues to sell that image to the American people’ (2014: 2). We would add that Hollywood also sells itself as an apolitical, escapist brand in the global economy. In effect, such claims reassure audiences beyond Hollywood’s domestic market that its product is made for universal consumption and carries no threat of covert outreach for US national/military interests or Americanising colonisation of other cultures. The movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn is credited with articulating this most succinctly when he famously quipped ‘pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union’ (as cited in Katz, 1979: 491; Knowles, 2007: 135). Other commentators stress that Hollywood is an entertainment business which is not intrinsically antagonistic to producing socially critical films, but simply chases profits. In this context, director John Frankenheimer asserted that ‘Hollywood has nothing against message films as long as they make money’ (as cited in Christensen and Haas, 2005: 22). This suggests that the reason socially critical films are produced only in small numbers is because such movies have less than widespread appeal: the implication here is that Hollywood simply reflects what consumers want and has no agenda other than audience satisfaction and associated commercial success. Against this, our view is that Hollywood movies – including socially critical films – are neither merely entertaining nor merely commercial. Indeed, despite its protestations to the contrary, Hollywood is not politically disinterested. To suggest that Hollywood is shaped by and itself shapes power relations does not amount to an accusation of conspiracy. On the contrary, the collective shape of Hollywood products cannot be programmed, as such, but depends on a whole range of contingent circumstances. The under-representation and stereotypical characterisation of women in the industry, for example, illustrate this. Industry explanations for continuing male domination in Hollywood films typically cite an apolitical profit motive – that is, they say that female protagonists do not make for box-office success. Yet there is mounting evidence that this is not the case (Hickey, 2014b; Adams, 2015; O’Keeffe, 2015). Hollywood’s entrenched and well-documented failure to provide any semblance of gender equity in its narratives and production system thus cannot be rationalised as the coincidental



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outcome of hard-headed business decisions addressing demand-driven entertainment.7 Neither is it the result of a deliberately misogynistic collusion between studio executives and creatives, but arises, instead, from complex social conditions in which gender figures as a foundational axis of power. The Hollywood film industry promotes itself as merely facilitating the exchange of product for money without any political meaning, and as unproblematically engaged in a free-market supply– demand cycle. The example of women’s positioning in Hollywood film is but one of many which reveal a rather more complicated story. Hollywood is not simply driven by financial imperatives responsive to mainstream audience values and appeal, but also generates and endorses veiled, unacknowledged, and even unrecognised political agendas. These do not necessarily amount to deliberate attempts to influence populations or to produce particular political outcomes, but rather reflect, reinforce, or generate certain (usually hegemonic) myths and beliefs, and work to shore up existing orders of privilege. As Haas et al. note, Hollywood movies espouse a decidedly conservative, patriotic and even nationalistic viewpoint … American films of various genres tend to celebrate the power of the individual to overcome any obstacle and emphasize the worth of the one over the struggle of the many. By movie’s end they neatly restore or erase any disruption in the socio-political order so that movie­ goers leave satisfied with life more or less as it is. And satisfaction with the status quo and valorized individualism are inherently more conservative values than liberal. (2015: 29–30) More specifically, the narratives of the films we have looked at so far often foreground the perspective or journey of the white male (and sometimes – especially in romance – white female) protagonist, reinforcing first-world and other existing relations of power. Socially critical movies may sit at odds with this relentlessly reiterated Hollywood blueprint because their overt intention is not mere enjoyment. Rather, they ask to be taken seriously. However, it can be observed that even these potentially counter-hegemonic films often remain tethered to the conservative convention of the special individual who is crucial to all significant action and change, reiterating the formula’s disavowal of

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collective or socially systemic forces in narratives of social life and history (Peatling, 2013).8 Forms taken by socially critical films Socially critical films invite us to think about their message both within and beyond screening time, and to consider the relevance of the film and its message in everyday ‘real life’. Consistent with this, their format is often realist. The most common genre employed by socially critical films is drama; often, the conventions of sub-genre styles like melodrama are also used. The conventions of drama genres are, however, by no means the only approach socially critical films employ. Though the requirements of socially critical films are particularly well suited to realist drama, they can also find a home in a range of other genres including science fiction and fantasy films. Since science fiction and fantasy prompt us to consider how things might be otherwise and invite us ‘to think in a genuinely speculative way about the future(s) that awaits us’ (Brereton, 2005: 141), these genres – like realist drama – can also afford opportunities for an agenda of challenge associated with socially critical films. However, even seemingly unlikely genres like children’s films – usually viewed as inevitably conservative in orientation, concerned with upholding order, safety, and harmony even if they entail exciting adventures – can provide a vehicle for significant social commentary. Some children’s stories can be understood as scarcely veiled critiques of (American) society. For example, in A Bug’s Life (1998) we are offered a none-too-subtle denunciation of the ruling class in capitalist society in the depiction of grasshoppers continually expropriating hard-won food collected by the (worker) ants until the ants unite and rise up against their oppressors. In Antz (1998) there is a critique of social conformity, and of the military’s propensity to go to war for dubious reasons, presented in the story of an eccentric worker ant who fails to fit into his totalitarian society and discovers that its military leadership has tricked the ant colony into launching a suicidal attack upon neighbouring termites. Socially critical films also appear as docudramas, biopics, westerns, horror, history, and even comedy. An appropriate though oddly



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uncommon format is satirical comedy. In satire representative authority figures and institutions are allegorically held up to ridicule. Perhaps the most famous example here is Dr Strangelove. Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which offers a blackly comic account of the foreign policy madness of America’s ‘mutually assured destruction’ doctrine during the Cold War. Electoral politics also provide a useful example since they have been the subject of several comedies utilising different degrees of satire (Wag the Dog, 1997; Election, 2000; Swing Vote, 2008). Wag the Dog (1997) perhaps comes closest to the strikingly uncompromising stance of Dr Strangelove. It is a dark comedy in which a public relations expert, or political ‘spin doctor’, directs public attention away from a presidential sex scandal by manufacturing (fake) news of a war between the USA and Albania. The film was released shortly before the Clinton administration faced the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and in some ways presciently addressed the role of ‘news’ (and ‘fake news’) during election campaigns. Election (2000) employs a high-school setting but is something quite other than a typical ‘teen film’ (Karlyn, 2011: 140). Allegorising school and nation, Election satirises ‘both the US political system and mainstream America’s suspicion of excellence’ along with (gendered) political ambition (Karlyn, 2011: 140). The primary contender for election to the role of class president is presented as ambitiously self-serving and vindictive. The election process itself is shown to be institutionally shaped such that real, popularly mandated change is impossible to effect: instead, the institution itself is protected. By contrast, Swing Vote (2008), in which the fate of an election hinges on one particular (yet ‘everyman’ white, working class, American) voter, is not satirical at all. It offers a more conservative political commentary by staving off voter cynicism and mythologising the democratic truism that every vote counts. These comedies, whether oriented towards conservative or more liberal agendas, are all examples of capital-P political films that are socially critical, albeit by degrees. We now turn from discussion of forms to outlining the spectrum of socially critical movies by identifying the shifting presentation of key topics. This enables an initial delineation of the broad parameters of what constitutes socio-political critique in Hollywood film over

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time, in order to lead into an examination of the historical framing of socially critical movies as a whole. Socially critical topics: the content of ‘the political’ over time Given that socially critical films work within a number of genres and sometimes move across genres, they disrupt or at least enable us to question traditional understandings of genre. For this reason it is useful to conceptualise such films not as a genre or even as ‘meta-genre’, but rather as a category encompassing a spectrum.9 We have maintained that, in general, the most obvious examples of socially critical movies are realist dramas – that is, realist drama is the centrepiece genre of the category. However, a variety of other genres and styles radiate from this centre-point, offering diminishing emphasis on and less markedly critical approaches to social concerns to a point where social commentary is no longer clearly centralised, at which moment the socially critical spectrum reaches its definitional boundary. The organisation of topics within the spectrum of the socially critical category maps the terrain of the political in Hollywood films, both constructing and reflecting what is ‘important’. The categorical universe of socially critical films can be conceptualised as a spectrum entailing different levels of attention to socio-political agendas. The range of topics addressed overall is diverse, but patterns and preferences in the spectrum are nevertheless apparent. Some topics are less frequently employed and are not always, definitively, socially critical. Topics positioned at the edges of the spectrum include movies addressing family dysfunction, poverty, education, and government (see for example, Rebel without a Cause, 1955 and Little Miss Sunshine, 2006; Angela’s Ashes, 1999; The Pursuit of Happyness, 2006, Dead Poets Society, 1989, and Good Will Hunting, 1997; JFK, 1991, W., 2008). For instance, Rebel without a Cause certainly attends to the social problem of adolescent alienation, yet this focus on a social issue is undercut by its melodramatic, psychological, highly personalised and individualised attention to (particular) young men. Other topics – such as addiction and other health issues, the criminal justice system, science, and corruption – are employed more often, but typically also remain quite variable in the extent and depth of the



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social commentary they invoke. These form the middle ground, or mid-range of the category (see for instance 12 Angry Men, 1957; Dead Man Walking, 1995; Requiem for a Dream, 2000; Traffic, 2000; Surrogates, 2009; Ex Machina, 2015; The Hunger Games, 2012). An interesting illustration here arises in relation to Requiem for a Dream. This film offers a devastating, dramatic, realist account of the social problem of addiction. It is much more hard-hitting in its visceral framing of the issue at stake than Rebel without a Cause. Nonetheless, the level of critique remains considerably less powerful than its intense, voyeuristic scrutiny of addicted subjects. There is little account here of the reasons for the three protagonists becoming drug-addled other than personal pain or misjudgement. While some drug-oriented movies shift into the core grouping within the spectrum described shortly (such as Traffic, 2000), many become mired in relishing the pleasures of moralising sensationalism and thus creep closer to the largely conservative agendas of fear films.10 And finally, there are core or ‘cardinal’ topics – including the environment (FernGully: The Last Rainforest, 1992; Avatar, 2009), racism (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? 1967; Django Unchained, 2012), gender/sexuality (The Stepford Wives, 1975; Victor/Victoria, 1982; Transamerica, 2005; Milk, 2008; Brave, 2012), consumer capitalism (There will be Blood, 2007; The Wolf of Wall Street, 2013), and social alienation (Network, 1976; American Beauty, 1999; American Psycho, 2000). These topics are employed regularly, and offer subject matter that is almost by definition socially critical. Such topics are at the heart of the category of socially critical films. In this core grouping we see a different level of attention to social analysis and a different framing of social problematisation. These films are strongly, indeed almost exclusively, preoccupied with social appraisal and their accounts reach beyond the personal (associated with the format of the previous two groupings) to entail explicit attention to society-wide, socio-political and/or structural, explanation. One useful exemplar here is There will be Blood (2007), which characterises a particular individual, not to concentrate on his personal failings, but rather as a means to embody the raw savagery of unregulated capitalism, with its disregard for human welfare and indeed for anything but profit.

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The positioning of certain topics at the edges, mid-range, or centre of the spectrum of socially critical agendas on screen is perhaps most apparent when we consider these films in their historical context. Social critique in context: historical periodisation of ‘the political’ Hollywood films typically promote an overarching political myth regarding the apolitical status of the industry and its products, while simultaneously promoting a specific range of narratives, including, especially, the valorisation of the individualist, white, male (American) saviour. These narratives offer political articulations which are by no means culturally universal and may be viewed both through the narrower lens of Nye’s (2004) soft power and Gramsci’s (1992) more expansive notion of the constitution of consent to hegemony. Cinematic articulations of soft power and the legitimation of hegemony – that is, the appealing portrayal of the community/polity/nation, and the means by which identification with that collectivity is established – necessarily change over time. Similarly, while socially critical Hollywood films profess to offer explicitly important messages questioning both the collective social fabric itself and the requirement to comply with that collectivity, the character and extent of their challenge also varies over time. Like all movies, socially critical offerings are created in specific conditions. In this respect it is possible to see that, no matter how sharply any particular socially critical movie departs from Hollywood’s conception of itself as apolitical, taken collectively they too are subject to the vicissitudes of historical contexts. As Steven Doles notes, they dramatise social concerns that are presented as in some way representing ‘the conditions of their historical moment’ (Doles, 2015 – emphasis added). This is the case even when the past is employed as a setting for this dramatisation.11 What ‘problems’ are addressed, how those problems are shaped, and the extent to which such questioning involves a radical alternative to the political myths promulgated in most Hollywood films, does change over time, but certain threads endure, too. The specific sociopolitical challenges on which socially critical Hollywood films rest must therefore be considered in parallel with the histories of other forms of Hollywood film. Indeed, the agendas of these seemingly critical



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movies should be set alongside the political myths presented in security and relationalities films (as discussed in earlier chapters), rather than treated as entirely separate. Our concern in the contextualisation of socially critical movies that follows is to situate their cultural politics in the industry in which they are produced, rather than assume in advance that they are either simply immersed in or entirely distanced from that politics. The historical context for socially critical Hollywood films is constructed in different ways depending on how this broad category of movies is conceptualised. Drew Casper’s account of ‘social problem’ films depicts a tightly defined genre that reached its box office heyday after World War II (2007; 2011). Casper distinguishes these films as having a more earnest moral orientation, exemplified by films which deal with soldiers returning from the Second World War, as compared with films with a sharper anti-establishment stance associated with the ‘New Hollywood’ period which followed. Like a number of other commentators (including Shadoian, 1972; Neale, 2000b; and Doles, 2015), we take a more expansive view. For us, socially critical films include a wide array of approaches, are characterised by a fictional or fictionalised narrative format centrally entwined around a particular and recognisable social issue, and typically follow a singular protagonist’s struggle in relation to that issue. Socially critical movies invariably invoke some aspect of social justice, often detailing ordinary or extraordinary injustice arising in relation to established social institutions in order to present a story of heroic struggle. This definition of socially critical films, and our preference to consider them alongside political myths about security and relationalities, allows us to consider them using the historical framework and periodisation outlined in chapter 2. ‘Social problem’ films before and during the ‘Golden Age’ Socially critical offerings have been part of the filmmaking repertoire from the beginning. We might think of drug and alcohol problems as an especially modern phenomenon, for example, but the dangers of alcohol feature in one of the earliest instances of socially critical film. What Drink Did (1909) tends to provide a moralistic fable rather than offer much in the way of social critique, but certainly engages with alcohol as a social problem. Subtitled ‘A Thoughtful Moral Lesson’, it

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tells the story of a hardworking, respectable, loving husband and father who is pressured by his workmates into trying liquor. Succumbing to the lures of drink, the man is almost instantly transformed into a degenerate and nasty alcoholic. The protagonist’s drinking results in the accidental shooting death of his elder daughter but ends (relatively) happily when, ‘having learned a bitter lesson’, he returns to his teetotal ways. The film pre-dates the American Prohibition by at least ten years, but speaks directly to the moral and social anxieties attending the consumption of alcohol. Similar films – about a range of drugs in addition to alcohol – appeared through to the 1930s. Other social problem films depicted concerns with working conditions under the New Deal arrangements.12 Like many of the earlier offerings, these were often markedly didactic, even self-righteously moralistic, and censorious. By no means inevitably or even typically did social progress follow. These films may have offered some questioning of the character of the collective social fabric, but more clearly showed flaws within it that were presented as capable of being rectified. Rather than enabling a critique of consent to the status quo, their moralism precisely promoted conformity and complicity. They were in most ways instructional guides to upholding hegemonic order, rather than offering a marked challenge to it. Their social critique, if we can call it that, can be understood as the accusation that citizens were not taking their responsibilities seriously enough. In the face of a negligent citizenry, disorder threatens. What distinguishes these films from the ‘disorder-fear’ movies considered earlier is that, rather than concentrating upon the priming of emotional responses, their narrative rests upon providing a clear lesson. Rather than simply relishing disarray, they offer a message regarding a social problem and how it might be solved. During the pre-World War II period, a rather more critical perspective appeared, bringing a somewhat different array of topics into view (Packer, 2015: 132). Poverty and class were conceived as domestic problems relevant to mainstream audiences (Cry of the Children, 1912; Wild Boys of the Road, 1933; The Grapes of Wrath, 1940) rather than the stuff of usually more distant or independent filmmaking we may see today.13 Crime and juvenile delinquency delivered related popular themes (Regeneration, 1915; I am a Fugitive from a Chain



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Gang, 1932; They Made Me a Criminal, 1939), often connected to contexts of poverty and familial breakdown (usually through death rather than divorce). Race-oriented questions were also raised (Black Legion, 1937), informing the shape of many subsequent socially critical films (Barker, 2013: 64). Some of these ‘social problem’ films were controversial in their time – Cry of the Children (1912) used footage of real child labourers at work; Black Legion (1937) was based on the true story of a racially motivated kidnapping and murder. These films clearly drew on and highlighted power relations and their impact upon social issues of their day. Nevertheless, this pre-World War II perspective soon began to change. While some of the early themes from before and during the Golden Age persisted into the 1940s and beyond – including substance abuse (The Lost Weekend, 1945; The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955) and criminality (Sullivan’s Travels, 1941) – after World War II overall, social problem narratives began to shift in focus. They became generally less concerned with macro-economic matters and began to concentrate more on individual psychological accommodation and social adjustment. In an obvious response to historical conditions, the immediate aftermath of war and the situation of returning soldiers were considered in films like The Best Years of our Lives (1946) and Home of the Brave (1949). Indeed, the meaning of ‘home’ – so often lauded as both the raison d’être for war and its trophy – was problematised in the immediate post-war period in films like these. The Best Years of Our Lives, for example, considers how the intimate relationships of three returned servicemen are changed in the wake of the war. The psychologically oriented thread of familial dislocation also became evident in movies depicting the malaise of youth (most famously in Rebel Without a Cause, 1955). In the aftermath of World War II, and in the period of transition between the end of the Golden Age and the establishment of the New Hollywood era, socially critical films at first declined in number, and their central emphasis altered once again. This development may be set against the particular political context of their production. Towards the end of World War II, the House Un-American Activities Committee accused a number of prominent Hollywood moviemakers of having communist sympathies (see Mintz et al., 2016: 207–55). Over the next

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three decades, up to 300 industry workers – actors, directors, writers, and others – were ‘blacklisted’ and denied opportunities to work in Hollywood.14 It would seem that the risk and cost of making socially critical cultural products in the United States is sometimes tied very tightly to explicit governmental regulation, as well as to related imperatives to uphold national pride and maintain hegemony. In this anxious Cold War period from the end of World War II to the early 1960s, a period associated with particularly intense concerns about the threat of communism and of nuclear destruction, there was an overall drop in the production of socially critical films and those which were produced became less demanding and more conservative.15 As Gerald Mast argues, heightened anti-communism, antagonism to leftist sympathies on film, and the rise of competition from television resulted in a reshaping of earlier critiques into inoffensive messages of social unity (Mast, 1986: 277, 291). Ryan and Kellner suggest a strong correlation between the ascendancy of political conservatism and the decline of strong social criticism in movies (1988: 87).16 Nevertheless, a ‘significant subset’ of Hollywood productions in the transition between the Golden Age and the New Hollywood era began to show signs of a more socially critical stance – a development that was consolidated during the latter period (see Sterritt, 1998: 110–13). For example, films featuring aspects of class conflict, poverty, or unionism emerged (The Garment Jungle, 1957; On the Waterfront, 1954). And, with the rise of the civil rights movement, socially critical films began to focus on systemic forms of oppression, such as racism,17 and explored related issues such as ‘passing white’ (The Defiant Ones, 1958; Black Like Me, 1964; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? 1967; In the Heat of the Night, 1967).18 In short, during the intermediate period after World War II there were strong pressures towards political conservatism, but also, at the same time, a growing movement critical of the American polity, expressing doubts about unquestioning loyalty to it. These critical leanings spelled certain challenges to the soft power mythology of the good society/nation and the self-evident advantages of consent to its social order. Such inclinations were evidenced by Hollywood productions which began to demonstrate the more openly questioning orientation that emerged in the ‘New Hollywood’ era. These more critical offerings



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enquired into the dangers of conformity and of militarism (Bad Day at Black Rock, 1955; 12 Angry Men, 1957; Spartacus, 1960; Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961; The Manchurian Candidate, 1962; Dr Strangelove, 1964; Fail Safe, 1964) (see Sterritt, 1998: 110–13). For instance, Spartacus tells a story set in antiquity of uprising against subordination and servitude, while The Manchurian Candidate is a complex thriller in which the stepson of a McCarthy-like US senator is brainwashed into carrying out political assassinations.19 In different ways, both films question the place and nature of political obedience, and hence offer a challenge to endorsement of the status quo. The hero in Spartacus leads a rebellion against the Roman oppressors; in The Manchurian Candidate the tragic protagonist struggles to avoid being the puppet of his Machiavellian family. This subset of critical, questioning films started to expand as the Golden Age gave way to the New Hollywood era. Social critique in the ‘New Hollywood’ era As the 1960s continued, the muffled edge of socially critical films began to sharpen again. Disquiet over the Vietnam War and associated social oppression/civil rights concerns were a catalyst for more critical productions. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s a range of films offered social critiques which, compared with those of the immediate post-war period, did not shy away from ‘difficult’ or uncomfortable issues and offered much more searching critiques of dominant social values. Films like Midnight Cowboy (1969), Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), Coming Home (1978), and Apocalypse Now (1979) confronted social problems that were disturbing, incapable of simple solutions, and aired qualms about American society as a whole. Midnight Cowboy, for example, intertwines themes of ‘urban decay, drug use, male hustling, [and] homosexuality’ (Milliken, 2014: 36) to tell the story of a hopeful Texan who seeks his fortune as a hustler in New York. It is not a triumphant tale glamorising the materialisation of dreams – it highlights, instead, the sometimes ambiguous value of a friendship born out of a society which demands that the vulnerable must confront dog-eat-dog survival. Sex work, along with alienation and violence, also looms large in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Scorsese’s protagonist, Travis Bickle

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(Robert De Niro), is a former US Marine who inhabits a thoroughly uncomfortable world characterised by ‘social failure’ (High, 2014: 373). Taxi Driver has been described as an allegory for American involvement in Vietnam (Ray, 1985: 360; High, 2014: 374), but also speaks more broadly to social isolation. Both films – and indeed all those mentioned above – depict social pain, trauma, and disillusionment. They are by no means all of a piece, however, even though they share a number of themes – including, most obviously, a concern with the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The treatment of returned servicemen in films like Taxi Driver and Coming Home can be usefully contrasted with the same theme as represented in the immediate post-World War II period. The rather more upbeat treatment even of significant wartime trauma and injury in The Best Years of our Lives (1946), for example, is upheld in its future-oriented and optimistic ending. Most of all, the ensemble cast of The Best Years of our Lives is completely at odds with the more solitary alienation and isolation of Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle (and similar anti-heroes). In these contrasts, we can see how the initially normalising tenor of the post-World War II era transformed into a more expansive and explicit political orientation – an orientation reminiscent of earlier (1930s) ‘social problem’ movies. Yet just as it seemed socially critical movies might begin to take on a broader critical scope, the conservative impulses of the Reagan presidency (1981–9) and the ‘New Right’ of the 1980s saw a return to framing social problems most commonly as individualised, moral issues rather than as systemic problems requiring structural solutions (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 87, 89). While Hollywood is never ‘univocal’, films like Prince of the City (1981) exhibit the tendency of socially critical films of this time to operate within an increasingly constrained politics (Prince, 1992: 3–6), to meet violence with violence, and to feature an individual, white, male hero as the anti-authoritarian, though flawed, saviour. Prince of the City tells the story of a narcotics detective in the New York City Police Department who, along with his colleagues, is implicated in corrupt practices but then develops a conscience. He participates in an investigation of police corruption but his past complicates his attempt to redeem his life. The social critic here is an individual maverick, marred by fundamental moral flaws. Narratives such as this evidence discomfort with political



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activism, especially collective political action, alongside growing distrust towards government and other established institutions.20 Such uncertainties continued into the 1990s. Socially critical film in the post-9/11 Conglomerate Hollywood era It has been suggested that socially critical films have been in overall decline since the 1980s (see for instance Ryan and Kellner, 1988; Kellner, n.d.[a]; Dickenson, 2010), with their content becoming increasingly diluted and bifurcated. This bifurcation is evident in the split between those cleaving to realist drama and (in general) offering more central, searching, and sustained critiques, and hybrid forms on the other path. What kinds of social problems do contemporary ‘message’ movies address today, and how do they illustrate this division? We might expect, in the post-9/11 context, to see social problem movies addressing religious extremism and the dangerous seduction of terrorism. However, while the theme remains a hardy perennial in various forms of action movie (Traitor, 2008; Unthinkable, 2010; White House Down, 2013; Patriots Day, 2016), such movies are most often at a considerable distance from social critique and, indeed, we have characterised them as security films, principally concerned with upholding the social order. Thus, in these films terrorists are barely present (as faceless, threatening others) or are caricatured as cartoonish villains (see The Dark Knight Rises, 2012). There is little opportunity here for any challenge to the presumed worthiness of the normative community (the ‘us’) or for raising misgivings about our commitment to it. In this context, the stance of socially critical movies is recognisably different from the slew of thrillers in which terrorism is a catalyst for heroic – or super-heroic – action. Socially critical movies precisely enable possibilities for unsettling notions of the good society/community/ nation and our investments in it. Munich (2005), for instance, presents a rare instance of a closer characterisation of terrorist impulses and counter-terrorist responses. Melding spy-thriller with social critique, Munich takes the events of the 1972 Olympic Games – when members of the Israeli team were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists – as its starting point. Based on George Jonas’s (1984) book, Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, the narrative follows a group of Israeli secret agents tasked with assassinating the

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Palestinians thought to be responsible for the attack in Munich. In some ways Munich presents the people on both sides of the conflict as similarly troubled, and embroiled in an endless sequence of deathly retaliation. The film concludes with two references to the terrorism of 9/11: first, we hear that the Israeli agents killed nine of the eleven (9/11) Palestinians believed to be involved in the Munich siege and, second, the movie closes with an image of the twin towers of the World Trade Center – the iconic site of the 9/11 attacks. Munich (2005) is more evidently socially critical than other action thrillers and superhero films addressing terrorism, partly because it downplays or avoids at least some of the conventions of the action genre and instead stays within the orbit of realist drama, but also because its delineation of ‘good guys’ versus ‘bad guys’ is not always and entirely clear-cut. Most tellingly of all, the resolution of the film is not a comforting show of well-functioning security and justice, but a more doubtful questioning of how the events it indexes can ever really be ‘over’. Even though terrorism (arguably) heads the list of contemporary social-political issues, it is generally treated as grist for action genre movies, and not as a matter for socially critical consideration. Terrorism is, of course, not the only politically salient marker of the twenty-first century. Films illustrative of the contemporary ‘socially critical’ category include treatments of media technologies. The rise of Facebook is charted in The Social Network (2010), for example, while The Hunger Games series (2012–15) deals with contemporary anxieties concerning surveillance, and surveillance as entertainment – or ‘reality television’. In The Hunger Games series, contestants are pitted against each other in a staged, televised, fight to the death. The games are presented as a mythologised and literal rendition of television’s international Survivor franchise. A further and related concern in recent socially critical films is the power of the press (and even individual broadcasters) as against government controls on content or opinion. Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) revisits the historical conflict between journalist Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy – a US politician closely associated with the anti-communist purges of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Set in 1953, Good Night, and Good Luck pits the ‘freedom of the press’ against government interference and regulation in the Cold War climate of 1950s America. In a similar vein, a range of recent socially critical



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films provide commentary on the corruption of organisations and institutions, including government. In The Constant Gardener (2005) pharmaceutical companies are in focus; in Syriana (2005) government/ military collusion with the global oil industry is subjected to critical investigation. Sexualities are another favoured topic in contemporary ‘socially critical’ movies. The category is nevertheless diverse in itself, and includes biopics like Milk (2008) – a film about San Francisco mayor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk – realist family dramas like The Kids are all Right (2010) – about lesbian parents and their children – and the ‘cowboy’ love story, Brokeback Mountain (2005). In the ‘post-closet’ era (Seidman, 2002; Dean, 2014), movies engaging with the politics of sexuality generally present their protagonists decidedly sympathetically. Even Monster (2003) – a narrative based on Aileen Wuornos’s life path as a much abused lesbian who becomes a serial killer – treats its eponymous protagonist as, in fact, not entirely monstrous but rather all too human.21 Movies offering critical perspectives on gender and identity also feature in the contemporary era – Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Transamerica (2005), The Danish Girl (2015) – and are generally distinguishable from the heteronormative tenor of romantic comedy and bromance. Indeed, gender and sexualities may be viewed as constituting ‘cardinal’ topics within the socially critical category. However, it is worth noting in this context that ‘queer cinema’ – though it draws upon gender and sexualities themes – provides a somewhat different facet to considerations of socially critical films. Queer contributions to Hollywood are by no means entirely identical to movies about gender or sexuality, but rather offer perspectives on contesting and subverting heteronormative boundaries which are usually presumed to be natural and fixed. While gender and sexualities themes have a central place in socially critical Hollywood films, by contrast Hollywood has rarely produced queer counter-hegemonic films and in this sense offers few examples of the kind of film we have linked to the term ‘socially critical’.22 Scope of the socially critical: centre and periphery Examining the ‘critical’ emphases of various Hollywood eras provides a useful historical background for identifying the political nature of

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socially critical movies. Considering how certain topics recur over time in straightforwardly ‘serious’ as against hybridised ways offers a somewhat different but similarly useful approach, enabling further contextualisation of the category as well as an indication of the scope of its spectrum. As we have pointed out, terrorism, for example, is not usually presented as something to think about in terms of social critique, but instead merely indexes ‘bad guys’. Contemporary movies about gay and lesbian sexualities, however, are more likely to be critically oriented, especially when considered against the ubiquitously heteronormative myths and characters mobilised across the gamut of Hollywood genres and styles. Problems that might characterise an era are clearly implicated in popular cultural representations of the social fabric, but there is no necessary transference of weight: that is, a problem like terrorism might be divested of its capacity to unsettle by being represented in simpler, more comforting, manageable ways. Drug films similarly bring what is almost universally understood to be a serious social problem to the screen, but the critical traction of the issue is often derailed by the tendency of such films to wallow in addiction’s generally individualised horrors. Social problems may be more or less palatable; more or less amenable to thoughtfully critical representations, depending on the particular circumstances of their emergence. We can trace these ebbs and flows by exploring socially critical topics that have endured or reappeared across different eras, sometimes moving from centre to periphery or back to the centre again within the socially critical spectrum – topics such as gender/ sexuality and racism. As we have already paid some attention to the first topic in this and previous chapters, here we will consider only the latter. Racism is treated as consistently worthy of social critique, and offers good examples of the way hybridisation works to complicate the ‘message’ offered. (This is not to say that the issue of racism is in fact any more or less pressing, or more or less real, but rather to suggest that how flaws in the social fabric are represented in Hollywood movies may be instructive.) Though questioning of social discrimination and authority was evident in the 1960s, some socially critical Hollywood films of this period moved away from their hitherto almost exclusive reliance on social realism and naturalistic narrative dramas. Until then



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socially critical films had laid claim to ‘serious’ rather than entertainment value by their use of docudrama styles, but in the 1960s they began to shift into the territory and style of fear films. The science fiction genre, in particular, was appropriated from its more usual location in fear films to become a setting for ethico-political dilemmas associated with scientific knowledge and ‘progress’ (Packer, 2015: 133–40). Films about ‘passing’ and the experience of racism illustrate this. In the mid-1960s, Black Like Me (1964) told the socially critical, realistic story of a white man who darkens his skin in order to pass as black and walk in another’s shoes. The story is reiterated but reconfigured through a science fiction motif in Change of Mind (1969). In this later film, a white District Attorney’s brain is transplanted into a black man’s body – again, offering the DA an opportunity to experience the conditions of another person’s life. The story was much more ironically re-presented – in markedly different social-political circumstances – in The Thing with Two Heads (1972). In this version, a racist (white) surgeon tries to secure his own survival by having his entire head grafted onto/alongside that of an African-American death row prisoner. The surgeon’s fiendish plan is to later remove the convict’s ‘original’ head and take the body as his own. Ultimately, however, the prisoner reclaims his own body, and his freedom. The sequence of steps these films take demonstrates movement away from serious realism towards fear/science fiction, and then towards more comic ‘blaxploitation’ horror.23 In Black Like Me (white) audiences are earnestly enjoined to recognise the humanity of African-American people; The Thing with Two Heads affirms that some forms of racism are simply ridiculous (Ponder, 2011). The differences between each film’s treatment of an essentially similar narrative show us how racism is itself problematised in historically specific ways, but also illustrate how situating a given social problem as cinematically ‘serious’ (or not) feeds back into our understanding of that problem. Black Like Me purports to be taken seriously as a socially critical film, The Thing With Two Heads does not.24 In these ways, we can understand socially critical Hollywood films as historically aligned, to some extent, with the waxing and waning of fear films, since the latter in many ways also provide forums for questioning what counts as ‘progress’ in times of social turmoil, even if that questioning is more limited.25

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In something of a throwback to such adaptation of science fiction elements, recent socially critical films have not merely appropriated fear-film motifs but have employed them in ‘hybrid’ forms. Examining topics and their varying presentation over time raises the question when do the claims of socially critical films become untenable – that is, when do socially critical movies reach the boundaries of the category and stop being socially critical? The shift away from realism towards the development of socially critical/sci-fi fear-film hybrids has gathered momentum in the current era and, in tandem with the rise of media conglomerates and the ‘New Hollywood’ blockbuster format, has arguably blunted the critical edge of these films – even as such hybrids at least provided an established means to offer some social commentary (see The Terminator, 1984 and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991). In contemporary sci-fi/socially critical hybrids, conventions are combined to enable treatment in more palatable, less heavy-handed, and somewhat less serious forms. The X-Men franchise (2000, 2003, 2006), for example, has included substantial attention to social problems (like discrimination, AIDS, and racism), yet remains strongly superhero/sci-fi/action-driven. Films like these remain part of the broad bailiwick of socially critical films because, even though social critique may not be their core business, they are significantly or even strongly attentive to social problems. Hybridisations demonstrate how socially critical films can be understood as a category encompassing a spectrum – with those which are very strongly or even solely focused on social commentary at the centre, and those featuring degrees of social commentary marked by the imperatives of other modes at its edges. Despite the increasing hybridisation of socially critical and fear films, and despite being subject to historically similar trends, the two are by no means entirely in sync. They continue to be informed by distinct histories, styles, and agendas. These agendas will be considered in more depth in the next chapter. Delimitation of ‘the political’ The cultural politics approach adopted throughout this book suggests that movies play a role in enhancing the appeal of the (American) nation-state in order to advance its soft power influence as well as



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securing the assent of the governed. Socially critical movies present something of a flipside to this in that they deliver a circumscribed arena for (permissible) dissent: that is, they both construct and reflect what we are enjoined to care about, or change, and in doing so shape not just what we value, but also who ‘we’ are, and what we might apprehend as capable of change. In this way, for example, while ‘justice’ routinely features as a matter for serious treatment in socially critical films, prisons are depicted as part of the problem only in an individualised sense, and only where corruption or mistakes lead to injustice. These films indicate that we should care that (occasionally) attorneys are lazy or incompetent; we should care that police can be racist; we should care that a person might be punished for a crime they did not commit. However, the operation of the prison-industrial complex and the structural work it accomplishes, even in its peculiarly American context, barely figures. We do not need to care that the United States imprisons more of its people than any other nation (Lacey, 2008; Phelps and Pager, 2015: 185). The fact that there are more prisons than universities in the USA (Ingraham, 2015) is not presented in Hollywood movies as a ‘social problem’. In other words, there are hegemonic imperatives even in that category of movies whose ‘job’ is to question the status quo. Moreover, the realm of socially critical films airing misgivings about the criminal justice system is not only highly circumscribed and selectively blind, it also exists in the same cinematic universe that routinely endorses even ‘cruel and unusual’ penalty as entirely, thoroughly, routinely appropriate (Con Air, 1997; The Longest Yard, 2005; Felon, 2008; Escape Plan, 2013). Taken as a whole, socially critical films might be assumed to map an entire universe of social problems. We argue, however, that they almost invariably present just a small selection of familiar constellations. More than this, socially critical films do not merely reflect existing problems but also ‘join the dots’ to identify or problematise particular issues in circumscribed ways. We have maintained, in this chapter, that social problems, along with substantively and explicitly critical political messages, are almost always attached to bounded, cinematically triedand-true, subject matter and plot-lines. Just how critical (or not) such movies might be is the pivotal subject explored in the next chapter.

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Notes 1 As noted in chapter 1, Comolli and Narboni (1971) offered an early, highly influential taxonomy of films in terms of how and to what extent they might be understood as upholding the dominant status quo or as resistant in class terms. The mode of categorisation they outlined included a range of films such as documentaries and films which are idiosyncratic and avant garde, as well as popular films. They also considered that films which did not employ realism could be understood as politically resistant by virtue of their form. Our analysis, by contrast, is solely of fictional popular films and does not equate power relations with capitalism/class. The analysis is shaped by Hollywood’s increasing embrace of forms beyond realism and makes use of the notion of spectrum when describing the kind and degree of support for the status quo in Hollywood films. 2 The term ‘social cinema’ is occasionally employed but this typically refers to independent European films of the ‘non-commercial’ kind envisioned by pioneering French filmmaker Jean Vigo (Strebel, 1977: 499). 3 In referring to this grouping of films as a category rather than a ‘genre’ we take a somewhat different tack from the several valuable analyses of socially critical/social problem movies offered by writers like MacCann (1964), Roffman and Purdy (1981), Maland (1988), and Neale (2000b). 4 See Karlyn (2011) and Radner and Stringer (2011a) for a more comprehensive exploration of feminist influences in contemporary movies. 5 There are perhaps more British films with an unequivocal focus on the feminist movement, including Made in Dagenham (2010) and Suffragette (2015), as well as (perhaps more tangentially) the BritishAmerican movie, The Hours (2002). 6 In cultural studies, this phrase (‘against the grain’) usually connotes approaches associated with resistance to dominant power relations, and is often specifically linked with subcultures or alternative readings of cultural texts (Rojek, 2007; Meehan, 2012). 7 In addition to the emerging research and commentaries on women and box-office success, there is substantial scholarship outlining the ongoing under-representation of women in Hollywood movies, both in front of and behind the camera, their stereotypic portrayal, lack of character development, and comparative sexualisation when they are present. For some examples, see Marshall and Özlem (2009); England et al. (2011); Conrad (2011); Bacon (n.d.); Bleakley et al. (2012); and Pomerantz et al. (2014). See also chapters 7 and 8.



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8 At the movies, injustice happens to individual people in individual circumstances; disadvantage is very rarely represented as systematic and ingrained. See also chapter 4 on the white male saviour in security films. 9 The terminology of ‘meta-genre’ is consistent with the tack taken by Belén Vidal in relation to biopics (2014: 15), and Pat Brereton on ecology (2005: 11). For us, however, genre conventions are not as important as a range of other considerations. 10 Movies about drugs have waxed and waned, depending on their regulatory context and social-political situation. It is clear, however, that Hollywood ‘drug’ films have directly or indirectly influenced drug policies both within and beyond the United States (Schulte, 2012; Mercille, 2014). Indeed, the ‘drug menace’ has been mythologised in fairly consistent ways over time, regardless of the particular substance in focus (Stevenson, 2000: 60–2). The recent (albeit independent) feature, Meth Head (2013) reiterates the story of an out-of-control spiral into despair and degradation thanks to methamphetamine use that has been used to similar effect in relation to screen stories of both marijuana and heroin. As Jack Stevenson’s (2000) history of the treatment of drug use in Hollywood film explains, before World War II Chinese opium dens were predictably demonised on screen, but similarly reactionary approaches prevailed even through the 1960s and 1970s ‘psychedelic’ era. While some films toyed with experimental styles referencing the supposed effects of drugs (and especially LSD), these were commercially unsuccessful – and perhaps driven by the potential for cutting-edge special effects sequences more than anything else. Instead, as early as the 1970s (and certainly since then), the ridiculously inaccurate melodramas of bygone drug ‘warning’ pictures became subculturally popular as camp irony (Stevenson, 2000: 58). Mainstream Hollywood’s relationship with drugs has been strongly tempered by political attitudes: the highly acclaimed Traffic (2000), for example, was rejected by all of the major Hollywood studios because of its potentially troublesome subject matter and its unusually marked social critique (Dargis, 2012). Movies reasserting rather than challenging the legitimacy of the ‘war on drugs’ have been far more numerous (and less controversial). These include Clear and Present Danger (1994); Blow (2001); End of Watch (2012); and American Made (2017) – to name just a few. More recently, the Obama administration eschewed the language of the ‘war on drugs’ that had prevailed since (at least) the early 1970s (Pratt, 2016), and serious treatments of drugs as problem fodder for Hollywood seem to have experienced a parallel (if partial) decline.

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11 History itself is, of course, the product of a particular time and place. Hollywood forays into historical forms are just as much a product of their time as any other films. See, for example, the historical setting of socially critical films on racism developed by the director/producer/ studio mogul, Steven Spielberg – The Color Purple (1985); Schindler’s List (1993); Amistad (1997). Representing racism as a problem situated in the past has contemporary and continuing effects – see, for example, Jacqueline Nelson’s (2013) account of ‘temporal distancing’ as a way to dismiss or disavow racism. 12 The New Deal was a set of state interventionist economic policies and projects developed during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency following the terrible impact of the Depression. These policies and projects were designed to inject funds into the US economy to create jobs, develop strategies to prevent further economic disasters, and, importantly, to provide welfare support for those who had been cast into poverty (Lurie, 1934). Many of the social security measures introduced through the New Deal were enduring reforms (Hardman, 1999). 13 Present-day treatments of poverty – in Slumdog Millionaire (2008), or Precious (2009), for example – tend to be produced outside the USA, and/or by independent filmmakers. Where poverty plays a part in more ‘mainstream’ movies, it is rarely presented as ‘familiar’ or ‘normal’, but rather as the unfortunate setting from which an outstanding individual emerges – as in Good Will Hunting (1997) or The Blind Side (2009). 14 Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible compares the House UnAmerican Activities Committee’s operations to the Salem witch trials, arguing that a deeply irrational and dangerous political hysteria was rife. The play was adapted as a movie in 1957, and then again in 1996. (The 1957 movie was a non-Hollywood, European film.) Not surprisingly, Miller himself attracted the Committee’s attention – it fined him a sum of money and sentenced him to a period of detention, which Miller’s lawyers successfully appealed (Wertheim, 1982: 218–9; Martin, 1977; see also the nuanced interpretation in Clapp, 2013). 15 The Cold War refers to a period of intense rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States following the Second World War. Rivalry between the two super-powers often fell short of open warfare (‘hot war’) but was nevertheless often undertaken in a barely submerged fashion in other countries as they competed for global influence and power. 16 They cite, in particular, the decline of socially critical movies in the immediate post-war period, their resurgence in 1960s counterculture, and their slide back with New Right Reaganism in the 1980s (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 87–9).



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17 In the immediate post-war period, and no doubt while the atrocities of Nazism were still very fresh, several films addressed American anti-Semitism – including 1947’s Crossfire and Gentleman’s Agreement, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in that year. 18 In her exploration of ‘passing white’ films, Karen M. Bowdre makes the ironic observation (among other critiques) that white actors were almost always cast in the black protagonists’ roles (2014). 19 Released in 1962, The Manchurian Candidate offered an almost prescient platform for thinking about political assassinations. Civil rights activist Medgar Evers and President John F. Kennedy were assassinated in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and Martin Luther King in 1968. 20 The New Right in the USA was associated with an antagonism to the state, to taxes, to government regulation of business, to communism abroad, and to the counterculture of the late 1960s/1970s. Ronald Reagan may be seen as an icon of this direction in American political life (Rusher, 1984; Chappell and Keech, 1988). 21 Monster (2003) is a difficult film to categorise. It mobilises socially critical themes of sexuality and gender, but within the broad parameters of ‘fear’ films. Even as a fear film, Monster is not straightforward, thanks to the serial-killing monster’s incarnation as a woman. 22 Nevertheless, Hollywood stories have sometimes presented queer counter-narratives, in which the main heteronormative narrative may be viewed as underpinned by a parallel, usually disguised, alternative. ‘Queer readings’, which identify and expose such disguised counter-narratives to produce subversive interpretations of ostensibly mainstream representations of gender/sexuality, constitute a form of social critique in themselves. However, expansive discussion of film commentaries falls outside the purview of this book. Queer commentaries emerge from a broad field of scholarship that is neither discrete nor easily condensed (see Hall et al., 2013; Beasley, 2005: 161–74; Sullivan, 2003; Jagose, 1996). The field deploys a particular mode of analysis concerning the constitution of identity categories that certainly overlaps with our intention to challenge the political innocence of popular cinema but is also somewhat distinct from it. The concerns mobilised in queer readings of Hollywood film can be more comprehensively examined in a range of other, more detailed, texts (see, for example, Tinkcom, 2017; Lindsay, 2015; Benshoff and Griffin 2004). 23 On ‘blaxploitation’ films see Benshoff (2000), who defines them as movies of the early 1970s featuring ‘some degree of African-American input’, marketed to African-American audiences, and depicting ‘a stronger, more militant image of African-Americans who triumphed

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over (frequently racist) white antagonists’ (2000: 31–3; emphasis in original). 24 This is not to say that The Thing with Two Heads is in fact less politically salient than Black Like Me – as Justin Ponder (2011) argues, it is just as salient. 25 A similar move towards the hybridisation of socially critical and fear films is evident in The Stepford Wives (1975), in which anxieties concerning feminism are interlaced with a ‘fear’ story concerning less-than-human robot wives, realising ‘men’s assumed desire for submissive, sexy wives who do what they are told’ (Johnston and Sears, 2011: 75).

11 Questioning the critical

We have argued throughout this book that the scope of movies that can be considered ‘political’ is much broader than is often assumed. For us, all movies are political in one way or another. How, then, should we understand those films that are more ostensibly political or socially engaged? In this chapter we continue our examination of ‘socially critical’ films (as defined in chapter 10) to consider the extent to which they offer any challenge to dominant power relations with regard to nation, culture, class, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, or other axes of power. We consider how this spectrum of films might be understood as counter-hegemonic, how they engage with and criticise the existing social order, including the assumed ‘us’ and ‘ours’ associated with that order. Investigating a number of enduring, socially critical themes favoured by Hollywood, we identify and discuss the political myths they iterate or contest. Having outlined the terrain of the socially critical category in the previous chapter, here we explore debates about the degree of critique they afford. Do Hollywood’s ‘serious’ movies offer substantial critiques, or do they superficially raise concerns only to contain and disarm them? Are ‘message’ films a serious injunction for movie audiences to think critically, or are they more like those horror films which present social anxieties and disruption but generally return us safely and gratefully to ‘normality’? Our aim, in addressing such questions, is to assess the robustness of the political engagement of the category as a whole. The mode of socially critical films can be didactic, featuring familiar tropes of ‘warning’. Assessing the degree of social critique inhering in these

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warnings invites us to consider their limitations and opportunities: these include the operation of Hollywood conventions; the grafting of controversial material onto more familiar ideas; appeals to ‘universal’ themes; the reiteration of axiomatic formulas in socially critical movies; and the place of ‘serious’ movies in the broader Hollywood industry. Before considering the spectrum of socially critical films and the character of their political engagement, we repeat an initial note of caution. While it is tempting to assume that political perspectives in film are most evident in films about capital-P politics, we resist this approach. As we have argued throughout this book, politics (in the narrower sense of government and administration) does not necessarily present obvious subject matter for socially critical Hollywood movies, nor are these films the most commonly employed or most critical location for attending to power relations. Indeed, ostensibly political films may in fact occlude rather than illuminate power relations – an irony not lost on us. Films like Reds (1981), Dave (1993), The American President (1995), The Contender (2000), and Lincoln (2012), for example, may be significantly less political in terms of opening up questions about power relations than films which are at a distance from politicians and political life (for instance, The Grapes of Wrath, 1940; The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951; Soylent Green, 1973; The Color Purple, 1985; Gattaca, 1997; WALL-E, 2008; Brave, 2012; 12 Years a Slave, 2013). Indeed, some capital-P ‘political films’, in our view, do not properly belong in the socially critical category at all. This may be demonstrated by comparing two instances. The American President (1995) is a romance story which just happens to be located in government, but is decidedly conventional. It may be a capital-P political movie, but it is not socially critical. The sci-fi film, Gattaca (1997), in contrast, offers an excoriating commentary upon systemic social discrimination and eugenicist assumptions. Despite its distance from the realm of more immediately recognisable ‘Politics’, Gattaca is much more clearly a socially critical film. In other words, the spectrum of the ‘socially critical’ does not necessarily include a number of seemingly obvious contenders. Moreover, the political myths revealed in security and relationalities movies may also appear in more overtly



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‘political’, controversial, and socially critical movies. Those myths – of xenophobia as fundamental to national security or of brotherhood as the foundation of the polity – are arguably even less obvious in socially critical movies, since more overtly ‘political’ messages tend to override them. Nevertheless, as we shall see, myths about national security, order, threats, gender, and relationalities do not vanish whenever a movie takes, as its key subject, a particular social problem. Warnings and celebrations Socially critical films as a category offer a more or less explicit engagement with social issues. At the centre of the socially critical spectrum, such engagement is fundamental rather than a mere sideline, and involves an agenda of social critique aiming to unsettle or even challenge the existing status quo. This political intention is nevertheless differentially expressed: exemplary films present a social problem or social commentary as their primary or even sole concern, while others include social critique (by degrees) as one of several main intentions. Beyond this, socially critical films draw upon a circumscribed range of reiterated topics which change over time and collectively indicate what should be understood to be centrally, inextricably, and strongly political as against what may be deemed contingently so. As we saw in the previous chapter, what is excluded from the category is also important, in that what is omitted can be assumed to be politically irrelevant (for example, feminism as a social movement); or, perhaps, so self-evident as to obviate any need for critical examination (for example, that terrorism is not a matter for social interrogation because terrorists are simply the ‘bad guys’). All of these elements of the socially critical category may be viewed in combination as delineating the shape or configuration of ‘the political’ in Hollywood film. However, dealing with social issues on film also brings to the forefront a didactic message-orientation – the proffering of lessons – which is made manifest in a set of reiterated instructional themes. These themes usually take a certain shape. In other words, not just the range of topics deemed ‘political’ but also the message aspects of socially critical Hollywood films are circumscribed. Such messages are delivered in two main forms, warnings and

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heroic triumphs – that is, they offer directions regarding what not to do and what should be done. Such directions are as intimately implicated in the constitution of Hollywood’s political mythology as those we have located in relation to security and relationalities films. The particular terrain of Hollywood’s political mythology is revealed in the didacticism of socially critical films. Certain topics, as noted earlier, are identified as the domain of the political, as arenas for social commentary: these can be seen to point out flaws in the social fabric. Such topics may offer cinematic lessons about how trouble can be staved off, and often deploy starkly conservative impulses. The flawed social fabric is usually imagined to be capable of repair if the lesson is learned. There are decided limits to the terrain of this political mythology in relation to both ‘content’ (the subject matter for critique) and narrative. For example, some commentators note that constituting racism as a social problem in social commentary films (in which the saviour is more often than not a ‘brave’ or ‘compassionate’ white man or woman), and paying very limited attention to the systemic power relations associated with whiteness, hardly involves robust social critique.1 Instead, in such treatments, the ‘problem’ is constituted as the subjects of racism rather than the social ubiquity of racism itself. Similarly, the reiterated themes which have proved to be favoured frameworks for the didactic character of socially critical movies involve warnings and heroic celebrations that most often boil down to a limited number of well-worn scenarios. We are often warned not to go ‘too far’. In movies like Requiem for a Dream (2000) and Disconnect (2012) we are exhorted to avoid falling for easy fixes: the fantasy worlds of drugs (Requiem) and the internet (Disconnect) present reiterations of how easily a normal life might slide into disaster. We are urged to be vigilant in policing our personal dreams and desires, to choose moderation over excess. The political myth on which such fears rest is clearly conservative and temperate. We see a second form of warning in films that alert us to the need for organisations as well as individuals to be monitored. In movies like The China Syndrome (1979), Wall Street (1987), and Traffic (2000), we see that, in the absence of vigilant transparency, corruption and negligence can lead to terrible consequences. The message is that some corporate or governmental paths – often the ‘easier’ paths – lead



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to ruin, and must be refused or re-routed before the point of no return is passed. In The China Syndrome (1979), for example, safety short-cuts at a nuclear power plant jeopardise the city of Los Angeles and its people. The warning here is that operational safety must be maintained to a very high standard, regardless of the cost, and that such organisations must be subject to effective scrutiny. As Plato asked the classical Romans around 380BCE (and students of politics ever since), ‘who guards the guards?’ A number of films espouse ‘turning back’ in a different sense, lauding older, simpler ways of doing things and warning against the onslaught of morally bankrupt forms of ‘progress’. Whether we understand films like Dances with Wolves (1990) and Avatar (2009) as jeremiads against alienation, urging engagement with community and nature, or deeply conservative romanticisations, they serve to remind audiences that development comes at a cost. This message is a variation on the enduring theme that nature is precious, and that the hubris of playing God or tampering with the natural order of things generates retribution. The perils of unchecked scientific and technological meddling are sounded in movies like Frankenstein (1931), Alien Resurrection (1997), Minority Report (2002), and Ex Machina (2014). If the ‘warning’ messages of many socially critical films caution us against behaving in certain ways, the celebration of heroic triumphs is its flipside, spelling out the ‘right’ course of action. The two forms are by no means mutually exclusive. The hero in Dances with Wolves (played by Kevin Costner) simultaneously warns against the ‘progress’ of frontier colonisation and stands as a dissenting (white) hero. Heroic tales – in movies as different as Equilibrium (2002) and Happy Feet (2006) – valorise the individual who struggles poignantly and bravely against the many. Equilibrium rehearses familiar sci-fi scenarios: in a dystopian future, a totalitarian government outlaws art and emotion, securing citizen obedience by forcing the population to take a desensitising drug. The hero refuses to comply, and in doing so rejects the bland conformity of living without love (and other emotions). In the children’s animated feature Happy Feet (2006), an emperor penguin who cannot sing (as emperor penguins must if they are to find mates) is ostracised when he refuses to stop dancing – but eventually wins acceptance and, of course, love. In many if not most socially critical movies the hero

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is cast as a renegade, but in others ‘represents’ a larger group: in Amistad (1997) and 12 Years a Slave (2013), for example, the heroes throw off the shackles of their systemic oppression, exemplifying and enabling the liberation of others like them. Of all these variations on the heroic tale, this is the only reiteration that consistently imagines some social (rather than individualised) conceptualisation and critique of social issues. For the most part, both oppression and liberation are presented as strongly individualised and even idiosyncratic experiences. This is perhaps indicative of the terrain of political mythology available within the socially critical spectrum of Hollywood films as a whole. In these films we are routinely enjoined to listen, notice, prevent. The narratives often revolve around a choice: in one direction lies ruin, in the other, a better, safer, more just outcome. A lesson about ‘real life’ is made available either directly through realist drama or through allegory. For example, Surrogates (2009) offers a critique of superficiality, obsessive concern with body image, plastic surgery, social passivity, and overuse of technological devices as a means to social interaction, under the rubric of the well-established warning regarding the dangers of scientific innovation. The film starts with a voiceover by a figure called The Prophet who alerts the audience to the (strongly ironic) cinematic lesson. Look at yourselves. Unplug from your chairs, get up and look in the mirror. What you see is how God made you. We’re not meant to experience the world through a machine. Despite what we may expect, the didactic orientation of socially critical films like Surrogates does not mean that the social commentary invoked is necessarily challenging or wide-ranging. Indeed, Surrogates perfectly illustrates what we have already intimated regarding the limits and indeed unlikeliness of counter-hegemonic messages in Hollywood films: what kind of movie would encourage audiences to stop watching movies? We will now turn to mapping debates about this category of movies and, in the process, refer to the content of some contemporary examples in order to examine further their claimed character and intended effects.



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Critical conditions Socially critical Hollywood films are, of course, themselves subject to criticism. Scholarly and popular commentaries point to considerable dispute regarding the extent to which socially critical films offer any substantial or effective social critique.2 A range of interrelated debates have raised questions about the degree to which such films may be taken seriously and viewed as offering alternative perspectives which unsettle ‘common-sense’ notions about American social norms and organisation.3 These debates indicate that several features of films we have located in the socially critical category arguably offset, work against, or blunt the critical edge of these films. The elements at issue include convention offsets; ‘cinematic jujitsu’ (Hoerl, 2008); questions of verisimilitude; universal versus culturally specific meanings and effects; the lure of axiomatic formulas; and how the Hollywood film industry is legitimated. Convention offsets In the previous chapter, we observed that the extent of critique in socially critical films is associated with the use of particular conventions, and suggested that the dilution of critical intent can be loosely correlated with the hybridisation of ‘serious’, socially critical, realist dramas with other genre imperatives. Any departure from realist drama tends to suggest a simultaneous diminution of claims to socially critical commentary. However, the differential extent of social critique in those films we have designated as at the centre of the socially critical spectrum, as against hybrid forms which we locate at its periphery (see chapter 10), should be considered alongside ‘convention offsets’. Cinematic conventions are typically employed in the interests of enhancing a dramatic narrative: they include a range of technical devices such as the positioning of (visual) point of view, the establishment and manipulation of atmosphere, all sorts of techniques associated with acting, directing, and cinematic creation, and, of course, the use of genre-based story-lines. Genre-based cinematic conventions deploy stock narratives: victory against the odds; Cinderella stories; the struggle for redemption; and so on. In socially critical films these conventions encourage particular

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ways of presenting social messages – indeed, they sometimes seem to dictate how social problems or critique are incorporated. The result is that, in some cases, the intended critique is rather inelegantly grafted onto genre conventions. Stock narratives like the ‘fish out of water’4 or ‘against the odds’5 story-lines can override critical content so that it becomes merely descriptive, personalised drama and/or submerged in sensory immersion. The dramatisation of Muhammed Ali’s life, Ali (2001), for example, follows the experience of the most famous boxer of all time, across ten turbulent years. During this period, Ali was reviled as much as feted in the United States. There were very few signs in the white community of the honour and respect that Ali would later be afforded. His criticism of the Vietnam War, his Muslim faith, and his contempt for white supremacy (in the context of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X) were highly controversial. However, in the movie, it is Ali’s individualised struggle, personality, and persistence that drive the story: racism is merely (though still clearly) the context for the emergence of his ascendancy. Ali succeeds ‘against the odds’, and the context of the broader, collective, civil rights movement is sidelined. A similar move is executed in the celebration of shark victim/ surfer Bethany Hamilton’s exceptionalism in Soul Surfer (2011). Ali and Hamilton clearly are exceptional people succeeding despite racist and ableist social structures. However, the potential for social critique that their life-stories present is diluted by the reiteration of the deeply entrenched political myth that any problem can be surmounted on an individual basis if only one is strong, smart, or persistent enough. The dramatic and sensationalising æsthetic demands of conventional cinematic formats can also result in a kind of voyeurism in which critical content is overlaid with a vicarious wallowing in degradation or other horrors. This is, perhaps, a risk attached to any Hollywood representation of suffering, but is particularly associated with representations of problematic drug use such as Requiem for a Dream (2000), as noted in the previous chapter (see also Blackman, 2004). In Hollywood movies, lead characters almost invariably remain essentially attractive and likeable (to some degree) even as they are ravaged by drug abuse. Similarly, a concern to wrap difficult and bleak social problems in visually appealing packages can see dystopic futures looking cool and



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sexy. This, in turn, prompts the ironic effect that social message films may encourage, inspire, or bring into being what they apparently mean to criticise or condemn. Illustrating this, both Blade Runner (1982) and Minority Report (2002) are thought to have led advertisers, architects, and designers to copy the look of their future worlds (Glancey, 2009; Fortin, 2011; Fairs, 2015; Sey, 2016). In each of these instances we see that Hollywood conventions regarding dramatic impact may counterbalance, diminish, or even override social critique. Convention offsets are also strongly evident in a number of socially critical movies which address real-life social oppression – particularly in the form of racism – as a central and driving theme. The Help (2011), for example, presents a story about particular characters – a group of African-American women and the several white households in which they work as domestic servants, in 1960s Mississippi – but its narrative drive is to reveal the racism that governed their lives and the injustices such racism produced. The Help is not ‘about’ romance, redemption, or retribution; it is about racism, and as such can be placed at the centre of the spectrum of socially critical films. It is historical in that it is set in the civil rights era, but it is contemporary in that the story it tells remains part of living memory and has continuing effects in many people’s lives. The Help is clearly and obviously a social message movie, but the impact of its use of cinematic dramatic conventions means that its socio-political critique is not as clear-cut as might at first seem. Consider, for example, whose story is being told. The experience of oppression to be represented in this instance is the experience of the maids. At a number of points, including the ‘bookends’ of beginning and end, the movie speaks from the point of view of one of the maids, Aibileen Clark. It is unusual in itself for a Hollywood movie to focus on black women’s experience, and the opportunity to hear the voice of a black maid as The Help’s narrator is singularly rare. The novel on which the movie is based was written by Kathryn Stockett (2009), a white woman who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and whose experience as the well-educated daughter of wealthy Southerners employing ‘help’ shapes the novel (and, in turn, the movie). The movie is set in 1963 (when laws affirming racist segregation were still in force in the southern USA), but Stockett was born in 1969. Stockett’s

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book reflects on her relationship with a maid working in her family home (Stockett, 2011; Harris, 2011). Already, questions about the politics of point of view might be apparent.6 Does it matter whether the experience a writer draws on to write a ‘social message’ story is imagined or real? Does it matter whether the experience of racism being represented on screen occurred in one era (the post-civil rights 1970s) but is set in another (just before the repeal of segregationist policies, smack in the middle of the civil rights movement)? Whose voices are we listening to: Stockett’s, the maids’, or some other, new, amalgam – and do their words amount to a kind of political ventriloquism?7 What kinds of racism might inhere in the myriad decisions made in relation to this cinematic story and its telling? The Help may remind audiences of the bizarre, cruel, and sometimes singularly petty forms of oppression endured by African-American domestic workers in the 1960s, but it may also affirm a well-established political mythology that racism ended with the rise of the civil rights movement and the repeal of the ‘Jim Crow’ laws in 1965.8 The Help may provide convenient fodder for white American audiences by suggesting that racism is a thing of the past, now over and done with, and having no continuing effects (Nelson, 2013). While systematic privileges attaching to whiteness endure – in Jackson, Mississippi, and Hollywood, California, as much as anywhere else in the United States (and beyond) – setting the action in 1963 irons out some of the moral and political ambiguities involved, and the dramatic construction of the film furthers this by rehearsing a neat, feel-good resolution (Maslin, 2009). ‘Cinematic jujitsu’ Tension in socially critical films between critical social commentary and conventions associated with cinematic ‘success’ can also lead to what Kristen Hoerl (2008) calls ‘cinematic jujitsu’ – that is, the simultaneous presentation of potentially inconsistent socio-political perspectives. She coins the term ‘cinematic jujitsu’ because, ‘like the martial art, cinematic jujitsu uses counter techniques that draw upon the strength of an opposing force in order to achieve a more dominant position’ (2008: 358). Using Spike Lee’s film about black activist Malcolm X (1992) to illustrate her argument, Hoerl shows how Malcolm X’s radicalism meets and engages with the more hegemonic ‘American



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Dream’ myth – a foundation myth of liberal ideology (which will be considered again later in this chapter). Rejecting the idea that Malcolm X’s radicalism is simply or entirely absorbed by its retelling in a mainstream movie, Hoerl argues that bringing radical (counterhegemonic) and hegemonic elements together can open fissures for reimagining a more ‘just and equitable future’ (2008: 367). Cinematic jujitsu can give controversial issues and figures space by linking them with more conventional ideas – especially those that function as well-established political myths. However, by appealing to the hegemonic impulses of ‘common sense’ (Hoerl, 2008; Foust, 2010: 67), this dualistic strategy can also diminish their critical impact, particularly in relation to institutional or systemic power relations. Formidable figures like Malcolm X and society-wide problems like institutionalised racism may be easier to appreciate if they are made more palatable for a broad-based audience (typically addressed as white) by ‘normalising’ the struggle to challenge white hegemony into a conventional format that is both comfortingly familiar and well accepted. At the same time, cinematic jujitsu is a potentially costly manoeuvre. For example, in The Garment Jungle (1957) the rare presentation of a pro-union perspective is distinctly offset by Hollywood’s cinematic convention of ‘feel-good’ resolutions. In this case, the convention results in a focus on ‘decent’ unionists and capitalists who decide to work together, drawing back from any suggestion of a potentially less comfortable and certainly more strongly critical stance which might include ongoing or even endemic socio-political conflict in the form of class warfare. Verisimilitude Convention offsets and cinematic jujitsu both work to obscure moral and/or political ambiguities and complexities in background, story-line, and character. Awkwardly neat or feel-good closure, along with impossibly saintly or brave protagonists, can diminish the authenticity of social critiques which typically rely on some relation to ‘the real’. Socially critical films, with their preference for strong dramatic realism, are thus sometimes castigated for historical, biographical, or narrative inaccuracies. These are apparent, most often, in films based on books – including journalism,9 autobiography,10 and fiction.11 Unlike most

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other Hollywood movies, socially critical movies are sometimes subject to judgements concerning their verisimilitude or perceived truthfulness, and debates continue about whether accuracy in socially critical films is of any significance (McCrisken and Pepper, 2005). The imperative to tell a good story that will also be profitable at the box office means that accuracy concerning the contours and effects of the central social problem can be lost. Unsurprisingly, for some commentators on film, gradations of loose, faithful, or literal reference (Dean, 2009) to real events are entirely immaterial. Entertainment value is not necessarily indexed to reality and often is not required to be. Political meanings in socially critical films, however, usually are. Issues associated with the politics of verisimilitude arise most obviously with regard to socially critical biopics. Biopics are fictional films that deal ‘with a figure whose existence is documented in history, and whose claims to fame or notoriety warrant the uniqueness of his or her story’ (Vidal, 2014: 3) but they do not necessarily deal with social critique.12 Those biopics which do attend to social problems may feature musicians, artists, scientists, and all manner of remarkable individuals.13 A small number focus on the business of government and people engaged in political activities (Lipkin, 2011: 134). American presidents, for example, feature in several biopics: Nixon (1995), Lincoln (2012), and others (see Menne and Long, 2015). The question of verisimilitude is brought into sharp relief in two docudramas dealing with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy: JFK (1991) and the more recent Parkland (2013). The former tells a story of conspiracy and scapegoating at the highest levels of government; the latter rehabilitates the official story. Both movies engage with ‘the real’ and their claim to be taken seriously is linked to their use of historical and biographical sources.14 As Belén Vidal observes, history and biopics connect ‘specialist knowledge, popular history, and mass entertainment’ (2014: 4). Socially critical dramas like The Danish Girl (2015), Erin Brockovich (2000), and The Insider (1999), provoke questions about verisimilitude and invite us to think about the relationship between real events and representations of those events (Lipkin, 2011: 21; Staiger, 2000: 5). While verisimilitude issues are at the heart of some disputes about the extent of social analysis offered in socially critical Hollywood films, it is difficult to arrive at any overarching position about accuracy, since



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the degree to which accuracy has an impact upon the level of critique depends on assessments regarding the centrality of what is ignored or altered. Is it of any importance to the tragic narrative of social rejection of gender diversity and gender reassignment in The Danish Girl (2015) that the protagonist (Einar/Lili) and the protagonist’s wife (Gerda) in real life lived comfortably as a lesbian couple, at first, and then both took up male partners after Lili’s first surgery? Is it of any concern that the film offers a decidedly sanitised account of Lili’s story that did not involve any trans people in its production? Does it matter to the environmental contamination story of Erin Brockovich, for example, that the protagonist and the victims are entirely successful in the lawsuit shown on film, but that this was not so clear-cut for the real-life plaintiffs; or that the scientific evidence for cancer-causing properties in the contaminated water was not entirely straightforward (Sharp, 2000)? In the tale of industrial corruption within the tobacco industry outlined in The Insider, does it matter that there is some dispute about the nature of the threats the whistleblower, Dr Jeffrey Wigand, received? When the real-life whistleblower at the heart of the film was asked about the question of verisimilitude, he noted that precise accuracy might not have been upheld in the movie, but was very clear that, from his point of view, this was of little significance, because the film was successful in delivering the central, socially relevant message: [t]he movie combines multiple historical events into a single scene and coalesces several years of events into 2 hours and 38 minutes, yet still retains social relevance … It’s relevant in many aspects. For example, did a large corporation (Brown and Williamson) use its economic, legal and bullying power to intimidate another large corporation (CBS)? Yes. Does the movie demonstrate the value of the First Amendment? Yes. Does the movie demonstrate that there is power in one? Yes. Does the movie demonstrate that we all should stand up for what we believe in? Yes. Can one person make a difference? Absolutely. (Wigand, n.d.) Wigand here raises the point that docudrama ‘realism’ as a cinematic mode is never an exact representation of reality, but rather aims to be

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‘true’ to the social message of the story. The cinematic production of truthfulness, then, may both serve and compromise social critique. Universalism Although the issues at play in socially critical films like The Help (2011), The Danish Girl (2015), Erin Brockovich (2000), and The Insider (1999) are clearly significant and politically salient, they are not necessarily universal. While Hollywood cinematic conventions rest upon a notional universalism, socially critical movies offer lessons which are not always relevant to other nations and cultures. Appeals to an assumed universalism are, for instance, evident in Wigand’s comments on the docudrama about his struggle with ‘big Tobacco’. Yet, the First Amendment (guaranteeing, among other things, a certain understanding of freedom of speech) is in fact specifically American, and equivalent provisions are by no means universal (nor universally admired). This cultural/national specificity is especially apparent in movies which rest upon some level of detail about US history and institutions, such as those about governmental politics. Social message movies do not always translate neatly across cultures, even where those cultures share the same language. In the United States, so-called ‘liberal’ and ‘libertarian’ perspectives (which have particular meanings in America) compete against more conservative political agendas (Schmidt et al., 2009: 20). There are no straightforward parallels to these terminologies or this particular American political configuration in, say, the United Kingdom, South Africa, New Zealand, or Australia – despite these nations having many profound, enduring, and arguably increasing similarities with American culture (George et al., 2009: 165; Goldfarb, 2010). As Michael Goldfarb explains, the term ‘liberal’ has quite different meanings in the United Kingdom and Australia than it bears in the United States.15 Support for government regulation and welfare services is not usually deemed to be a particularly radical or left-wing perspective in Australia or the United Kingdom (as it frequently is in the United States), and libertarian individualism often is not viewed as a progressive stance in either of these two countries, given their long histories of social democratic politics and culture. Hollywood social message films may thus assume a political stance that is imagined to be universal, but which is actually culturally



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provincial or assumes culturally specific knowledge. No wonder, then, that these films struggle with the question of whether to lock their particular stories into conventional genre narratives to help them ‘travel’, or whether to honour the ‘true’ (and historically/geographically/ culturally/nationally specific) details of the story or issue being represented. Both options can restrict the level of critique which is offered. Axiomatic formulas However, by far the most limiting feature of social message films is that the political mythology of Hollywood films is situated at a distance from the social which they supposedly invoke. Despite the central claims of socially critical movies to attend to social problems and offer lessons about society, they generally draw on heavily axiomatic formulas that for the most part are dissociated from social perspectives and social critique. Such films rarely offer any explanatory analysis which grasps ‘the social’. Most importantly, they rarely suggest social or collective solutions to the problems they identify. Instead, outstanding individual endeavour or elite, small-group heroism saves the day. Even where collective solutions are presented, socially critical movies tend to require an outstanding individual who organises collective action. In Dallas Buyers Club (2013), for example, there is almost no sign of the vibrant, collective politics of AIDS activism that emerged from gay liberation struggles. Rather, it takes a redneck, homophobic Texan to embody the wherewithal required to buck the health system and supply sick people with the drugs that will extend or perhaps even save their lives. Similarly, the exploited maids in The Help (2011) eventually form a kind of critical mass, but only after they are rallied by (heroically compassionate, rich, white girl) Skeeter Phelan. It is not surprising, then, that a staple of Hollywood social message films – as should by now be clear – is the individualised biopic. No wonder Dr Jeffrey Wigand viewed the biopic of his resistance to the tobacco industry as successfully offering a message of social relevance since, as he astutely noted, The Insider offers a story of individual struggle against the odds, even if aided, in the end, by the institutions of American justice. Indeed, socially critical Hollywood films typically rest on three axiomatic pillars, which are common to almost all Hollywood movies and act to delimit the extent of their critique.

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Firstly, as Phillip Gianos observes, Hollywood cultural products are typically predicated upon the notion that ‘the world’ – that is, the America-centred world they depict – is essentially just. The assumption routinely played out is that justice will in the end prevail (Gianos, 1998: 4). This political perspective is fundamentally conservative in that it upholds existing American values and social life. While socially critical films by definition engage in questioning the status quo to some extent, they nevertheless shy away from indicting American society in any overarching way. Instead, problems are depicted as occurring within ‘a fundamentally sound society’ (Maland, 1988: 309). Films in this category thus rest on the presumption that social problems can be resolved ‘within the parameters of the social system’ and do not demonstrate any agenda implying ‘structural change or social transformation’ (Hill, 1985: 35). The fundamental political myth endorsed here is the conception of the United States itself. Lester D. Friedman decisively summarises this limitation in the following terms: ‘[t]he social problem film draws attention to particular social concerns without providing solutions that might threaten the core of American societal beliefs or its political organization’ (2006: 245). Secondly, as Chuck Kleinhans explains, the history of Hollywood film illuminates a key political myth – namely, the individualised and psychologically based success myth of the American Dream: [the] function of the myth in American life is to encourage hope and a belief in individual opportunity … The myth promises to those who lack money, educational advantages and influence – the vast majority of Americans – that a personality committed to ambition, determination, perseverance, temperance and hard work will earn its appropriate reward. (1985: 66) According to Friedman, socially critical films do not depart from this axiom: [t]he overwhelming number of mainstream social problem films maintain the basic narrative structure common in Hollywood movies, focusing on an individual’s attempt to overcome obstacles instead of the larger political dimensions of the situation. When



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impediments emerge … the films emphasize personal, rather than more broadly activist, solutions. (2006: 245) Thirdly, the ultimately equitable and decent world of the American Dream is represented as more or less permanently endangered by that which might impede such individualised or small-group opportunities. There are of course perils from outsiders that ‘we’ face as members of ‘our’ free community. However, Hollywood frequently pits the power of the state and state institutions (the tyranny of government) against the naturalised bonds between individuals, family, and community. The state is often cast in the role of an externalised, interventionist juggernaut that dominates the people, suppressing individuality and individual opportunity (see, for example, Fahrenheit 451, 1966; A Clockwork Orange, 1971; The Handmaid’s Tale, 1990; Apocalypto, 2006; The Hunger Games series, 2012–15; Elysium, 2013). The three axiomatic pillars of Hollywood films – that is, ‘our’ (American) society’s legitimacy and decency, a legitimacy based upon ‘our’ individualism, and the threat of organised social structures to that legitimate order, all tend to resist acknowledgement of the social. Yet they are also at the heart of almost all socially critical films. These underlying political axioms thus provide an ongoing counter both to ‘the social’ and to critique in such films. Feel-good Hollywood: industry legitimacy All the same, socially critical films can be very good business. They may be robustly engaged in establishing and reinforcing the political legitimacy and cultural hegemony of the United States, but they also lend moral weight to the Hollywood film industry insofar as they deal with ‘serious’ issues. In some ways, they attest to the value of making movies and thus can make everyone feel good about their work – from producers and investors to actors and audiences. Actors may quite reasonably judge that in their willingness to engage with ‘important’ social matters they will be seen as more serious professionals. Industry awards seem to accompany certain kinds of successful social-criticism films more frequently than other genres: actors appearing in biopics dominate Academy Awards winners lists, for example (Vidal, 2014: 4). Vidal’s assertion that ‘[i]n contemporary cinema the biopic is a

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ubiquitous vehicle for prestige projects, and in many ways it has become synonymous with award worthiness and its attendant market benefits, particularly when it comes to star-making performances’ (2014: 2) can be extended to socially critical movies more broadly. Yet, while such films purport to offer social meaning and critique, evidence for their impact in socio-political terms is widely disputed (Karlin and Johnson, 2011; Marsh, 2013). After all, it is much easier to see a movie about slavery – especially when that movie is told in a familiar way that offers a convenient and comforting resolution – than it is to act against racism in the community. Watching a movie can sometimes feel like some kind of political activity, but does not usually result in any political action nor even act as a substitute for political action. This is, of course, a somewhat pessimistic and cynical assessment of the claims of socially critical films. Critical mass Investigating socially critical films means enquiring into their limitations and effects – examining, in particular, how they both reflect and generate political mythologies. Are movies with a social message more than mere entertainment? Are they any more meaningful than other movies? We may experience them as such, but perhaps they manipulate and misrepresent stories about social power rather than offering real explanatory depth. If such movies contain and disarm the critical perspectives on the status quo that they purport to raise, their political effects may be unpredictable, negligible, or ephemeral. The question remains, in a nutshell: how critical are socially critical movies? Russell Campbell asserts that socially critical films allow issues to be considered ‘without contemplating a decisive shift in existing power relationships’, while paradoxically celebrating those relationships and thus the current social order ‘for being flexible and susceptible for amelioration’ (1978: 60). As such, these cultural products may be said to engage not only in ‘cinematic jujitsu’ but also – and perhaps more importantly – in political jujitsu. Our view is that there are some possibilities for reclaiming the socially critical aims of this category of films for a cultural politics analytical framework. While we support the general tenor of the more sceptical and censorious assessments,



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we also consider that they underestimate the ways in which such films (and indeed all Hollywood films) may leak and exceed rather than simply or inevitably reiterate their political myths. Friedman reminds us that ‘while social problem films challenge Hollywood’s escapist fantasies and highlight the fissures in American society, they do so by using the same techniques that create those illusions’ (2006: 245). In response, we would stress, in keeping with Hoerl’s comments on cinematic jujitsu (2008), that political jujitsu – the simultaneous presence of dominant and counter-hegemonic messages – may provide a good means to open up spaces for political contestation in culture. Notes 1 A similar issue may be raised in relation to gender/sexism topics in this category of films (Cripps, 1969: 48; see also Peatling, 2013). 2 See for example the wide variety of perspectives presented by commentators on some socially critical films: Douglas (1999) on The Insider (1999), Kirp (2000) on Erin Brockovich (2000), Murray and Heumann (2009) on WALL-E (2008), and Brooks (2010) on Avatar (2009). 3 ‘Common sense’ is a term that resonates with our use of Antonio Gramsci’s understanding of hegemonic power maintained through consent rather than force alone. For Gramsci, cultural products are implicated in the construction of what counts as ‘common sense’, which in turn underpins the largely uncritical absorption and acceptance of the existing order, so that the social order appears as inevitable, self-evident, and natural (Gramsci, 1992: 137, 333; see also Stoddart, 2007: 200–202; Hoerl, 2008: 358–60). 4 ‘Fish out of water’ narratives follow the experience of a person whose life circumstances suddenly change. For example, Sister Act (1992) follows a lounge singer with underworld connections entering a convent in a witness protection programme; in Pleasantville (1998) siblings suddenly find themselves living in a 1950s soap opera; Knocked Up (2007) tells the story of a pot-smoking idler unexpectedly facing fatherhood. Such narratives are sometimes, but not usually, attached to social commentary. 5 ‘Against the odds’ story-lines are almost ubiquitous plots featuring characters who succeed (or even merely survive) in the face of overwhelming opposition or danger. See, for example, Rocky (1976); Life of Pi (2012); and All is Lost (2013). These narratives are reasonably amenable to use in social message agendas. 6 For analysis of the politics of point of view, which is especially relevant to representations regarding racism, see for example Hill Collins, 2009

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(for allied debates about feminist standpoint theory to which Hill Collins offers a particular contribution see Hartsock,1983; Harding, 1987, 2004; Bowell, n.d.). On this, see Belén Vidal’s discussion of The Arbor (2010) – an experimental film dealing with the life of English playwright Andrea Dunbar – as, quite literally, ‘an extended act of ventriloquism’ (2014: 16). ‘Jim Crow’ laws were policies of strict racial segregation operating in some southern US states from the end of the nineteenth century until 1965. They involved everyday hierarchical and humiliating distinctions for African-Americans, like those noted by Tischauser: one toilet for whites, another (inferior one) for blacks; whites at the front of the bus, blacks at the back (Tischauser, 2012). Movies based on journalism most obviously include investigative and crime journalism such as Spotlight (2015), dealing with child sex abuse perpetrated by clerics and reported by The Boston Globe newspaper. Similarly, Zodiac (2007) was based on a book by Robert Graysmith (1986), who was a cartoonist on a San Francisco newspaper at the time the serial killings featured in the movie took place. All The President’s Men (1976) drew upon the unfolding of the Watergate scandal by Washington Post reporters that led to President Nixon’s resignation, and Argo (2012) was partly based on an article Joshuah Bearman (2007) wrote for Wired magazine about CIA operations in Iran. However, other forms of journalism have also offered grist for feature films – including fashion and entertainment journalism. Almost Famous (2000) was based on director Cameron Crowe’s experience as a young music journalist on Rolling Stone magazine, and Lauren Weisberger’s (2003) roman-à-clef about working at Vogue magazine was adapted into a film of the same name – The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Journalist John Carlin’s (2008) book Playing the Enemy inspired the rugby union movie Invictus (2009). Memoirs and autobiographies are (obviously) grist for Hollywood biopics. See for example, Susanna Kaysen’s (1993) Girl, Interrupted; Elizabeth Gilbert’s (2006) Eat Pray Love; or Jordan Belfort’s (2007) The Wolf of Wall Street. Despite the almost routine reinterpretation of best-selling memoirs into movies, research on such adaptations as a whole is surprisingly thin (see Dean, 2009; Hassler-Forest and Nicklas, 2015). Again, the traffic from (best-selling) fiction to Hollywood movie is quite heavy. Some examples: Annie Proulx’s (1997) short story of the same name became Brokeback Mountain (2005); Lionel Shriver’s (2003) novel We Need To Talk About Kevin was adapted for the 2011 movie of the same name; Gone Girl (2014) is a treatment of Gillian Flynn’s (2012) novel. (There are thousands more examples, from classics to comic books.)



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12 A Beautiful Mind (2001), for example, tells (a version of) brilliant mathematician and economist John Nash’s experience with a disabling mental illness, but pays no attention at all to the social conditions and prejudices that he faces as a schizophrenic. A critical perspective on ableism – the ideas, institutions, and social structures that normalise able-bodied privileges – is entirely absent. 13 We have already considered biopics based on the lives of Muhammad Ali (Ali, 2001) and Malcolm X (Malcolm X, 1992). More examples include What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993, dramatising the musical and personal life of Tina Turner); A Beautiful Mind (2001, based on the life of mathematician John Nash); Walk The Line (2005, about country music legend Johnny Cash); Milk (2008, commemorating San Francisco mayor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk); and Hidden Figures (2016, bringing to light the largely unrecognised achievements of mathematician Katherine Johnson and her NASA colleagues). 14 These treatments of the assassination of John F. Kennedy as ‘history’ can be usefully compared to more contemporary versions, including Executive Action (1973) and the more heavily fictionalised The Parallax View (1974) (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 98). 15 In Australia, the leader of the Liberal Party, John Howard, led a decidedly conservative Australian government as Prime Minister from 1996–2007. In the United Kingdom, liberalism takes several forms and sometimes indexes classical liberalism, but also refers to the Liberal Democrats – a party that stands in opposition to both the Conservative and Labour Parties. In both countries (and beyond) the term ‘liberal’ has very different connotations from its typical usage in the United States, where it tends to be associated with the Democratic Party.

PART IV GLOBAL AGENDAS

12 The big picture: the ‘metropole’ and peripheral ‘others’ In this book we locate Hollywood films as a form of ‘political technology’ – a technology that generates and manipulates ideas, individual and collective identities, inter-relational bodies, and fictionalised flows by giving cinematic flesh to certain myths, characters, and narratives. Our intention is to challenge any attempt to cocoon culture from power and the political. We raise connections here to Joseph Nye’s (2004) focus on rendering state power attractive by the use of cultural forms at some distance from direct government control, and Gramsci’s (1992) account of power as not simply about force but also as constituted through consent for hegemonic power relations. In so doing, we place Hollywood film as intimately connected with the maintenance of legitimacy through cultural products (rather than, or in addition to, other methods). Our focus on this interplay between culture and politics in relation to Hollywood film means we pay limited attention to the particularities of individual films or genres and instead focus more on reiterated (rather than idiosyncratic or localised) tropes, over time, in a wide range of popular films, viewed by mass audiences in Hollywood’s domestic market and around the world. We inquire into political myths as these are expressed in relation to the social fabric or the collective (in which the dual face of security, as order and disorder, features), political relationalities (as evident in intimate heteronormative and masculine homosocial interconnections), and flaws in the social fabric (where counterpoints may appear). In each of these fields, political myths are generated in particular temporal and cultural contexts, even as they are produced by a thoroughly

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globalising industry. These historically situated political myths are fundamentally uncritical and often present a synecdochal view of the world. Even the truly unique hero or protagonist thus has a solidary aspect associated with constituting belonging and identity within a political community. On this, Joseph Campbell asserted that there is one overarching mythic archetype common to all cultures – that is, the ‘monomyth’ of the ‘hero’s journey’ (Campbell, 1949: 23; Lancaster, 2016: 30). Robert Jewett and John Lawrence (1988) rearticulate Campbell’s monomyth as more culturally specific. For them, the American monomyth can be summarised as follows: [a] community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to contend with this threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition; the superhero then recedes into obscurity. (Jewett and Lawrence, 1988: xii) This account of the overarching monomyth, with its emphasis on the cultural and religious particularities of the United States (Lawrence and Jewett, 2002; Jewett and Lawrence, 2003), can be extended to foreground the political: the harmonious paradise of the American political community is threatened, but the state and other public institutions are unable to secure the polity; a steely authoritative white American man emerges and, despite his personal individualising faults, takes charge; his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition; he returns home transformed and victorious. The hero’s valour and individual determination reflects the good community which he exemplifies. He is the nation; he is the USA (after Jewett and Lawrence, 1988: xii). In its reiteration of this myth, and variations on it, Hollywood’s political mythology maintains and validates the nationstate/community by explaining and illuminating its domestic and global power relations in such a way that they become invisible, naturalised, self-evident, uncontroversial, and hence beyond contestation. Analysis of Hollywood film thus enables the interrogation of narratives which continually elaborate crucial socio-political beliefs. These cinematic narratives endorse and solidify what is of shared significance for a



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polity, alongside what is either not acknowledged or beyond recognition, and is excluded from that polity. In this light, we now reflect upon the current state of Hollywood’s cultural politics. We have suggested that the historical frame in which the Hollywood film industry developed has involved three major stages – the ‘Golden Age’, ‘New Hollywood’, and contemporary, post-2001 ‘Conglomerate Hollywood’. The contemporary period is associated with the rise of a media-conglomerate, economic and production system heralding the advance of hyperrealistic sensory spectaculars. These blockbuster spectaculars, and their extension into franchises in recent times, rest upon ever more highly visual codes, and for that reason favour simplified narratives and characterisations removed from the specificity and complexity that is more likely to be apprehended in cinematic realism. No wonder, then, that blockbusters increasingly produce technologically enhanced visual action with a diminished and broadly allegorical content. The allegorical subject matter foregrounds reductive struggles between good and evil, and places centre-stage a one-dimensional comic-book superhero, whose visual ‘look’ defines him (see chapter 1). Such typically lightweight, comic-book spectaculars are expensive. Conglomerate Hollywood now produces fewer films, but those produced tend to be on a larger scale, and are expected to produce strong box-office returns. The blockbuster format, and the economic pressures associated with it, do not encourage taking risks or raising difficult issues. In short, production and format in the post-2001 Conglomerate Hollywood largely entail the safe repetition of mainstream, undemanding, and readily acceptable narratives.1 The ongoing simplification of Holly­ wood narrative forms in order to sustain and expand profits is thus linked to more limited opportunities for alternative, let alone socially critical, formats. The political mythology of post-9/11 Conglomerate Hollywood is thus notable for a particular nexus of reiterated tropes which symbolise and stabilise political community. Variations on the well-established political monomyth of the worth of the one – typically the individual, white, American man – feature strongly and repetitively. The political technology of contemporary Hollywood films resides perhaps most insidiously in the unquestioning presentation of stories of axiomatic social asymmetry as stories of justice. In short, even thoroughly social/

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political problems may be addressed and solved by a uniquely individual hero. This disturbing paradox is achieved by wrapping a core story of social asymmetry – involving identification with the power of the individual hero to overcome any obstacle – in an account of the restoration of legitimate and morally worthy socio-political order (see Kleinhans, 1985: 66). However, the myth of inspirational selfhood at the centre of legitimate political community balances reiterated elements with new features. Such new developments are made manifest in the franchise format of the comic-book action blockbuster. The central heroic figure of this format rests on several Hollywood generic narratives outlined in earlier chapters. Building on these, the present state of the cultural politics of Hollywood film may be summarised in the following way. Hollywood movies now display an increasing emphasis upon a fantasised American (super)hero who, despite his anxieties, leads and saves the world (security-as-order films) in the face of exponentially expanding dangers (security-as-disorder or ‘fear films’). He does so while affirming set and hierarchically organised social roles (relationality/ romance films) and fraternal, masculine bonds (relationality/bromance films), in a context of diminishing emphasis upon humour and fun in social relationships (relationality/rom-coms). Overall, the hero’s story rarely involves critical commentary or judgement (socially critical films). In the current climate of growing political volatility and uncertainty in the United States (and beyond), Hollywood’s contemporary cultural politics strikes us as worrisome. Hollywood films now routinely turn to a fantasy saviour in response to hysterical immersion in hyperbolic and ever-expanding fears, while clinging to traditional or perhaps nostalgic intimacies and social privileges. Holding onto stances that are both fanciful and defensive coincides with a loss of faith in pleasure, critique, and alternative perspectives in relation to connection and community. This curious combination does not augur well. The political imaginary – the envisioned selfhood and socio-political community of belonging2 – currently outlined by Hollywood involves a complex and threatening world which stresses the importance of individual emancipation and flatters our individual can-do spirit, but typically discourages acting on that spirit. The present-day Hollywood political imaginary is given tangible form in the figure of a violent vigilante afflicted by



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social quietism.3 It inscribes a potentially alarming retreat from sociopolitical change and agency. In this context, some cultural commentators now argue that Holly­ wood film is being ‘hollowed out’, not just in the sense that the Los Angeles-based major production studios are being demoted and dispersed by their subsumption within huge media conglomerates (Aksoy and Robinson, 1992; Hozić, 2000; Hawkins, 2016), but also in terms of their tendency to present thinner and thinner narratives (Child, 2014; Walker, 2013; Wolcott, 2012; Scott, 2010). The purported waning of narratives with substance has been associated at least in part with Hollywood’s mission to maintain and extend its global economic dominance. Diana Crane (2014) suggests that Hollywood’s current global agenda has resulted in a less clearly American form – which, along with the integration of ‘deculturalised’ imported narratives and themes, has produced more ‘transnational’ content. Whether or not the narrative depth of Hollywood films has diminished in recent times, Crane argues that American ‘cultural imperialism’ and ‘media imperialism’4 – that is, ideological and media conglomerate influence over other countries – has changed shape over time. This point seems uncontroversial. However, she implies that the discursive and institutional forms of Hollywood’s global hegemony have not been merely subject to change, but have in fact weakened (Crane, 2014). Hollywood narratives may be viewed in this perspective as slimming down their level of detail and as a result potentially offering a little more space for importing from other cultures – even if these imports are subjected to some ‘deculturalisation’.5 In the process, Crane suggests they are becoming a little more composite and less obviously American. However, we do not agree that these putative changes provide persuasive grounds for Crane’s associated contention that Hollywood’s hegemonic position is consequently less secure. Hollywood’s global reach via media conglomerates remains unchallenged.6 In Crane’s language, Hollywood remains the paramount global ‘media imperialist’. Moreover, as we have argued in this volume, its political mythology is not necessarily less significant when expressed in less obvious or more heavily disguised ways. Indeed, as we have asserted in relation to American war films as against ‘fear films’, romcoms, or animated ‘family films’, more evidently nationalist themes

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may actually be less effective than the diffuse but endlessly reiterated soft power of the axiomatic centrality of the individualistic (white, male) American hero/protagonist. This political mythology has not disappeared, nor even diminished. In this context, it seems at least premature and perhaps even misleading to describe Hollywood film as ‘transnational’ – as somehow having broken away from national interests, values, and agendas. Indeed, in our view one of the side-effects of the apparent ‘hollowing out’ of Hollywood narratives has been precisely to focus ever more narrowly upon the centrality of the specific­ally characterised American protagonist. And, all the while, the global reach of this mythology is expanding. Hollywood continues to be an extraordinarily powerful force as a producer and purveyor of a particular cultural politics. That said, the question of the impact of Hollywood’s products, and therefore of its political myths, remains a source of considerable dispute. This brings us to debates about responses to Hollywood film from its international ‘body politic’, from its increasingly global audience, and finally (in the next chapter) to policy implications which might flow from that impact. Global Hollywood: do movies matter? Throughout this book, we have focused on mainstream English-language feature films. The book is therefore largely about ‘American cinema’, or ‘Hollywood cinema’. We have suggested that Hollywood film presents specific political myths, and that these reiterate a range of limited themes, rather than presenting opportunities for imagining things differently. Such a perspective regarding Hollywood’s political mythology would hardly be of much moment, however, if the Hollywood film industry did not attract mass audiences, or if its output was small and its international distribution limited. The cultural politics of Hollywood is a matter of considerable importance because the Hollywood film industry is synonymous with global dominance (in terms of audience reach, box-office appeal, production, and distribution). Our central orientation here is with the cultural politics of cinema – that is, with theories and analysis regarding ‘Global Hollywood’ (Newman, 2010: 5). The development of cinema in different parts of the world involves complex interchanges, and in focusing on Hollywood there is a danger



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that this complexity might be lost. All the same, despite uneven transnational interchanges and dynamic cinematic exchanges between film industries around the world, Hollywood films generate a normestablishing æsthetic (see Ďurovičová, 2010: xiv; Newman, 2010: 4). It is not surprising, then, that the phrase ‘national cinema(s)’ almost invariably designates non-American cinemas. In contrast, Hollywood itself is not designated as a national cinema but rather is often perceived as the unmarked ‘normal’, the standard, from which ‘different’ films from ‘other’ places depart. Hollywood movies constitute the norm not just in the USA, but in much of the world. Within and outside the United States, popular, political, educational, and intellectual debates about film demonstrate deep-seated concerns about globalisation in the form of Americanisation and, relatedly, about the status of national identities and cultures. Debates about cultural identities and products are highly invested with these conflicting conceptions of the impact of globalising Hollywood – that is, the impact of its hegemonic ‘metropole’ status as against the constitution of ‘other’ national identities as marginal, as on the periphery.7 Films are not, in simple terms, instantly forgettable confections but rather have some impact on people’s thinking and behaviour – whether direct and practical, or generalised and attitudinal (Hunter, 2003: 71). As we have outlined, the Hollywood film industry sustains a range of political myths. In this context, it matters that the most powerful global force in cinema produces films which reflect an American political sensibility. For this reason, Hollywood’s global reach and appeal are significant. However, scholarly analyses of the impact of film on societies and audiences are often rather abstract and equivocal. The comparatively small number of empirical audience studies that are not commercially driven may further obfuscate understanding of that impact (Meers, 2001). To make matters worse, there is limited scholarship on demographic variables, or consideration of non-American audiences. Moreover, theoretical discussions regarding contemporary film audiences are inclined to note the heterogeneity of audiences’ reception of cultural products (Livingstone, 1998; McEachern, 1998; Besley, 2003; Davis, 2003; Beasley, 2004; Ang, 2006; Morley, 2013: 16–30). The idea that people bring their own idiosyncratic beliefs and experiences to their interpretation of movies is almost unchallengeable,

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but the problem with this line of enquiry is that it tends to foreclose investigation of the broad social impact of mass-market film and its political myths, its formulaic stories and representations. The effect of seeing racist tropes over and over again, for example, is unlikely to be reducible to nuanced reception at the level of individuals (see Silfen Glasberg and Shannon, 2011: 74; see also Fazio et al., 2015). Yet, in spite of the limits of existing empirical scholarship on film audiences and a pervasive notion in some approaches to film that movies have indeterminate effects on audiences,8 it is clear that filmmakers, politicians, government bodies, and business organisations are entirely convinced that films do have a social impact upon their mass audiences. If they did not think that mass-market feature films had such effects, why would governments bother trying to influence their content, and why would businesses and others care about ‘product placement’? Ironically, recognition of the social impact of films is evident in recent disquiet within the United States Congress raised by representatives from ‘both sides of the political aisle’ regarding Chinese influence on cultural forms like Hollywood film. Members of Congress asked the US Government Accountability Office in 2016 whether Chinese influence should result in greater attention to American ‘national security … concerns about propaganda and control of the media and “soft power” institutions’ (Beech, 2017: 33–4). Such disquiet clearly assumes that film can have significant social effects, and recognises the capacity of American movies to sway other nations/cultures. Confirming the conviction that films can influence audiences, the Chinese government has instituted a strict quota on imported big-budget feature films, a quota that is particularly sensitive to Hollywood’s global appeal and reach. This quota restriction is not simply about protecting China’s domestic film industry, but is also about delimiting the assumed social effects of imported films. China’s recent national film law (which took effect in March 2017) explicitly states that co-produced films – which evade the quota limit requirement – cannot offer critique of the Chinese socio-political system, values, or social order. Foreign companies may not engage in co-productions if they have ever engaged in or are intent upon ‘damaging China’s national dignity, honour and interests, or harming social stability or hurting national feelings’ (Beech, 2017:



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33–4; Wei and Shaw, 2016; China Hollywood Society, n.d.; Motion Picture Association and China Film Co-Production Corporation, 2014). This sensitivity, like that expressed by members of the US Congress (even if from a vastly different political culture), gives formal, indeed institutional credence to the influence of filmic narratives. And if films, including Hollywood films, have socio-political effects, it becomes crucial to reflect on the specifically American character of Hollywood’s impact. For us, as we think about political myths in Hollywood movies, this means considering debates about globalisation and, in particular, globalisation in terms of cultural politics. Globalisation and Global Hollywood However, before we can engage with those debates, some clarification concerning terminology is required. What is ‘globalisation’? A term of relatively recent origin, globalisation emerged from economics, sociopolitical studies, and studies of culture. It refers to increasing integration and connection between nation-states and, sometimes, to the growth of a new global system in which traditional territorial boundaries are undermined and other connections are made, even though these connections may well be rather disjointed and even fitful.9 David Held and Anthony McGrew describe globalisation as the intensification of worldwide social relations and interactions, [involving the] stretching of social, political and economic activities across political frontiers [and the] intensification … of interconnectedness, in almost every sphere of social existence. [This intensification is characterised by] the accelerating pace of transborder interactions and processes as the evolution of worldwide systems of transport and communication increases the rapidity … with which ideas, news, goods, information, capital and technology move around the world. (2007: 2–3) In short, the term globalisation refers to a shift away from discrete national states to a shrinking world of ‘shared social space’ in which the ‘local and the global’ are less and less distinct (Held and McGrew, 2007: 3).

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In economic contexts, globalisation refers to everything from the development of a global financial market to the massive increase in flows of capital such that national governments appear to have less and less control. Transnational/multinational companies, for example, can relocate production and money to nations with policies and conditions favourable to them, and may produce economic-political collapse should they withdraw their operations. Economic globalisation also refers to international flows and divisions of labour: workers relocate, nations become specialised in certain parts of a production process, and companies seek to reduce labour costs by shifting production to nations with cheaper workers. In this sense, globalisation is the growth of the world-market system, even as economic flows retain national features, and even as ‘economic regulation remains largely national’ (Held et al., 1999). The economic aspects of globalisation and the rise of world markets pertain to the Hollywood film industry as much as any other business. Not everyone has welcomed the development of such a world market. A world-market system underlines the vulnerability of many nations and peoples to transnational economic powers, but especially emphasises the vulnerability of ‘developing’ countries, since it appears at the very least to signal the rise of big capital over both labour (workers, citizens) and the increasingly diminished state. These and related effects of economic globalisation are no doubt familiar. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Occupy Movement, Brexit, and the rise of national political and economic protectionism in many parts of the world, a number of commentators have predicted an end to increasing worldwide interconnectedness (Saul, 2005; Rosenberg, 2005; Verrender, 2016). However, any single or straightforward answer regarding the future of globalisation remains elusive. David Harvey, for example, discerns a complex and continuing tension between the logics of power associated with global interconnectedness and pre-existing territorial imperatives (2006: 107). Moreover, those who have written obituaries for globalisation have largely focused on its economic forms, along with the effects on government and the military associated with those forms, rather than attending to its cultural modes (Held and McGrew, 2007: 8–9; Slaughter, 2007; Wolf, 2016).



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The impact of globalisation of cultural politics, though linked to global economics, is perhaps even more open to debate. Globalisation and the question of disjunctures It is possible, even likely, that the growth of discontent regarding economic and national political integration need not be accompanied by an equivalent degree of rejection of globally accessible cultural products, such as Hollywood films. Hollywood’s political mythology offers a particular set of values, a particular understanding of what is taken as given and what is ‘political’. Hollywood’s political myths are wrapped in narrative lessons promoting a specific cultural politics throughout the world, even as this specific ‘language’ confronts a multiplicity of other ‘languages’ through which people make meaning in their lives. This point is linked to the notion that, in terms of global cultural consumption, a growing degree of standardisation may paradoxically arise in parallel with continuing heterogeneity across the globe (Ritzer, 2007: 6). Indeed, cultural products provide a concrete and accessible way to consider globalisation and national identity as responding to monopolistic trends with multiple pathways rather than singular political trajectories. Thus, while economic aspects of globalisation and its impact on nations might be argued to take one broad path, this path is not immediately applicable to what Appadurai describes in terms of global ‘mediascapes’ or ‘ideoscapes’ (Appadurai, 1990: 298–300; Appadurai, 1996: 35). Scholarly theorising which rejects claims that global interconnection has stalled and instead links globalisation to the multifaceted constitution of ‘new global structures and systems of transnational domination’ (McGrew, 2007: 39; Hardt and Negri, 2000), may well be especially relevant to cultural products and cultural consumption. Arjun Appadurai’s sceptical account of disjunctures which disrupt the top-down imposition of any singular, global, cultural politics offers an appropriate caution to hyperbolic globophilia, and provides ways of reconsidering the admixture which constitutes globalisation processes. This account is helpful in understanding the impact of Hollywood films. While Appadurai rejects simplistic accounts, he does not go so

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far as to suggest that globalisation processes amount to global disarray without any discernible patterns. Similarly, George Ritzer’s use of the term ‘glocalization’ involves a recognition of the complex interactions in these processes. The term acknowledges both the imperialistic ambitions of businesses that aim to impose their perspectives and products on the local, and the continuing significance of localism, such that exchanges between global and local produce contextually contingent results (Ritzer, 2007: 118; see also Roudometof, 2016). Ritzer’s account details a co-constitutive but not co-determining interaction. In other words, global and local processes influence and affect each other, but it cannot be concluded that their relationship is straightforwardly causative or programmatic. In the context of cultural politics and products, taking account of globalisation appears to require a nuanced recognition of Hollywood’s acknowledged dominance, rather than a perspective in which Hollywood either holds absolute sway or is entirely superseded by local cultural agendas. With these nuances in mind, Beasley et al. (2010) present aspects of globalisation associated with cultural politics as an assemblage replete with disjunctures and contextspecificity, yet nevertheless capable of generating hegemonic impact in which growing standardisation associated with the cinematic metropole necessarily co-exists with cultural heterogeneity. To this end, they identify an intriguing national and individual bifurcation between ‘identification’ and ‘alliance/allegiance’. Their analysis, undertaken in Australia, draws on Michael Kimmel’s (2008) work on young white men in the United States, and suggests that the impact of globalising cultural products is significant in many parts of the world. Kimmel argues that white suburban identification with and consumption of hip-hop and other inner-city African-American music genres does not represent any kind of white alliance with African-American communities – and thus does not herald the arrival of a new racial politics in America. On the contrary, he shows how consumption and appropriation of ‘other’ cultures can co-exist with ongoing social distance and discrimination. Indeed, Kimmel asserts that ‘identification’ should not be confused with any sense of ‘allegiance’. In his work, this means that cultural identification across communities cannot be equated with the development of any straightforwardly shared socio-political agenda, such as opposition to racism (Kimmel, 2008). Beasley et al.’s (2010)



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study draws broadly on the same distinction. The respondents in their study (school-aged Australians) expressed deeply ambivalent – and sometimes paradoxical – views of American influence. On one hand, their respondents conceived the United States as a source of highly desirable cultural products, styles, and forms of identity while, on the other hand, they also described the United States as ‘self-centred’, ‘dangerous’, ‘a place of vengeance’, ‘arrogant’, ‘power-hungry’, and excessive in many respects. To these young people, the USA appears as a known stranger, inspiring both desire and distaste, attraction and antagonism. Their responses are perhaps indicative of the bifurcation – even estrangement – of identification and allegiance, a bifurcation which may be seen as generating a form of national/individual cognitive dissonance. In brief, Beasley et al. suggest that young Australians display a cherished immersion in American cultural influence but simultaneously demonstrate considerable uncertainty about that influence. To extend the Australian example, results from the Australian Everyday Culture Project, a national survey of nearly 3,000 Australians in 1994–5, found that American cultural influence was much stronger in relation to favourite films than in relation to books, television, or music. In this survey, nearly three-quarters of the most popular films chosen by respondents were produced by the major Hollywood film studios, whereas only a fifth of these films were Australian in origin. For those aged 18–25, the preference for American movies was even more pronounced (Bennett et al., 1999: 217; UQ News, 1997). The global popularity of Hollywood movies continues in Australia, with more recent commentaries confirming the Australian Everyday Culture Project’s findings (Woodward et al., 2008; Beasley et al., 2010; Swift, 2013). At the same time, evidence of complex and nuanced views of America and its influence also continue (Emmison, 1997; University of Sydney News, 2007). While national cultures vary markedly, this bifurcation of identification and allegiance with respect to America and to Hollywood film is not likely to be confined to Australia, given the overwhelming evidence of the take-up of Hollywood films around the world. As such, even though allegiance to national political communities and cultures may be robust, and even though Hollywood’s cultural products are inevitably interpreted locally, the allure of American cultural products in terms of identification remains strong.

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Any announcement of a trend towards a global way of thinking or a shared global culture may thus be unfounded (Tomlinson, 1997; Held and McGrew, 2007: 32), but this does not alter Hollywood’s dominance as a purveyor of cultural politics with unmatched global appeal (McDonnell and Silver, 2009; Semati and Sotirin, 1999). Moreover, cultural products like film may facilitate certain politically strategic functions. Cultural identification and allure are by no means irrelevant in such endeavours (De Zoysa and Newman, 2002). As Held and McGrew observe, America’s position is not straightforwardly described as ‘imperial’, given the significant gap between its military might and what it can achieve politically. The use of coercion and, in particular, military force, is in any case unsuitable for a range of political goals, and its use is complicated by the danger of now widely dispersed and accessible military weaponry located beyond America’s shores (2007: 26). As we have argued earlier (see chapters 1, 2, and 3), Joseph Nye’s (2004) account of ‘soft power’ and Antonio Gramsci’s (1992) analysis of hegemony offer insights into the importance of gaining support and consent as part of national and military tactics and object­ ives. Given that the increasing interconnectedness associated with globalisation is not accompanied by any levelling of power relations, the other face of globalisation’s disjunctive assemblage is that it can ironically support particular – in this case American – territorial logics and national interests. This is precisely why Hollywood’s cultural politics may be ever more relevant. Global dominance Despite the development of some isolationist territorial tendencies in recent times, movies – and especially ‘big’ Hollywood movies – remain an immensely popular cultural medium in different parts of the world, particularly among children, adolescents, and young people (AFC, 2007a; MPAA, 2006a: 4, 2006b: 7). In the USA in 2015, for example, 12–17-year-olds were the most over-represented segment of the moviegoing population, followed by 18–24-year-olds. All other age groups of moviegoers were represented at the same rate as their presence in the population (or below it). In 2016 and 2017, the 18–24-year-old group were more strongly over-represented than the 12–17-year-olds.



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Taken together, young people aged between 12 and 24 clearly constitute a key cohort of movie audiences (MPAA, 2016a, 2017). This should be a major consideration in any assessment of the impact of Holly­ wood film. The unrivalled global allure of Hollywood products is decidedly linked to and buttressed by their prevalence in the lives of the young. As Michael Dezuanni (2015) says, this produces an odd conjunction: [c]hildren and young people growing up today … seem to have a plethora of choice about the screen entertainment they consume. It is a paradox, then, that they do not necessarily experience a diversity of media content across the multiple screens with which they engage. The vast majority of mass-market cultural corporations originate in the West, and Hollywood leads this industry grouping. As should by now be clear, film production and distribution are dominated by the United States (Segrave, 1997; Olson, 1999; Balio, 2002; Scott, 2004). As Brian Rosen (former head of the Australian Film Finance Corporation) pointed out in 2006, ‘Hollywood controls 73 per cent of the world market’ (as quoted in Craven, 2006: 37). By 2015 the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) stated that box office for US films was 71 per cent of the world market (MPAA, 2016b). Moreover, the US share of many domestic national markets remains on a mono­ polistic scale. For example, the US share of the Australian box-office market in 2004 was 94 per cent (AFC, 2007b) and in 2008 it was 84.2 per cent (Moran and Vieth, 2009: 29–31). More recent figures confirm this pattern, with the American share amounting to 82 per cent in 2015 and 84 per cent in 2016 (Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, 2017). By contrast, the Australian share of its own national box office to 2016 has not risen above 10 per cent since the 1980s (Screen Australia, n.d. [c]). The Australian experience is not out of the ordinary. Indeed, the dominance of American films in the Australian market, though marked, is consistent with the prevailing US share of almost all domestic markets internationally (Durmaz et al., 2008: 5; Crane, 2014: 370).

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In the face of such evidence, no-one disputes that Hollywood is the centre of the American film industry, or that the American industry is globally dominant (Scott, 2002; Screen Australia, 2009: 3; Crane, 2014). Only a few nations outside the USA actually produce films in any significant numbers (Cieply, 2014; Screen Australia, n.d.[d], n.d.[e]). The USA distributes movies in more countries, and is the exporter of a larger number of films than any other competitor. The Hollywood film industry has long been able to control an extraordinary share of the worldwide market. Even though there has been some speculation about the growth of other ‘super-producers’ (Crane, 2014) and their markets – that is, the Chinese and Indian industries, in particular – the pre-eminence of Hollywood film continues. For example, noting a weakening of Hollywood’s paramount position, McDonnell and Silver (2009) undertook to predict what the box office in the USA, India, and China would be in 2030 by extrapolating ticket price trends during the period 2001–7. They found that the combined box office of India and China would still be only 48 per cent of the US share. In other words, even reasonably modest claims regarding box-office projections still position Hollywood film as the dominant force in the global film market both at present and into the future (McDonnell and Silver, 2009; see also Su, 2011; Crane, 2014; Hancock, 2017). That Hollywood dominates the global film industry is not contentious. There is less certainty, however, as to what effects result from this dominance. ‘Compliance’ in the sense of buying tickets – that is, the box-office statistics we have just discussed – or attitudinal measures of identification with American cultural products, are not equivalent to ‘consent’ to American national agendas. Even more broadly, such compliance does not necessarily mean that the multifaceted character of American political mythology as exhibited in Hollywood film is simply accepted. There is likely to be some dissonance between viewing American films and socio-political dominance, as we have already noted in relation to dislocations between identification and allegiance. Nevertheless, such dissonance does not necessarily override or trump national/cultural impact on those countries experiencing a saturation of Hollywood film. Indeed, though we certainly acknowledge that so-called ‘political imperialism’ and ‘cultural imperialism’ are not coterminous – and thus acknowledge that US military/economic/political



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power is not a proxy for its cultural reach – we also reject any straightforward separation of or divide between them.10 It thus remains necessary to explore the socio-political impact of Hollywood’s global dominance, and to raise questions about the export of American national values through film. In short, the cultural politics of American imperialism remains a live issue. And it is to this issue that we now turn. Notes 1 This point is also in keeping with Salt’s (2009) view that Hollywood films in the 1990s ushered in increasingly restricted stylistic norms. 2 The conception of the political imaginary rests upon a premise that socially constituted meanings shape human practices and interactions. It points specifically to the ways in which socio-political order involves and relies upon commitments to an imagined community founded in cultural meaning rather than face-to-face connections (see Castoriadis, 1997 [1975]; Anderson, 2006 [1983]; Marin, 1993; Taylor, 2003; McClintock, 2015). The political imaginary typically is associated with upholding an existing status quo, although it can be employed to describe alternative, even utopian visions. The conception is particularly useful in elaborating political categories such as nation or ‘people’, since it outlines the character and borders of a shared political community by reference to mythological (literary, iconographic, rhet­ orical) narratives of foundation and exclusion. 3 This discussion draws upon a reworking of Tim Park’s concern about conventional narratives in the traditional novel – for discussion of which, see Lopate (2016). 4 Crane (2014) describes ‘cultural imperialism’ and ‘media imperialism’ respectively in terms of the imposition of ‘political ideologies’ or dominance by media conglomerates. 5 See, for example, the deculturalised importing of Chinese elements such as the iconography of willow trees and pagodas for use in the Hollywood reinterpretation of the ancient Chinese story of Mulan in terms which depict a resolutely American tale of individual gumption (Mulan, 1998; see Wang and Yeh, 2005: 182). This point is outlined in a little more detail in the next chapter. 6 International movie-ticket sales (that is, sales outside the USA and Canada) amounted to around 73 per cent of box-office totals in 2015 – up from 66 per cent in 2010 (Faughnder, 2015). 7 Raewyn Connell (2010), among many others, describes the development of social science as associated with a distinction between the view which modern metropolitan societies had of themselves and the view

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these societies had of colonised, ‘remote’, or ancient societies, a distinction which cast the former as the centre of history, civilisation, and social change and the latter as of narrow particular interest and as subject to the centre’s economic, military, cultural, and moral authority. This distinction between metropole and periphery is now often employed to give voice to the imperialist/colonialist underpinnings of assumptions by Western/Northern nations-cultures about their self-evident significance compared with the supposedly subsidiary and relatively peripheral status of other nations-cultures (Connell, 2010; Steinmetz, n.d.). 8 For perspectives on the indeterminate effects of movies, see, for example, Austin (2002: 1–2); Corbett (2008: 247–8); Walters (2008: 252). 9 There is a vast and diverse literature on the term ‘globalisation’: see for example, Appadurai (1990); Friedman (2000: 29–44); Mann (2001); Steger (2005a; 2005b); Sharma (2008). 10 This distinction is widely used in a range of settings – see, for example, Ginnane (2014).

13 Responses from ‘the margins’

While we have acknowledged that the past and continuing global dominance of Hollywood movies remains obvious and at present apparently inexorable, debate continues about whether this domination is, in essence, to be celebrated or condemned. Competing views about Hollywood are associated with questions regarding what effects arise from this domination. To examine and assess the cultural politics of American imperialism – that is, the socio-political effects of Hollywood’s cinematic dominance – it is necessary to consider debates regarding whether ‘Global Hollywood’ should be endorsed or resisted. To this end, we identify three approaches that figure prominently in such debates. First, there are those who celebrate global Hollywood more or less uncritically – a position we label ‘globophilia’. Second, there is robust criticism of Hollywood’s thrall – an approach we term ‘globophobia’. Finally – though not necessarily synthesising or reconciling the tensions inherent in the more starkly contrasting approaches – there is a more cautious, hedging view. Taken together, debates concerning the desirability of Hollywood’s global reach raise the question of what, if anything, might be undertaken by non-American national cultures and cinemas in response, and these considerations form the last section of the chapter. The discussion in this final chapter provides a summary opportunity to assess Hollywood’s cultural politics in the light of responses from ‘the margins’ – the ‘reel politics’ of cinematic cultural products.

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Celebrating global Hollywood: globophilia Pro-globalisation commentators conceive what they see as a new global order in fundamentally positive terms. Global Hollywood’s champions tend to render the values disseminated through the global influence of American movies as ‘universal’ (rather than specifically American). For example, the poster-boy of global Hollywood, director Steven Spielberg, has explicitly insisted that Hollywood’s global supremacy ‘is not domination by American cinema. It is just the magic of storytelling and it unites the world’ (1993: 62). On many occasions Spielberg has unequivocally reiterated his account of Hollywood film as nationally/ culturally neutral ‘magic’. These ideas – and the language used to communicate them – position Hollywood in ways that promote its supra-humanity, its inclusivity, and its location beyond the worldliness of national economic and cultural agendas. In this context, Spielberg universalises children’s experience, describing his own agenda as developing stories of empowerment, and being magical or able to read your mom and dad’s mind, or your best friend being a tyrannosaurus rex that only you know about and he lives in your backyard. It’s all about making kids feel like they can do anything. That nothing’s impossible. (Spielberg, as quoted in Shone, 2016) In these and similar ways, Hollywood is cast as an artful dream-maker speaking everyone’s language. Its dreams are taken as ours, whoever we are and wherever or however we might live. This kind of thinking conceptualises Hollywood as an open-minded, non-partisan, mythopoeic force for the spread of universally attractive, uplifting, meritocratic, rights-oriented, and democratic values.1 This self-referential understanding of Hollywood’s mystical, righteous, yet comforting role is long established. Consider, for example, Neal Gabler’s (1989) account of the founding Hollywood studio mogul, Louis B. Mayer: What Mayer did in the thirties … was provide reassurance against the anxieties and disruptions of the time. He did this by fashioning a vast, compelling national fantasy out of his dreams and out of the basic tenets of his own dogmatic faith—a belief in virtue, in



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the bulwark of family, in the merits of loyalty, in the soundness of tradition, in America itself. (Gabler, 1989: 119) This idea that Hollywood film disseminates self-evidently beneficial and culturally inclusive values is made manifest in a range of genre formats. For instance, it is explicitly and robustly expressed in animated ‘family’ films like Antz (1998) and Ice Age (2002). In both instances, custom and unquestioning obedience to the wider group are rejected, while the sanctity of personalised, close-up relationships – ‘the family’ or ‘the herd’ – is endorsed, simultaneously offering a pæan to individualism. Indeed, Bi Yantao (2012) notes that Hollywood film acts as a ‘byword for the American dream’ which is conceived by pro-globalisation commentators as a dream which rightly belongs to the world. In this respect, Wendy Su (2011) suggests that extolling the ‘virtues of the American way of life’, promoting associated accoutrements in the form of various products and settings (including through advertising within films), and reinforcing ‘a positive American national image characterised by freedom, equality, prosperity’ on screen, is not particularly or simply American. The promotion of certain values, material goods, and locations may be offered under an American ‘brand’ but these cinematic elements are, she proposes, not the property of the United States alone. The implication here is that such elements simply are globally worthy and/ or in demand because they are attractive and pleasing. The pro-globalisation approach stresses the potential benefits arising from increasing connections between and among nations. It emphasises unity, oneness, and shared purpose. It is thought to achieve this not through suppressing others but by promulgating a global cinema which breaks down fragmentation and old divisions, enabling a convergence in perspectives which is nevertheless said to permit and even encourage diversity (Friedman, 2000; Legrain, 2003; Pells, 2006).2 Hollywood’s global impact, these commentators insist, is not oppressive or imperialist but in fact ‘cosmopolitan’, communicating useful ideas and values which are not bound by time or place but rather are universalist in their attention to the personal. According to Richard Pells, American movies … have customarily focused on human relationships and private feelings … They tell tales about romance, intrigue, success, failure, moral conflicts and survival … Such

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intensely personal dilemmas are what people everywhere wrestle with … [America’s mass culture] transformed what it received from others into a culture everyone, everywhere, could embrace. (Pells, 2006: 29) Pells and others insist that global Hollywood is not only universal in appeal – and hence not simply America-centric – but also that it is much more than a means to extol American values and ways. They argue that the Hollywood film industry is not all of a piece, and is engaged in a reflexive and even self-critical project, producing movies that do not simply celebrate American values, but also challenge and satirise them. Examples here range from overtly political films like Missing (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997) to dark comedies like Election (1999) and American Beauty (1999), or even animated ‘family’ films like Lilo & Stitch (2002), which offers a sympathetic representation of a ‘single-mother’ family. Defenders of global Hollywood regularly point out that exchanges between Hollywood and national cinemas have been long-standing, productive, and two-way. They note that many of the key architects of the Hollywood film industry were European émigrés, and that national (that is, non-American) schools such as French New Wave cinema, Japanese samurai movies, and many more have influenced Hollywood profoundly. Similarly, contemporary directors and stars of national cinemas, along with less famous cast and crew-members, often bring practices and innovations from their countries of origin to Hollywood, sometimes creating a fresh, hybrid æsthetic in the process. The Australian director Baz Luhrman may be conceived in this light. His characteris­ tically ‘excessive’ style (as evident in Moulin Rouge! 2001 and The Great Gatsby, 2013) has been influential and successful in Hollywood and beyond (Papson, 2011; Poole, 2014). Those who support Hollywood’s globalisation also point out that co-production and co-financing have grown over a number of years, extending most recently into China. Creative and financial collaboration with Hollywood is long-standing and even robust in nations like the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany, France, and Canada, among others. Some recent examples include The Danish Girl (2015), which was a UK-US co-production; The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001,



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2002, 2003) in which New Zealand partnered the USA; The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), a collaboration between German, American, and British interests; the French-American production 3 Days to Kill (2014); and Maps to the Stars (2014), in which Canada, France, Germany, and the USA collaborated (Hoskins et al., 1999; HammettJamart, 2004; Straubhaar et al., 2009: 216–8). Indeed, this kind of international co-production is in keeping with one of the central themes of US foreign policy since World War II: the expansion of its global trade. The Motion Picture Association of America – the peak trade association of America’s major studios – has the same global strategy and aims to maximise the screening of American films throughout the world.3 Pro-globalisation commentators argue, in this context, that the high volume of movies made in America does not present an obstacle to other nations or populations wishing to engage in joint projects or launch their own products. They assert that the film industry can expand in one place without necessarily causing contraction in another. For example, despite the continuing growth of Hollywood, China’s film industry has also expanded (Beech, 2017: 36). Similarly, it can be asserted that globalisation has by no means signalled the end of national cinemas’ audience appeal – even to Americans. Films arising from national cinemas have achieved worldwide box-office success along with industry recognition in Hollywood: consider the Italian film Life is Beautiful (1997), or Taiwan’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). These and other non-American films – like the Australian Mad Max (1979) – have been both popular and æsthetically influential in Hollywood. Advocates seeking to affirm the positive benefits of Hollywood’s global dominance reject the view that this is problematic for other national cultures. They note that Hollywood can support exchanges and co-production with other national cultures, co-exist alongside other national cinemas, and co-exist with US domestic appreciation of other national cinema products. However, perhaps their most important claim is that Hollywood is not immune from ‘foreign’ influence upon its own character. In other words, Hollywood products in recent times are not simply engaged in exchanges with other national cultures. Rather, it has become increasingly evident that, in a fundamental sense, Hollywood products are no longer just domestically constituted. National

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audiences located outside the United States are increasingly having an impact on the character of Hollywood movies. The obvious instance here is China, which is home to ‘the world’s second largest box-office market’ (Fritz and Schwartzel, 2017). China’s box-office power has had the effect of influencing the Hollywood formula itself. That boxoffice clout has offered justifications for the funding of expensive, grand-scale franchises or other ‘tent-pole’ movies that may be unprofitable in the American domestic market, yet offer good returns in China (Beech, 2017: 33; Fritz and Schwartzel, 2017). Even if pro-globalisation supporters recognise that global Hollywood is aligned with American national interests, and even if they acknowledge that this might encourage ‘uniformity and ubiquity’ manifested in at least some standardising of cultural products, these commentators do not always assume ‘the fundamental superiority and universal applicability of the project of [Western] modernity’ (Featherstone, 1995: 72) or adopt a simplistically pro-American stance. Perspectives favouring globalisation sometimes engage with elements of a ‘third line of argument’ concerning the impact of global Hollywood – that is, the argument that global Hollywood is increasingly not American so much as ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘transnational’, or ‘hybrid’ (Woodward et al., 2008; Su, 2011). This third line of argument will be discussed in more detail shortly. While approaches celebrating global Hollywood are unlikely to dispute Hollywood’s uniquely pre-eminent position, they offer a positive account of its socio-political impact. This assessment rests on a rejection of the argument that Hollywood film is in essence American film, and hence refuses the notion that Hollywood’s global dominance constitutes American imperialism. Although we do not, in this volume, suggest that any cultural form or product is singularly or seamlessly capable of shaping audience attitudes, beliefs, or behaviour, neither do we accept that cultural products can simply be detached from their socio-political contexts and offer a free-floating universality in terms of their content. Moreover, we do not consider that the exigencies of Hollywood film production and distribution – such as its strong and continuing links with American government and trade agendas – can be easily dismissed. As examples in the previous chapter demonstrate,



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there are compelling grounds for acknowledging that movies have at least some impact on audiences, and are likely to reflect national agendas in one way or another. Latham Hunter’s (2003) analysis of representations of masculinity at the movies confirms this. Hunter cites the influence of several popular films on everyday practices and attitudes: the popularity of British movie Billy Elliot (2000), for example, saw a significant increase in the number of boys taking up ballet. As Hunter points out, ‘film is not just text … it also influences the circumstances of culture’ (2003: 71). In innumerable ways, on-screen and off-screen worlds intersect. Criticising global Hollywood: globophobia Anti-globalisation commentators generally agree with pro-globalisation views regarding Hollywood’s global dominance and its associated, cross-cultural, homogenising effects. From this point, however, antiglobalisation commentators as varied as John Tomlinson (1991), Douglas Kellner (n.d.[b]; 1999), Armand Mattelart (Mattelart and Mattelart, 1998), and Robert McChesney (1997; 2000) take a different tack. Anti-globalisation voices contest the benevolence and usefulness of Hollywood’s global supremacy and impact (Goonatilake, 2005). Challenging the slippage between ‘American’ and ‘universal’ values, their chief charge is that the purported universality (and/or portability) of Hollywood movies inevitably represses difference. They insist that in any interaction between Hollywood and ‘national’ cinemas, ‘national’ cinemas are inevitably positioned as ‘different’ and inferior, even if they are included from time to time in particular collaborations. For these commentators, the term ‘globalisation’ is shorthand for American imperialism – a pernicious force threatening the survival of local cultures and ways of life (Griffiths et al., 2008: 131–3). Hollywood’s dominance, they say, is accomplished through a kind of cultural violence or suppression, resulting in the production of a homogeneity in which the language of universality becomes the means to simultaneous erasure and exoneration of power differentials. In reiterating a Hollywood/ national cinemas binary, the anti-globalisation commentators side with the (many, smaller, ‘different’) national cinemas, and view Hollywood

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as a cultural/media empire – a characterisation to which we will return. This approach is antagonistic to positive, liberal accounts of globalisation and sometimes draws upon Marxist or broadly socialist analyses. In response to the claim that Hollywood movies are best understood as ‘universal’ stories with similarly universal appeal, anti-globalisation commentators demonstrate how they often depend on or deploy narratives that are in fact specific to the United States. As we saw in chapter 11, movies like The Insider (1999) can be understood as addressing supposedly universal themes – like the importance of free speech, standing up for what you believe in, and the view that one person can make a difference (Wigand, n.d.) – but their context and realisation are decidedly and specifically American. The Insider presents the story of a real-life whistleblower who exposes the corruption of a global capitalist enterprise – the tobacco industry. The movie is very much concerned with demonstrating the democratic character of American society and the value of the US Constitution’s specific framing of freedom, as well as culturally specific (American) understandings of the paramount importance of the individual. Thus, where advocates for globalisation point to increasing interconnection between even vastly different people and cultures, anti-globalisation commentators stress the global saturation of American imagery and referents. Such saturation, they argue, normalises that culture as an unacknowledged but nevertheless centralised given, and results in a range of advantages for American businesses, profits, personnel, and products. The evidence supporting anti-globalisation arguments includes analysis of the phenomenon of ‘product placement’ – a kind of unmarked and possibly subliminal advertising within films. Product placement occurs when the various props or costumes used by actors on screen are pointedly (and sometimes repeatedly) branded. The practice of product placement blurs entertainment and advertising. Lodging with the Federal Trade Commission a petition on behalf of the Centre for the Study of Commercialism in 1991 – a petition supporting regulation of the practice – Michael Jacobson said, [m]oviegoers are being persuaded to develop a highly favourable opinion of a product by having the product associated with the



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glamor of Hollywood and the fame of actors. That obviously accrues to the advantage of the marketer, because moviegoers are likelier to buy that product … We’re asking the film studios to just be fair to the public. Don’t pretend you’re showing art when it’s really advertising. (as cited in Segrave, 2004: 193–4) The petition did not succeed. And no wonder, given that films of the period like Pretty Woman (1990) and Minority Report (2002) are frequently cited as exemplifying a shameless excess of product placement. Segrave reports that advertisers were rumoured to have paid US$25 million for product placements in the latter film, and states that such instances illustrate the ‘developing union’ of Hollywood and corporate America (2004: 208). For the corporate interests involved, it is not wasted money: there are now countless examples of how product placement has a direct effect on sales. Examples of their manifest impact include the marked spike in sales for Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces candy after the eponymous hero of ET the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) was shown eating them in the film, and the extraordinary rise in sales of Ray-Ban ‘Wayfarer’ sunglasses after Tom Cruise wore them in Risky Business (1983). In the year after this film was released, sales of the Wayfarer model tripled (Segrave, 2004: 181). The impact of product placement funnels profits directly back to the US economy, giving the lie to the idea that the economic benefits of globalisation are shared. The vast majority of beneficiaries of global Hollywood’s economic reach and appeal are American – from the production companies making movies, to the cinema complexes screening them, and the manufacturers of the food and beverages consumed while watching them. Global Hollywood might be argued to distribute universal themes and offer its culture as unifying largesse, but it nevertheless mostly keeps the profits of this for itself. In this context, critics of globalisation argue that the supposedly beneficial interconnectedness claimed by globophiliacs is a fantasy priming aspirational consumption and serving American capitalism and national interests (Alford and Secker, 2017). The actualisation of cultural exchange (or even of direct cross-cultural impact) asserted by pro-globalisation commentators is questioned for the same reasons. Rather than embracing and reciprocating creative collaboration, critics of global Hollywood

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argue that themes, talent, labour, and locations associated with national cinemas are for the most part simply appropriated. For instance, a number of critical commentators describe cultural interchanges, exchanges, collaborations, or fusions between Hollywood and national cinemas in terms of Hollywood dealing with its competition by absorbing it. Indeed, Gary Xu argues that ‘the more transnational national cinemas become, the more dominant Hollywood is’ (cited in Greene, 2014: 197). In this and other ways, global Hollywood is marked as monopol­ istic rather than universalist, multicultural, or pluralist. It is accused of engaging in the active suppression and appropriation of difference, in order to bolster its own commercial interests, and thus serving its own conception of global unity and reciprocity. The notion that Hollywood’s success is no barrier to national cinemas and that there is ample room for national cinemas to compete is also challenged by anti-globalisation commentators. Movies made outside the Hollywood empire continue to occupy a tightly circumscribed place. As noted in the previous chapter, although the Indian and Chinese film industries are ‘super-producers’ (McDonnell and Silver, 2009; Crane, 2014), they continue to be eclipsed by the dominance of Holly­ wood. The Indian and Chinese movie industries remain limited by language diasporas; the Indian market is highly fragmented, and the Chinese market is subject to considerable (albeit decreasing) Hollywood market penetration (Simpfendorfer, 2015). This centre–periphery arrangement of Hollywood as the metropole as against even the other two super-productive national cinemas is played out in the Academy Awards. Although other nations have film industry awards and cere­ monies, none has the significance or prestige of the Oscars, and in this context the name ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ is a telling part and parcel of Hollywood’s dominance in relation to other national cinemas. It marks Hollywood recognition of these ‘other’ cinemas in terms of a kind of cultural tourism (Naficy, 2009: 11), placing them as exotic and unusual, and hence reinstituting Hollywood as ‘normal’ and axiomatic. Even the restricted recognition provided by the label of ‘exotic’ may be a delimited space. The highest-grossing film to have won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) – a film which primarily benefited one of the Hollywood major



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studios, Sony Pictures (Riordan, 2004: 87–90). This film was touted as an international collaboration and in winning the Oscar stood as exemplifying the cultural openness of the Hollywood industry to other national cinemas. Yet the film – even though it was created in Taiwan under the auspices of a Japanese-owned media conglomerate parentcompany (Sony) – could hardly be said to be robustly independent of Hollywood. Finally, globophobic film scholars challenge the idea that Hollywood movies are in any general way reflexive or self-critical. While such films certainly exist, we are much more likely to see – over and over again – Hollywood narratives valorising individualism, defending the necessity of violence, reinforcing gendered power relations, and buttressing capitalism. The routinely repetitive business of Hollywood, according to anti-globalism critics, is the export of fundamentally, unapologetically, and normatively conservative national values. However, as both the pro-globalisation approach already outlined (and the hybridity perspective which follows below) point out, those adopting the characterisation of Hollywood as a villainous cultural imperialist tend to render its impact as universally and uniformly oppressive, vesting film with a pervasive and perhaps irresistibly hegemonic momentum. As we observed earlier, there may be sound reasons for doubting any singular or simple understanding of Hollywood’s global influence. The globophobic approach is adept at tracing relations of dominance and subordination, but may be less adept at recognising resistance and opposition, let alone moments of ambiguity and admixture.4 Hybrid Hollywood: globo-cautionary perspectives A third line of argument raises uncertainties about the fundamental premise of both the globophiliac and globophobic approaches: namely, their shared premise that Hollywood is the dominant cinematic form in the sense of producing global cultural homogenisation. Instead, commentators like Su (2011) outline a transnational-hybridising process described in terms of ‘dancing with wolves’. The phrase refers to the 1990 Kevin Costner film Dances with Wolves and invokes the risks associated with interacting with dangerous creatures.5 In Su’s analysis,

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‘dancing with wolves’ signifies a possibly dangerous, possibly enriching process of hybridisation between wolves (Hollywood) and sheep (China), in which the bifurcation of domestic and foreign films is blurred (2011: 196–7). Su depicts China’s changing responses to global Hollywood as indicative of this transnational hybridisation. Similarly, Néstor García Canclini (1995), Kellner (n.d.[c]), and Marwan Kraidy (2005) outline a view of the cultural logic of globalisation which highlights hybridity. This globo-cautionary view resists the presumption of global homogenisation of cultures associated with both pro-American ‘globophilia’ and anti-American-imperialist ‘globophobia’ arguments. Instead the globo-cautionaries are inclined to suggest multiple, disjointed, and contingent interactions producing a range of ‘mongrel’ composites, a viewpoint which is aligned with post-structuralist-inflected resistance to conceptions of singular, top-down oppression. It should be noted that some globophilic commentators support Hollywood’s global reach by drawing on certain elements of this third argument. One such element is the notion that the transnational character of Hollywood narratives is capable of cross-cultural audience engagement and provides useful or even inspirational lessons for smaller national cinemas (Su, 2011). Some globophiles also deploy other elements consistent with this third line of argument, such as highlighting heterogeneous story-lines which are not reducible to American national interests, co-production possibilities, Hollywood co-existing with the expansion of national cinemas, and Hollywood’s recognition of other national cinemas. While pro-globalisation commentaries sometimes engage with the notion of hybridisation in positive or at least neutral terms, describing this in terms of ‘cinematic evolution’ and as diminishing cultural imperialism (see Chan, as cited in Greene, 2014: 198), globophobic perspectives are generally less sanguine and more sceptical. These perspectives remain concerned with ongoing cultural imperialism and note that what may appear to be ‘hybrid’ uses of cross-cultural elements in Hollywood film – for example in relation to Chinese culture – can be emptied of meaning and substance and reduced to decorative surfaces and spectacle. The use of cross-cultural references in this appropriating way renders imperialism alive and well in the deceptively benign formats of ‘deculturalised’ remakings like Mulan (1998). Mulan offers a



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Disneyfied re-presentation of a fifth century poem which became a legendary folktale in China. The story of a young woman who challenges women’s subordination in traditional Chinese culture by dressing as a man and becoming a heroic warrior is reconfigured in terms of feisty American individualism. The deculturalisation of the Chinese story may be said to have the effect of inoculating the film against meaningful or substantive transnational hybridisation (Wang and Yeh, 2005: 182; Crane, 2014). Globophobes perceive ongoing (even if changing) imperialism at work in such appropriations and thus suggest that, while hybridisation concepts like Kraidy’s ‘critical transculturalism’ (2005) provide intriguing alternative perspectives on global Hollywood, such concepts tend ‘to neglect the dynamics of power and inequality that still require some reformulated sense of cultural imperialism’ (Shor, 2010: 166, n. 14). The third line of argument with its globo-cautionary framing may overstate the flexible possibilities entailed in cultural globalisation and understate its implication in long-standing power differentials. In sum, debate continues about the effect of Hollywood’s global dominance. Nevertheless, even as commercial businesses, governments, and a range of scholars argue about whether this effect is to be endorsed, deplored, or approached with critical caution – depending upon whether they see it as supporting universal, imperialist, or transcultural narratives – Hollywood’s immense and profound impact on audiences around the world is almost universally acknowledged. It is in the light of that broad agreement that we conclude this book with a discussion of the potential implications of Hollywood’s impact. Global Hollywood: policy implications This book brings together an account of the global dominance of Hollywood films, the political myths they present, and their global impact, to consider (in this chapter in particular) questions arising in relation to cultural diversity. Since even the most gung-ho globophiles acknowledge the worldwide impact of Hollywood, there remains a continuing and pressing need to respond to the Hollywood leviathan’s reach and pre-eminence. While there are a range of ways to consider the Hollywood behemoth, our view is that the global film market is

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a vitally important site for examining its impact, alongside the strategic policy implications that might flow from this examination. Hollywood’s dominance raises the most crucial dispute about cultural globalisation – the threat to cultural diversity. In this context, financial pressures associated with the increasingly high production costs of Hollywood movies encourage the American film industry’s continuing infiltration and expansion of foreign markets, while at the same time the American market remains virtually impenetrable for other national film industries (Brunet and Gornostaeva, 2006). A key element in Hollywood’s global dominance lies precisely in this asymmetry – that is, its dominance arises out of ongoing battles to neutralise or overwrite the cultural policies of other nations. A clear expression of this was the US government’s forceful lobbying against the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expression (Jin, 2011). Indeed, in the face of the Convention, the United States moved to increase the use of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) in unilateral arrangements with other nations to advance exports of Hollywood (and other) products.6 FTAs aim to reduce barriers to trade and investment in general (Australian Government, DFAT, n.d.), typically by dismantling protections such as tariffs and quotas. In relation to the global film industry, these agreements take a familiar and particular shape. FTAs within the global film industry have been subject to ‘a powerful commitment from the US political apparatus and the US entertainment industry to take care of their own interests’ (Breen, 2010: 673). The American government’s reaction to the Convention, in terms both of its opposition to the Convention and its advocacy of FTAs, indicates the importance of the Hollywood film industry to advancing American national interests. FTAs became a means of enabling unfettered American access to other nations – through accessing their means of cultural expression. Not surprisingly, national governments have attempted to defend cultural diversity with regard to their film industries by two main, protectionist strategies – restrictions upon foreign competitors through tariffs and quotas, and encouragement of domestic industries through subsidies and tax credits (Gao, 2009; Hopewell, 2013; Crane, 2014; Raschella, 2015).



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It is in this context that we introduce and consider one example of Hollywood’s relationship with another nation’s film industry. The US-Australian FTA was an agreement negotiated in 2004, brought into effect in 2005, and reviewed in 2016. Debates about this particular FTA in many ways epitomise more general concerns over Hollywood’s global dominance, its capacity for cultural imperialism, and the implications of these for policies designed to protect cultural diversity. In chapter 12 and in this chapter, we raised questions about the meaning, impact, and worth of cultural globalisation. In considering these questions, it is patently evident that nations and national values are expressed and disseminated through cultural industries, including film industries. In this context, the global dominance of the American film industry is a means for economically and culturally expansionist imperialism, which unsurprisingly tends to be resisted by the cultural policies of other nations. Global Hollywood is a soft power mechanism which has been highly successful at generating identification in other national audiences registered in the form of box-office receipts but, as noted in chapter 12, this does not inevitably translate into uncritical political allegiance on the part of such national audiences beyond the USA. The cultural politics of American imperialism means that while American cultural products have a monopolist position in many countries, American economic dominance, culture, and values are not always welcomed with open arms, even by broadly similar or allied nations. Indeed, even where populations exhibit a marked preference for Holly­ wood films, the embrace may be neither complete nor unreserved. Protectionist approaches are evident in a range of countries which have long established antagonistic stances to US cultural products, such as Egypt, France, and China. In these places, the value of ‘local’ or domestic culture is defended in popular and political commentary, and is buttressed by concomitant policies.7 Such policies are the more showy markers of a cultural ‘battle’ in which a term like ‘resistance’ seems appropriate. Crane reports that in Eygpt, for example, where a protectionist cultural policy encourages domestic production (Turgut, 2009; Mellor et al., 2011: 110), domestic products constituted a substantial (80 per cent) share of the market in 2013 (Crane, 2014; Noam et al., 2016). Moreover, a 2016 study of media responses by

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Egyptians shows a continuing high degree of loyalty towards domestic films (Anmuth, 2017). Such marked and formal policy resistance offers – or seems to offer – a counterweight to Global Hollywood. However, the discursive impact of a term like ‘resistance’ risks obscuring the colossal influence of the American film industry. The florid language of ‘culture wars’ may also downplay the ambiguity and sometimes incoherent national dissonance that can arise in relation to the threats to cultural diversity identified by the UNESCO Convention. For example, reports of the paradoxical popularity of American hip-hop artists in the Middle East do not sit entirely easily alongside Eygpt’s determination to uphold cultural protection (Lynch, 2007). French politicians rail against US cultural influence but box-office hits in France’s cinemas are routinely American. Moreover, French rom-coms show increasing evidence that they are adopting Hollywood tropes (Harrod, 2015; The Economist, 2005). Countries like Egypt, France, and China may provide instances of ‘best case’ scenarios regarding the impact of global Hollywood in that their experience suggests room for resistance, disjunctures, hybridity, and transnational exchanges. They offer grounds for optimism regarding cultural diversity. However, these instances should not be taken as typical. It bears repeating that ‘[i]n almost all countries which participate in the global film market, American films predominate in the top 10 films’ and that Hollywood unquestionably plays the dominant role in global culture (Crane, 2014). For these reasons, we suggest that the impact of Hollywood’s colossal grasp is more usefully revealed through the lens of the global film market’s operation in nations which have a very high US share of their national box office – demonstrating their considerable attachment to Hollywood products – while nevertheless continuing to exhibit some uncertainty about this level of market penetration and its consequences. Our focus is therefore on the much more common global position of nations that resist relatively weakly but are likely to exhibit marked ambivalence towards, and poor defences against, the expanding imperialist impact of Hollywood. Countries like Australia, for example, express concerns over cultural policy, as will be explored below, but Australian films have a domestic market share that typically sits at about only 5 per cent. Thus, Australia provides a classic ‘problematic case’ that offers, in our view, a useful



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guide to strategic policy directions responding to the impact of Global Hollywood. Strategic policy implications of weak resistance to global Hollywood The 2004/5 US-Australian Free Trade Agreement (still in place at the time of publication) dramatically illustrates the ambiguities and national dissonance that can arise in the struggle between Global Hollywood and national cultures: a struggle that is not a David and Goliath battle story of asymmetrically heroic resistance by the underdog so much as a story of seduced and compromised cultural confusion. The Australian Minister for Trade at the time of negotiations around the FTA, Mark Vaile, justified it on the grounds that it was ‘overwhelmingly in the Australian national interest’ (2004). This upbeat and primarily economic/ political approach was not accepted by all within the Australian federal parliament, however. The terms of the agreement were therefore subjected to scrutiny by two government committees: a Senate Select Committee and the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. In the context of these committee hearings, the more critical Senate Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade invited comments on a government White Paper titled Advancing the National Interest: Australia’s Foreign and Trade Policy.8 It drew submissions and heard witnesses from those who wished to consider or contest the minister’s positive assessment of the FTA. While agreement was finally reached between the two main political parties – the Liberal Party (neo-liberal/conservative) in government and the Labor Party (social democratic) in opposition – the FTA was and remains a site for considerable debate in Australian political and public life.9 Submissions to and witnesses before the Senate Committee, as well as interested commentators (including the then New South Wales State Premier Bob Carr), argued against any reduction in the FTA of existing government-regulated minimums on Australian-based content in the cultural sector. They argued that Australia should institute – either alternatively or in addition to minimum content provisions – an exemption clause for cultural activities, heritage, and industries along the lines of that which had already been agreed between Australia and

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Singapore (Morello, 2004; Australian Screen Directors Association [ASDA], 2003). Proponents of an exemption clause aimed to reduce or restrict the dominance of American cultural products, including Hollywood films. Like the minister’s endorsement and the Senate Committee’s White Paper, these calls were framed in the language of protecting Australia’s national interest. Nevertheless, this emphasis on national sovereignty was often accompanied by more expansive concerns. Debate within Australia around the FTA precisely assumed that the unregulated dominance of American media might well have a detrimental effect on Australian society (ASDA, 2003; Dalton, 2004; Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance [MEAA], 2004) and that local cultural products and industries should be protected. These arguments for limiting American cultural products tended not only to be framed in the language of national interest and identity but additionally and more specifically in terms of the desirability of protecting ‘cultural diversity’ along the lines described in the UNESCO Convention.10 Calls for the desirability of protecting ‘cultural diversity’ were made in much the same way as claims are made for protecting bio-diversity (see ASDA, 2003; Australian Coalition for Cultural Diversity, 2003; MEAA, 2004). Policy debates concerning the impact of globalising cultural products like Hollywood film demonstrate that the issue was and continues to be taken seriously in Australian national politics and beyond. However, the assumed place and value of national cultures, of both sovereignty and cultural diversity, were also bedevilled by largely unsubstantiated, sharply dissonant assumptions. For instance, several well-known Australian actors and the Australian Writers’ Guild argued that the agreement ‘threatened Australian culture’, while the Australian government insisted that it involved no loss culturally. These kinds of views rarely moved beyond rhetoric (Maddox, 2004). And, perhaps even more importantly, the allure of Hollywood cultural products remained strong. In short, the public debate was thinly developed and failed to come to grips with the implications of Hollywood’s global dominance. While the use of national protectionist cultural rhetoric regarding identity and Australian voices may have some impact on sections of



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Australian society, it seems to us that other rhetorics may well be useful and could indeed have wider impact within the great number of nations whose resistance to the powerhouse of Hollywood is relatively weak. In our view, the policy case for restricting the presence of American films in the Australian and other national markets, and for following the UNESCO Convention by supporting a cultural exemption in FTAs, should be based not merely on those existing and established notions of ‘national identity’ and maintaining ‘cultural diversity’. Indeed, we consider that there may be dangers in delimiting objections to American cultural products to an argument about culture and cultural dominance. Firstly, these kinds of arguments can all too easily sound like special pleading from an inefficient industry or imply the fragility of national identity in ways that reinforce perceptions of nations other than the USA as culturally under-confident and subject to an ongoing ‘cultural cringe’. These arguments may be particularly counter-productive in smaller English-speaking countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand that have long viewed themselves as in the shadow of the USA.11 Secondly, the use of a national-cultural rhetoric is likely to have limited resonance with the American public, officials, or politicians, and consequently provide little leverage from the United States side. Thirdly, the focus on national identity and cultural diversity may have limited traction in nations where the American film industry has significant market share and/or where the citizenry is by no means homogeneous. In this respect, what constitutes national identity and culture may not be easily disentangled from American national and cultural concerns. Cultural specificity may be complex and difficult to discern neatly, particularly given that culture is itself a comparatively amorphous entity. Policy claims around such an amorphous entity – as compared with policy claims around economic trade, political, and military concerns, especially in countries with strong alliances with the USA – are likely to be conceived as dispensable ‘collateral damage’ in FTA negotiations. In sum, rhetoric regarding the possible dangers of cultural dominance may not provide sufficient support for culture to be exempted from future FTAs. By contrast, we wish to highlight that this volume contests the culture/politics divide and to underline that cultural products like

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film are by no means divorced from political questions. We suggest, in keeping with our focus on a cultural politics approach, that the strategic case for developing policies aimed at restricting American films and promoting a cultural exemption clause might be strengthened by being directly linked to the maintenance of ‘political diversity’, and thus to upholding democratic ideals. A rhetoric of political diversity employed in support of a culture exemption clause within FTAs can buttress existing claims regarding national identities and cultural diversity. Conclusion Contemporary Hollywood films reach massive audiences around the globe, offering culturally specific stories (political myths) which project American national, political, and military objectives. These stories can be assessed as having effects, including the production of identification with American values and objectives, and the marginalisation of alternative perspectives. In the context of the political content of Holly­ wood films and their impact on audiences, the at-present overwhelming dominance of Hollywood films represents a threat to diversity of political opinion. Indeed, this dominance encourages not only cultural monopoly, but also a form of political monopoly. The former would perhaps be regrettable, in American terms, but hardly significant. While we would not wish to dismiss the importance of cultural diversity, we suggest that there is in fact much more at stake here than culture alone. What is more, there is as much at stake for those in the United States as elsewhere. Indeed, the United States appears to be facing a politically volatile period. In this climate, Americans may be especially sensitive to issues of political freedom and democratic ideals. It seems to us that the global film market provides a particularly salient instance of the significance of cultural politics in the world today. American engagement in ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East has been mired in gross violations of democratic and human rights including apparently systemic torture and humiliation of detainees. The question of what intervention by the USA and its allies has brought to countries in the Middle East



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remains, to say the least, highly problematic. The lesson of the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad is not that some American troops were evil renegades, nor even that they were probably encouraged or instructed to behave the way they did, but that overweening power corrupts, and hence that checks and balances are always vital (Eccleston and Kerin, 2004). The importance of the checks and balances provided by political diversity is as relevant in the arena of culture as it is in any other. Moreover, such constraints work for the benefit of those who wield power as well as those who are relatively powerless. In other words, Americans, as much as citizens of other nations, stand to gain from upholding limits on American cultural imports and from continuing to debate cultural exemption clauses in FTAs. Mechanisms that limit cultural imports are not simply about cultural diversity but about diversity of political expression as a global democratic ideal, about curtailing globalising forms of American-based ‘securitization’. Just as legal restrictions on cross-media ownership acknowledge the political dangers associated with an insufficiently diverse cultural sector, policy restrictions on the unremittingly dominant position of America-centred Hollywood films are of profound political significance. In an interview just before a visit to Australia to run screenwriting workshops, Oscar-winning screenwriter Pamela Wallace warned that Hollywood is a very provincial town, cut off from the rest of the world and all anybody ever talks about, or cares, is the film industry. You don’t get together at a party to talk about books or politics … and there really is this belief that the rest of the world is like them. (as quoted by Galvin, 2004: 22) While such provincialism may well be problematic for America, it is likely to be particularly oppressive for other countries dominated by its cultural products. Indeed, it has become more important than ever for nations to maintain ‘a degree of separation’ from singular – including American – national/political/military concerns in order to uphold global diversity of political expression. In such times, there is no avoiding the politics of culture.

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Notes 1 See, for example, James Monaco’s (2009: 317) account of the mythopoeic function of Hollywood film. 2 For an overview of forms of globophilia, see Manfred Steger (2005a). 3 An early instance of US government and Hollywood complicity occurred just after World War II, when US assistance to France was withheld until the French government agreed to annul the import quota on American films (Cockburn, 1995). 4 This is a rephrasing of Douglas Kellner’s critique of the cultural imperialism approach as exemplified by the Frankfurt School (1995: 41). 5 In the 1990 movie, Kevin Costner plays John Dunbar, an outposted Civil War soldier who befriends (and comes, heroically, to ‘protect’) the Native American First Nations Sioux people. ‘Dances with Wolves’ is the name bestowed on Dunbar by the Sioux, after Dunbar is seen playing with a tame wolf. The title phrase has come to connote several quite different meanings. Less often, ‘dancing with wolves’ refers critically to the appropriating work of cultural colonisation and draws heavily on critical anthropology’s ‘going native’ debates (Sirota, 2013; after Powdermaker, 2012 [1967]). More often, and less critically, it connotes the process of making strategic overtures to an enemy (e.g. Ancram, 2007), or simply flirting with danger (e.g. Bates, 2012). 6 As at 2017, the USA has free trade agreements with Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and a number of Central American nations (DR-CAFTA), Israel, Jordan, Korea, Morocco, Canada and Mexico (NAFTA), Oman, Panama, Peru, and Singapore (US Department of Commerce, n.d.). 7 What distinguishes these provisions from others is that they are both substantial and vigorously defended. Historical and contemporary protectionist approaches include the nationalisation of Egyptian cinemas (Shafik, 2007: 20–2), government subsidies supporting domestic filmmaking in France (Gordon and Meunier, 2001), and a range of restrictions described by many as ‘restrictive’ in China (Keane, 2004). 8 A White Paper is a document issued by a government outlining a contentious issue or policy for the purpose of providing an authoritative overview and to present a statement regarding the government’s stance on a topic of significance. White Papers are widely disseminated in order to gather feedback through public consultation on the impact and acceptability of the proposed policy. They are distinguished from Green Papers, which involve a more open-ended account of possible policy agendas. The term originated in the UK and is used in similar ways in many Commonwealth countries (including New Zealand and Canada).



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9 For examples of Australian debate and commentary on free trade agreements, see The Australian (2004); Kelly (2004); Starick (2004); Uren (2004); Weiss et al. (2004). For additional background on and analysis of the politics of Australian national identity in this context, see Simpson (2002). 10 This was the language employed by, for example, popular Australian actor Claudia Carvan, when she appeared before the Senate Committee (Morello, 2004). 11 French claims to national identity are less defensive and are more readily registered as cultural arrogance than either the censorial quality of China’s concern with limiting cultural trade or the ‘poor little us’ tone that tends to be employed in Australia. Perhaps this suggests that Australian supporters of the cultural exemption clause might consider adopting some features of the more culture-positive French rhetoric.

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Filmography

3 Days to Kill. 2014. Directed by McG. Relativity Media (US), EuropaCorp (France); France, USA. 9 to 5. 1980. Directed by Colin Higgins. 20th Century Fox; USA. 10 Things I Hate about You. 1999. Directed by Gil Junger. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. 12 Angry Men. 1957. Directed by Sidney Lumet. United Artists; USA. 12 Years a Slave. 2013. Directed by Steve McQueen. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA. 27 Dresses. 2008. Directed by Anne Fletcher. 20th Century Fox; USA. 28 Days Later. 2002. Directed by Danny Boyle. Fox Searchlight Pictures; UK. 40-Year-Old Virgin, The. 2005. Directed by Judd Apatow. Universal Pictures; USA. 500 Days of Summer. 2009. Directed by Marc Webb. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA. Abbott and Costello go to Mars. 1953. Directed by Charles Lamont. UniversalInternational; USA. Abyss, The. 1989. Directed by James Cameron. 20th Century Fox; USA. Accused, The. 1988. Directed by Jonathan Kaplan. Paramount; Canada, USA. Adventures of Tintin, The. 2011. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Paramount Pictures (North America), Columbia Pictures (international); USA, New Zealand. Affair to Remember, An. 1957. Directed by Leo McCarey. 20th Century Fox; USA. Air Force One. 1997. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Columbia Pictures; USA. Airport. 1970. Directed by George Seaton. Universal Pictures; USA. Ali. 2001. Directed by Michael Mann. Columbia Pictures; USA. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. 1974. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Warner Bros; USA. Alien series (1979–2017) — Alien. 1979. Directed by Ridley Scott. [Alien series, #1.] 20th Century Fox; USA.

Filmography 339 — Aliens. 1986. Directed by James Cameron. [Alien series, #2.] 20th Century Fox; USA. — Alien 3. 1992. Directed by David Fincher. [Alien series, #3.] 20th Century Fox; USA. — Alien Resurrection. 1997. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. [Alien series, #4.] 20th Century Fox; USA. — Prometheus. 2012. Directed by Ridley Scott. [Alien series, #5.] 20th Century Fox; UK, USA. — Alien: Covenant. 2017. Directed by Ridley Scott. [Alien series, #6.] 20th Century Fox; USA, UK. Alive. 1993. Directed by Frank Marshall. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. All is Lost. 2013. Directed by J.C. Chandor. Lionsgate; Canada, USA. All the President’s Men. 1976. Directed by Alan J. Pakula. Warner Bros; USA. Almost Famous. 2000. Directed by Cameron Crowe. DreamWorks Pictures (North America), Columbia Pictures (international); USA. Along Came Polly. 2004. Directed by John Hamburg. Universal Pictures; USA. Amazing Spider-Man, The. 2012. Directed by Marc Webb. Columbia Pictures; USA. Amazing Spider-Man 2, The. 2014. Directed by Marc Webb. Sony Pictures Releasing; USA. American Beauty. 1999. Directed by Sam Mendes. DreamWorks Pictures; USA. American Made. 2017. Directed by Doug Liman. Universal Pictures; USA. American President, The. 1995. Directed by Rob Reiner. Columbia Pictures; USA. American Psycho. 2000. Directed by Mary Harron. Lionsgate Films; USA. American Sniper. 2014. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. American Werewolf in London, An. 1981. Directed by John Landis. Universal Pictures; UK, USA. Amistad. 1997. Directed by Steven Spielberg. DreamWorks Pictures; USA. Amour. 2012. Directed by Michael Haneke. Les Film du Losange; France, Germany, Austria. Anaconda. 1997. Directed by Luis Llosa. Columbia Pictures; USA, Brazil. And so it Goes. 2014. Directed by Rob Reiner. Clarius Entertainment; USA. Angela’s Ashes. 1999. Directed by Alan Parker. Paramount Pictures (North America), Universal Pictures (international); UK, USA, Ireland. Annie Hall. 1977. Directed by Woody Allen. United Artists; USA. Antz. 1998. Directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson. DreamWorks Pictures; USA. Apocalypse Now. 1979. Directed by Francis Coppola. United Artists; USA. Apocalypto. 2006. Directed by Mel Gibson. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Apollo 13. 1995. Directed by Ron Howard. Universal Pictures; USA. Arbor, The. 2010. Directed by Clio Barnard. UK. Argo. 2012. Directed by Ben Affleck. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Armageddon. 1998. Directed by Michael Bay. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Avatar. 2009. Directed by James Cameron. 20th Century Fox; USA. Avengers, The. 2012. Directed by Joss Whedon. Walt Disney Studios; USA.

340 Filmography Backdraft. 1991. Directed by Ron Howard. Universal Pictures; USA. Backup Plan, The. 2010. Directed by Alan Poul. CBS Films; USA. Bad Day at Black Rock. 1955. Directed by John Sturges. Metro-GoldwynMayer; USA. Bad Seed, The. 1956. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Warner Bros; USA. Battle of the Coral Sea. 1959. Directed by Paul Wendkos. Columbia Pictures; USA. Beaches. 1988. Directed by Garry Marshall. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Beautiful Mind, A. 2001. Directed by Ron Howard. Universal Pictures; USA. Behind Enemy Lines. 2001. Directed by John Moore. 20th Century Fox; USA. Ben Hur. 1959. Directed by William Wyler. Loew’s, Inc.; USA. Best Years of our Lives, The. 1946. Directed by William Wyler. RKO Radio Pictures; USA. Big Wedding, The. 2013. Directed by Justin Zackham. Lionsgate; USA. Billy Elliot. 2000. Directed by Stephen Daldry. Universal Pictures, Focus Features; UK. Birds, The. 1963. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Universal Pictures; USA. Black Hawk Down. 2001. Directed by Ridley Scott. Columbia Pictures; USA, UK. Black Legion. 1937. Directed by Archie Mayo. Warner Bros; USA. Black Like Me. 1964. Directed by Carl Lerner. Continental Distributing; USA. Blade Runner. 1982. Directed by Ridley Scott. Warner Bros; USA. Blind Side, The. 2009. Directed by John Lee Hancock. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Blow. 2001. Directed by Ted Demme. New Line Cinema; USA. Blue Valentine. 2010. Directed by Derek Cianfrance. The Weinstein Company; USA. Book of Eli, The. 2010. Directed by the Hughes brothers (Albert and Allen Hughes). Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Bourne series (2002–16) — Bourne Identity, The. 2002. (Bourne series #1.) Directed by Doug Liman. Universal Pictures; USA. — Bourne Supremacy, The. 2004. (Bourne series #2.) Directed by Paul Greengrass. Universal Pictures; USA. — Bourne Ultimatum, The. 2007. (Bourne series #3) Directed by Paul Greengrass. Universal Pictures; USA. — Bourne Legacy, The. 2012. (Bourne series #4) Directed by Tony Gilroy. Universal Pictures; USA. — Jason Bourne. 2016. (Bourne series #5) Directed by Paul Greengrass. Universal Pictures; USA. Boys Don’t Cry. 1999. Directed by Kimberly Peirce. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA. Bratz. 2007. Directed by Sean McNamara. Lionsgate Films; USA. Brave. 2012. Directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA. Bride Wars. 2009. Directed by Gary Winick. 20th Century Fox; USA.

Filmography 341 Bridesmaids. 2011. Directed by Paul Feig. Universal Pictures; USA. Brokeback Mountain. 2005. Directed by Ang Lee. Focus Features; USA. Buffalo Soldiers. 2003. Directed by Gregor Jordan. Miramax Films; USA. Bug’s Life, A. 1998. Directed by John Lasseter. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Cape Fear. 1962. Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Universal Pictures; USA. Cape Fear. 1991. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Universal Pictures; USA. Captain America. 1990. Directed by Albert Pyun. 21st Century Film Corporation; USA. Captain America: the First Avenger. 2011. Directed by Joe Johnston. Paramount Pictures; USA. Captain America: the Winter Soldier. 2014. Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA. Carriers. 2009. Directed by Alex Pastor and David Pastor. Paramount Vantage; USA. Catch-22. 1970. Directed by Mike Nichols. Paramount Pictures; USA. Change of Mind. 1969. Directed by Robert Stevens. Cinerama Releasing Corporation; USA. Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, The. 1978. Directed by Fred Schepisi. Hoyts, Umbrella Entertainment, Industrial Entertainment (US DVD release); Australia. Charlotte’s Web. 1973. Directed by Charles A. Nichols and Iwao Takamoto. Paramount Pictures; USA. Child’s Play. 1988. Directed by Tom Holland. MGM/UA Communications Co.; USA. Children of Men. 2006. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Universal Pictures; UK, USA. Children of the Living Dead. 2001. Directed by Tor Ramsey. Lionsgate Home Entertainment; USA. China Syndrome, The. 1979. Directed by James Bridges. Columbia Pictures; USA. Chinatown. 1974. Directed by Roman Polanski. Paramount Pictures; USA. Clear and Present Danger. 1994. Directed by Phillip Noyce. Paramount Pictures; USA. Clockwork Orange, A. 1971. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Warner Bros (US)/ Columbia-Warner (UK); UK, USA. Cloverfield. 2008. Directed by Matt Reeves. Paramount Pictures; USA. Collateral. 2004. Directed by Michael Mann. DreamWorks Pictures (North America)/Paramount Pictures (international); USA. Collateral Damage. 2002. Directed by Andrew Davis. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Color Purple, The. 1985. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Warner Bros; USA. Colossus of New York, The. 1958. Directed by Eugène Lourié. Paramount Pictures; USA. Coming Home. 1978. Directed by Hal Ashby. United Artists; USA. Con Air. 1997. Directed by Simon West. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Confessions of a Shopaholic. 2009. Directed by P.J. Hogan. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA.

342 Filmography Constant Gardener, The. 2005. Directed by Fernando Meirelles. Focus Features; UK, Germany, USA, China. Contagion. 2011. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Warner Bros Pictures; USA, United Arab Emirates. Contender, The. 2000. Directed by Rod Lurie. DreamWorks Pictures; USA. Copycat. 1995. Directed by Jon Amiel. Warner Bros; USA. Crazies, The. 2010. Directed by Breck Eisner. Overture Films; USA. Crazy Stupid Love. 2011. Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Crossfire. 1947. Directed by Edward Dmytryk. RKO Radio Pictures; USA. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. 2000. Directed by Ang Lee. Sony Pictures Classics; Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, USA. Crucible, The. (Les Sorcières de Salem.) 1957. Directed by Raymond Rouleau. Pathé Consortium Cinéma, Kingsley-International Pictures; France, East Germany. Crucible, The. 1996. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. 20th Century Fox; USA. Cry of the Children. 1912. Directed by George Nichols. (Silent film.) Thanhouser Company; USA. Daddy’s Home. 2015. Directed by Sean Anders. Paramount Pictures; USA. Dallas Buyers Club. 2013. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. Focus Features; USA. Damien: Omen II. 1978. Directed by Don Taylor. (Omen series #2.) 20th Century Fox; USA. Dances with Wolves. 1990. Directed by Kevin Costner. Orion Pictures; USA. Danish Girl, The. 2015. Directed by Tom Hooper. Focus Features (US), Universal Pictures (international); UK, USA. Dante’s Peak. 1997. Directed by Roger Donaldson. Universal Pictures; USA. Dark Knight, The. 2008. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Dark Knight Rises, The. 2012. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros Pictures; UK, USA. Dave. 1993. Directed by Ivan Reitman. Warner Bros; USA. David & Fatima. 2008. Directed by Alain Zaloum. Karim Movies; USA. Dawn of the Dead. 1978. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #2.) United Film Distribution Company; USA. Dawn of the Dead. 2004. Directed by Zack Snyder. Universal Pictures; USA. Day after Tomorrow, The. 2004. Directed by Roland Emmerich. 20th Century Fox; USA. Day of the Dead. 1985. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #3.) United Film Distribution Company; USA. Day of the Dead. 2008. Directed by Steve Miner. First Look Studios; USA. Day the Earth Stood Still, The. 1951. Directed by Robert Wise. 20th Century Fox; USA. Dead Heart. 1996. Directed by Nick Parsons. Fox Lorber; Australia. Dead Poets Society. 1989. Directed by Peter Weir. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution; USA.

Filmography 343 Dead Man Walking. 1995. Directed by Tim Robbins. Gramercy Pictures; USA. Deer Hunter, The. 1978. Directed by Michael Cimino. Columbia-EMI-Warner (UK), Universal Pictures (US); USA. Defiant Ones, The. 1958. Directed by Stanley Kramer. United Artists; USA. Definitely Maybe. 2008. Directed by Adam Brooks. Universal Pictures; Germany, UK, USA, France. Descendants, The. 2011. Directed by Alexander Payne. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA. Devil Wears Prada, The. 2006. Directed by David Frankel. 20th Century Fox; USA. Diary of the Dead. 2007. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #5.) The Weinstein Company, Dimension Films; USA. Die Hard. 1988. Directed by John McTiernan. 20th Century Fox; USA. Dirty Harry. 1971. Directed by Don Siegel. Warner Bros; USA. Disconnect. 2012. Directed by Henry Alex Rubin. LD Entertainment; USA. Django Unchained. 2012. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. The Weinstein Company, Columbia Pictures; USA. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. 1931. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Paramount Pictures; USA. Dr Strangelove. Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. 1964. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Columbia Pictures; UK, USA. Dracula. 1931. Directed by Tod Browning. Universal Pictures; USA. Dying Young. 1991. Directed by Joel Schumacher. 20th Century Fox; USA. ET the Extra-Terrestrial. 1982. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures; USA. Earthquake. 1974. Directed by Mark Robson. Universal Pictures; USA. Eat, Pray, Love. 2010. Directed by Ryan Murphy. Columbia Pictures; USA. Election. 1999. Directed by Alexander Payne. Paramount Pictures; USA. Elysium. 2013. Directed by Neill Blomkamp. TriStar Pictures; USA. End of Watch. 2012. Directed by David Ayer. Open Road Films; USA. English Patient, The. 1996. Directed by Anthony Minghella. Miramax Films; UK, USA. Equilibrium. 2002. Directed by Kurt Wimmer. Miramax Films; USA. Erin Brockovich. 2000. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Universal Pictures (USA & Canada), Columbia Pictures (international); USA. Escape Plan. 2013. Directed by Mikael Håfström. Summit Entertainment; USA. Ever After. 1998. Directed by Andy Tennant. 20th Century Fox; USA. Evil Dead, The. 1981. Directed by Sam Raimi. New Line Cinema; USA. Ex Machina. 2014. Directed by Alex Garland. Universal Pictures; UK, USA. Executive Action. 1973. Directed by David Miller. National General Pictures; USA. Exorcist, The. 1973. Directed by William Friedkin. Warner Bros; USA. Extinction. 2015. Directed by Miguel Angel Vivas. Vertical Entertainment; Spain, France, USA, Hungary.

344 Filmography Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. 2011. Directed by Stephen Daldry. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Fahrenheit 451. 1966. Directed by François Truffaut. Universal Pictures; UK, USA, France. Fahrenheit 9/11. 2004. Directed by Michael Moore. Lionsgate Films, IFC Films, Dog Eat Dog Films; USA. Fail Safe. 1964. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Columbia Pictures; USA. Fault in our Stars, The. 2014. Directed by Josh Boone. 20th Century Fox; USA. Felon. 2008. Directed by Ric Roman Waugh. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment; USA. FernGully: the Last Rainforest. 1992. Directed by Bill Kroyer. 20th Century Fox; Australia, USA. Fever Pitch. 2005. Directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly. 20th Century Fox; USA. Final Conflict, The. 1981. Directed by Graham Baker. (Omen series #3.) 20th Century Fox; UK, USA. Finding Nemo. 2003. Directed by Andrew Stanton. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. First Blood. 1982. Directed by Ted Kotcheff. (Rambo series #1.) Orion Pictures (USA), Carolco (international); USA. First Wives Club, The. 1996. Directed by Hugh Wilson. Paramount Pictures; USA. Five-Year Engagement, The. 2012. Directed by Nicholas Stoller. Universal Pictures; USA. Forrest Gump. 1994. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Paramount Pictures; USA. Fort Apache. 1948. Directed by John Ford. RKO Radio Pictures; USA. Frankenstein. 1931. Directed by James Whale. Universal Pictures; USA. Friends with Benefits. 2011. Directed by Will Gluck. Screen Gems; USA. Frost/Nixon. 2008. Directed by Ron Howard. Universal Pictures; USA, UK, France. Full Metal Jacket. 1987. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Warner Bros (US), Columbia-Cannon-Warner (UK); UK, USA. Garment Jungle, The. 1957. Directed by Vincent Sherman and Robert Aldrich. Columbia Pictures; USA. Gattaca. 1997. Directed by Andrew Nicol. Columbia Pictures; USA. Gentleman’s Agreement. 1947. Directed by Elia Kazan. 20th Century Fox; USA. Get Smart. 2008. Directed by Peter Segal. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Ghostbusters. 2016. Directed by Paul Feig. Sony Pictures Releasing; USA, Australia. Gift, The. 2015. Directed by Joel Edgerton. STX Entertainment; USA, Australia. Girl, Interrupted. 1999. Directed by James Mangold. Columbia Pictures; USA. Gladiator. 2000. Directed by Ridley Scott. DreamWorks Pictures (USA); Universal Pictures (international); USA. Glory. 1989. Directed by Edward Zwick. TriStar Pictures; USA. Godfather, The. 1972. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Paramount Pictures; USA. Gone Girl. 2014. Directed by David Fincher. 20th Century Fox; USA.

Filmography 345 Gone with the Wind. 1939. Directed by Victor Fleming. Loew’s Inc.; USA. Good Night, and Good Luck. 2005. Directed by George Clooney. WIP (US), Redbus Film Distribution (UK); USA, France, UK, Japan. Good Will Hunting. 1997. Directed by Gus Van Sant. Miramax; USA. Grand Budapest Hotel, The. 2014. Directed by Wes Anderson. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA, Germany, UK. Grapes of Wrath, The. 1940. Directed by John Ford. 20th Century Fox; USA. Gravity. 2013. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Warner Bros Pictures; UK, USA. Great Escape, The. 1963. Directed by John Sturges. United Artists; USA. Great Gatsby, The. 2013. Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Warner Bros Pictures (US), Roadshow Entertainment (Australia); Australia, USA. Green Berets, The. 1968. Directed by John Wayne and Ray Kellogg. Warner Bros, Seven Arts; USA. Green Card. 1990. Directed by Peter Weir. Buena Vista Pictures; USA, Australia. Green Zone. 2010. Directed by Paul Greengrass. Universal Pictures; France, Spain, USA. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? 1967. Directed by Stanley Kramer. Columbia Pictures; USA. Gung Ho! 1943. Directed by Walter Wanger. Universal Pictures; USA. Halloween. 1978. Directed by John Carpenter. Compass International; USA. Hamburger Hill. 1987. Directed by John Irvin. Paramount Pictures; USA. Handmaid’s Tale, The. 1990. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff. Cinecom Entertainment Group, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA. Hangover, The. 2009. Directed by Todd Phillips. Warner Bros; USA. Happy Feet. 2006. Directed by George Miller. Warner Bros Pictures (USA), Roadshow Films (Australia/New Zealand); USA, Australia. Hard Rain. 1998. Directed by Mikael Salomon. Paramount Pictures (US), Universal Pictures (international); USA, Denmark, UK, Germany, Japan. He’s just not that into You. 2009. Directed by Ken Kwapis. New Line Cinema; USA. Heaven’s Gate. 1980. Directed by Michael Cimino. United Artists; USA. Help, The. 2011. Directed by Tate Taylor. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA. Hidden Figures. 2016. Directed by Theodore Melfi. 20th Century Fox; USA. Hindenburg, The. 1975. Directed by Robert Wise. Universal Studios; USA. Hitch. 2005. Directed by Andy Tennant. Columbia Pictures; USA. Hitler’s Children. 1943. Directed by Edward Dmytryk and Irving Reis (uncredited). RKO Radio Pictures; USA. Holiday, The. 2006. Directed by Nancy Meyers. Columbia Pictures (USA), Universal Pictures (international); USA. Home of the Brave. 1949. Directed by Mark Robson. United Artists; USA. Hope Springs. 2012. Directed by David Frankel. Columbia Pictures, MetroGoldwyn-Mayer; USA. Horse Whisperer, The. 1998. Directed by Robert Redford. Buena Vista Pictures; USA.

346 Filmography Hotel Transylvania. 2012. Directed by Gennady Tartakovsky. Columbia Pictures; USA. Hotel Transylvania 2. 2015. Directed by Gennady Tartakovsky. Columbia Pictures; USA. Hours, 2013. Directed by Eric Heisserer. Pantelion Films; USA. Hours, The. 2002. Directed by Stephen Daldry. Paramount Pictures, Miramax Films; UK, USA. How to be Single. 2016. Directed by Christian Ditter. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. 2003. Directed by Donald Petrie. Paramount Pictures; USA. Hulk, The. 2003. Directed by Ang Lee. Universal Pictures; USA. Humpday. 2009. Directed by Lynn Shelton. Magnolia Pictures; USA. Hunchback of Notre Dame, The. 1996. Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Hunger Games series (2012–15) — Hunger Games, The. 2012. Directed by Gary Ross. (Hunger Games series #1.) Lionsgate Films; USA. — Hunger Games, The: Catching Fire. 2013. Directed by Francis Lawrence. (Hunger Games series #2.) Lionsgate Films; USA. — Hunger Games, The: Mockingjay – Part 1. 2014. Directed by Francis Lawrence. (Hunger Games series #3.) Lionsgate Films; USA. — Hunger Games, The: Mockingjay – Part 2. 2015. Directed by Francis Lawrence. (Hunger Games series #4.) Lionsgate Films; USA. Hunger, The. 1983. Directed by Tony Scott. MGM/UA Entertainment Co.; UK, USA. Hurricane, The. 1937. Directed by John Ford. United Artists; USA. Hurt Locker, The. 2008. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Summit Entertainment; USA. I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. 1932. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Warner Bros; USA. I am Legend. 2007. Directed by Francis Lawrence. Warner Bros Pictures, Roadshow Entertainment (Australia & New Zealand); USA. I Love You, Man. 2009. Directed by John Hamburg. DreamWorks Pictures; USA. I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry. 2007. Directed by Dennis Dugan. Universal Pictures; USA. I was a Teenage Werewolf. 1957. Directed by Gene Fowler, Jr. American International Pictures; USA. Ice Age. 2002. Directed by Chris Wedge. 20th Century Fox; USA. Impossible, The. 2012. Directed by J.A. Bayona. Warner Bros (Spain), Summit Entertainment (USA/international); Spain, USA. In her Shoes. 2005. Directed by Curtis Hanson. 20th Century Fox; USA. In the Heat of the Night. 1967. Directed by Norman Jewison. United Artists; USA. In Time. 2011. Directed by Andrew Niccol. 20th Century Fox; USA. Independence Day. 1996. Directed by Roland Emmerich. 20th Century Fox; USA.

Filmography 347 Insider, The. 1999. Directed by Michael Mann. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution; USA. Insidious series (2010–15) — Insidious. 2010. Directed by James Wan. (Insidious series #1.) FilmDistrict. USA, Canada. — Insidious: Chapter 2. 2013. Directed by James Wan. (Insidious series #2.) FilmDistrict. USA. — Insidious: Chapter 3. 2015. Directed by Leigh Whannell. (Insidious series #3.) Gramercy Pictures. USA, Canada, UK. Interview, The. 2014. Directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Columbia Pictures; USA. Interview with the Vampire. 1994. Directed by Neil Jordan. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Invictus. 2009. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Warner Bros; USA, South Africa. Iron Jawed Angels. 2004. Directed by Katja von Garnier. HBO Films; USA. Iron Man series (2008–13) — Iron Man. 2008. Directed by Jon Favreau. (Iron Man series #1.) Paramount Pictures; USA. — Iron Man 2. 2010. Directed by Jon Favreau. (Iron Man series #2.) Paramount Pictures; USA. — Iron Man 3. 2013. Directed by Shane Black. (Iron Man series #3.) Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA. It had to be You. 1947. Directed by Don Hartman and Rudolph Maté. Columbia Pictures; USA. It’s Complicated. 2009. Directed by Nancy Meyers. Universal Pictures; USA. JFK. 1991. Directed by Oliver Stone. Warner Bros; USA. Jarhead. 2005. Directed by Sam Mendes. Universal Pictures; USA. Jason Bourne. 2016. Directed by Paul Greengrass. (Bourne series #5.) Universal Pictures; USA. Jaws. 1975. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures; USA. Jazz Singer, The. 1927. Directed by Alan Crosland. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Jerry Maguire. 1996. Directed by Cameron Crowe. TriStar Pictures; USA. Judgment at Nuremberg. 1961. Directed by Stanley Kramer. United Artists; USA. Jungle Fever. 1991. Directed by Spike Lee. Universal Pictures; USA. Jurassic Park. 1993. Directed by Steven Spielberg, Joe Johnston, Colin Trevorrow, J.A. Bayona. Universal Pictures; USA. Karate Kid series (1984–94) — Karate Kid, The. 1984. Directed by John G. Avildsen. (Karate Kid series #1.) Columbia Pictures; USA. — Karate Kid, The. Part II. 1986. Directed by John G. Avildsen. (Karate Kid series #2.) Columbia Pictures; USA. — Karate Kid, The. Part III. 1989. Directed by John G. Avildsen. (Karate Kid series #3.) Columbia Pictures; USA. — Next Karate Kid, The (The Karate Kid Part IV). 1994. Directed by Christopher Cain. (Karate Kid series #4.) Columbia Pictures; USA.

348 Filmography Karate Kid, The. 2010. Directed by Harald Zwart. Sony Pictures Releasing; China, Hong Kong, USA. Kids are all Right, The. 2010. Directed by Lisa Cholodenko. Focus Features; USA. Kill Bill: Volume 1. 2003. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Miramax Films; USA. Kill Bill: Volume 2. 2004. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Miramax Films; USA. King Kong. 1933. Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. RKO Radio Pictures; USA. King Kong. 2005. Directed by Peter Jackson. Universal Pictures; New Zealand, USA. Kiss Me Kate. 1953. Directed by George Sidney. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA. Kissing Jessica Stein. 2001. Directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA. Knocked Up. 2007. Directed by Judd Apatow. Universal Pictures; USA. Lake House, The. 2006. Directed by Alejandro Agresti. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Lake Placid. 1999. Directed by Steve Miner. 20th Century Fox; USA. Land of the Dead. 2005. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #4.) Universal Pictures; Canada, France, USA. Last Chance Harvey. 2008. Directed by Joel Hopkins. Overture Films; USA. Last Temptation of Christ, The. 1988. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Universal Pictures (US), Cineplex Odeon Films (Canada); USA. Legally Blonde. 2001. Directed by Robert Luketic. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA. Letters to Juliet. 2010. Directed by Gary Winick. Summit Entertainment; USA, Italy. Life is Beautiful. 1997. Directed by Roberto Benigni. Miramax Films; Italy. Life of Pi. 2012. Directed by Ang Lee. 20th Century Fox; USA. Lilo & Stitch. 2002. Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Lincoln. 2012. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (North America), 20th Century Fox (international); USA. Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, The. 1998. Directed by Darrell Rooney and Rob LaDuca. Buena Vista Home Entertainment; USA. Little Miss Sunshine. 2006. Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA. Little Big Man. 1970. Directed by Arthur Penn. National General Pictures; USA. Little Vampire, The. 2000. Directed by Uli Edel. New Line Cinema; Germany, Netherlands, USA. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. 1998. Directed by Guy Ritchie. Polygram Filmed Entertainment; UK. Longest Yard, The. 2005. Directed by Peter Segal. Paramount Pictures (USA), Columbia Pictures (international); USA. Lord of the Rings series (2001–03) — The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. 2001. Directed by Peter Jackson. (Lord of the Rings series #1.) New Line Cinema; New Zealand, USA.

Filmography 349 — The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. 2002. Directed by Peter Jackson. (Lord of the Rings series #2.) New Line Cinema; New Zealand, USA. — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. 2003. Directed by Peter Jackson. (Lord of the Rings series #3.) New Line Cinema; New Zealand, USA. Lost Boundaries. 1949. Directed by Alfred L. Werker. Film Classics; USA. Lost Weekend, The. 1945. Directed by Billy Wilder. Paramount Pictures; USA. Love Story. 1970. Directed by Arthur Hiller. Paramount Pictures; USA. Lovely Bones, The. 2009. Directed by Peter Jackson. Paramount Pictures; US, UK, NZ. Lovers, The. 2017. Directed by Azazel Jacobs. A24; USA. MASH. 1970. Directed by Robert Altman. 20th Century Fox; USA. Mad Max. 1979. Directed by George Miller. Roadshow Distributors; Australia. Made in Dagenham. 2010. Directed by Nigel Cole. Paramount Pictures; UK. Made of Honor. 2008. Directed by Paul Weiland. Columbia Pictures; USA. Maggie. 2015. Directed by Henry Hobson. Lionsgate Films, Roadside Attractions; USA, Switzerland. Maid in Manhattan. 2002. Directed by Wayne Wang. Columbia Pictures; USA. Malcolm X. 1992. Directed by Spike Lee. Warner Bros (USA), Largo International (international); USA. Mamma Mia! 2008. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Universal Pictures; UK, USA. Man with the Golden Arm, The. 1955. Directed by Otto Preminger. United Artists; USA. Manchurian Candidate, The. 1962. Directed by John Frankenheimer. United Artists; USA. Maps to the Stars. 2014. Directed by David Cronenberg. Entertainment One (UK/Canada), Focus World (US); Canada, France, Germany, USA. Marley & Me. 2008. Directed by David Frankel. 20th Century Fox; USA. Mask, The. 1994. Directed by Charles Russell. New Line Cinema; USA. Matrix series (1999–2003) — The Matrix. 1999. Directed by the Wachowski Brothers. (Matrix series #1.) Warner Bros (US), Roadshow Entertainment (Australia); USA, Australia. — The Matrix Reloaded. 2003. Directed by the Wachowski Brothers. (Matrix series #2.) Warner Bros Pictures (US), Roadshow Film Distributors (Australia); Australia, USA. — The Matrix Revolutions. 2003. (Matrix series #3.) Directed by the Wachowski Brothers. Warner Bros (Time Warner) (US), Roadshow Entertainment (Australia); Australia, USA. Me before You. 2016. Warner Bros Pictures; UK, USA. Meet the Parents. 2000. Directed by Jay Roach. Universal Pictures (North America), DreamWorks Pictures (international); USA. Men in Black series (1997–2012) — Men in Black. 1997. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. (Men in Black series #1.) Columbia Pictures; USA.

350 Filmography — Men in Black II. 2002. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. (Men in Black series #2.) Columbia Pictures; USA. — Men in Black 3. 2012. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. (Men in Black series #3.) Columbia Pictures; USA. Messenger, The. 2009. Directed by Oren Moverman. Oscilloscope Laboratories; USA. Meth Head. 2013. Directed by Jane Clark. FilmMcQueen, Triangle Road Entertainment; USA. Midnight Cowboy. 1969. Directed by John Schlesinger. United Artists; USA. Milk. 2008. Directed by Gus Van Sant. Focus Features; USA. Million Dollar Baby. 2004. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Minions. 2015. Directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Bakla. Universal Pictures; USA. Minority Report. 2002. Directed by Steven Spielberg. 20th Century Fox (North America), DreamWorks Pictures (international); USA. Miss Congeniality. 2000. Directed by Donald Petrie. Warner Bros Pictures (USA), Roadshow Entertainment (Australia & New Zealand); USA. Missing. 1982. Directed by Costa-Gavras. Universal Pictures; USA. Missing in Action. 1984. Directed by Joseph Zito. The Cannon Group, Inc., MGM, Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Monster. 2003. Directed by Patty Jenkins. Newmarket Films; USA, Germany. Monsters, Inc. 2001. Directed by Pete Docter. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Moonstruck. 1987. Directed by Norman Jewison. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA. Moulin Rouge! 2001. Directed by Baz Luhrmann. 20th Century Fox; Australia, USA. Mrs Doubtfire. 1993. Directed by Chris Columbus. 20th Century Fox; USA. Mulan. 1998. Directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Munich. 2005. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures (North America), DreamWorks Pictures (international); USA, Canada. My Best Friend’s Wedding. 1997. Directed by P.J. Hogan. Tristar Pictures; USA. My Big Fat Greek Wedding. 2002. Directed by Joel Zwick. IFC Films; USA. My Sister’s Keeper. 2009. Directed by Nick Cassavetes. New Line Cinema; USA. Mystic River. 2003. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Nashville. 1975. Directed by Robert Altman. Paramount Pictures; USA. Natural Born Killers. 1994. Directed by Oliver Stone. Warner Bros; USA. Network. 1976. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (USA and Canada), United Artists (international); USA. New Year’s Eve. 2011. Directed by Garry Marshall. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Next Karate Kid, The. (The Karate Kid Part IV). 1994. Directed by Christopher Cain. Columbia Pictures; USA. Night of the Demons. 1988. Directed by Kevin S. Tenney. International Film Marketing, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA.

Filmography 351 Night of the Lepus. 1972. Directed by William F. Claxton. Metro-GoldwynMayer; USA. Night of the Living Dead series (1968–2009) — Night of the Living Dead. 1968. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #1.) The Walter Reade Organization; USA. — Dawn of the Dead. 1978. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #2.) United Film Distribution Company; USA. — Day of the Dead. 1985. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #3.) United Film Distribution Company; USA. — Land of the Dead. 2005. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #4.) Universal Pictures; Canada, France, USA. — Diary of the Dead. 2007. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #5.) The Weinstein Company Dimension Films; USA. — Survival of the Dead. 2009. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #6.) E1 Entertainment, Magnet Releasing; USA, Canada. Night of the Living Dead. 1990. Directed by Tom Savini. Columbia Pictures; USA. Nightmare on Elm Street, A. 1984. Directed by Wes Craven. New Line Cinema; USA. Nixon. 1995. Directed by Oliver Stone. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. No Blade of Grass. 1970. Directed by Cornel Wilde. MGM; USA. No Strings Attached. 2011. Directed by Ivan Reitman. Paramount Pictures; USA. No Way Out. 1950. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. 20th Century Fox; USA. Norma Rae. 1979. Directed by Martin Ritt. 20th Century Fox; USA. Notebook, The. 2004. Directed by Nick Cassavetes. New Line Cinema; USA. Object of my Affection, The. 1998. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. 20th Century Fox; USA. Objective Burma! 1945. Directed by Raoul Walsh. Warner Bros; USA. Oblivion. 2013. Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Universal Pictures; USA. Omega Man, The. 1971. Directed by Boris Sagal. Warner Bros; USA. Omen series (1976–81) — Omen, The. 1976. Directed by Richard Donner. (Omen series #1.) 20th Century Fox; UK, USA. — Damien: Omen II. 1978. Directed by Don Taylor. (Omen series #2.) 20th Century Fox; USA. — Omen III: the Final Conflict. 1981. Directed by Graham Baker. (Omen series #3.) 20th Century Fox; USA. Omen, The. 2006. Directed by John Moore. 20th Century Fox; USA. On the Waterfront. 1954. Directed by Elia Kazan. Columbia Pictures; USA. Other Woman, The. 2014. Directed by Nick Cassavetes. 20th Century Fox; USA. Outbreak. 1995. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Pacific Rim. 2013. Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Warner Bros Pictures; USA.

352 Filmography Parallax View, The. 1974. Directed by Alan J. Pakula. Paramount Pictures; USA. Paranormal Activity series (2007–15) — Paranormal Activity. 2007. Directed by Oren Peli. (Paranormal Activity series #1.) Paramount Pictures; USA. — Paranormal Activity 2. 2010. Directed by Tod Williams. (Paranormal Activity series #2.) Paramount Pictures; USA. — Paranormal Activity 3. 2011. Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. (Paranormal Activity series #3.) Paramount Pictures; USA. — Paranormal Activity 4. 2012. Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. (Paranormal Activity series #4.) Paramount Pictures; USA. — Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. 2014. Directed by Christopher B. Landon. (Paranormal Activity series #5.) Paramount Pictures; USA. — Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. 2015. Directed by Gregory Plotkin. (Paranormal Activity series #6.) Paramount Pictures; USA. Parkland. 2013. Directed by Peter Landesman. Exclusive Media Group; USA. Passion of the Christ, The. 2004. Directed by Mel Gibson. Newmarket Films; USA. Patriot, The. 2000. Directed by Roland Emmerich. Columbia Pictures; USA. Patriots Day. 2016. Directed by Peter Berg. CBS Films, Lionsgate; USA. Pearl Harbor. 2001. Directed by Michael Bay. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Perfect Storm, The. 2000. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Warner Bros; USA. Philadelphia. 1993. Directed by Jonathan Demme. TriStar Pictures; USA. Pinky. 1949. Directed by Elia Kazan. 20th Century Fox; USA. Pitch Perfect. 2012. Directed by Jason Moore. Universal Pictures; USA. Places in the Heart. 1984. Directed by Robert Benton. TriStar Pictures; USA. Platoon. 1986. Directed by Oliver Stone. Orion Pictures; USA. Player, The. 1992. Directed by Robert Altman. Fine Line Features; USA. Playing it Cool. 2015. Directed by Justin Reardon. Vertical Entertainment; USA. Pleasantville. 1998. Directed by Gary Ross. New Line Cinema; USA. Pompeii. 2014. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. FilmDistrict, TriStar Pictures (USA), Lionsgate (international); USA, Germany, Canada. Pork Chop Hill. 1959. Directed by Lewis Milestone and Gregory Peck. United Artists; USA. Poseidon Adventure, The. 1972. Directed by Ronald Neame. 20th Century Fox; USA. Poseidon Adventure, The. 2006. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Warner Bros; USA. Precious. 2009. Directed by Lee Daniels. Lionsgate; USA. Predator series (1987–2010) — Predator. 1987. Directed by John McTiernan. (Predator series #1.) 20th Century Fox; USA. — Predator 2. 1990. Directed by Stephen Hopkins. (Predator series #2.) 20th Century Fox; USA. — Predators. 2010. Directed by Nimród Antal. (Predator series #3.) 20th Century Fox; USA.

Filmography 353 Predator-Alien crossover series — Alien vs. Predator. 2004. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. (Predator-Alien crossover #1.) 20th Century Fox; USA. — Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. 2007. Directed by the Brothers Strause. (Predator-Alien crossover #2.) 20th Century Fox; USA. Pretty Woman. 1990. Directed by Garry Marshall. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. 2016. Directed by Burr Steers. Lionsgate (UK), Screen Gems (USA); UK, USA. Primary Colors. 1998. Directed by Mike Nichols. Universal Studios; USA. Prince of the City. 1981. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Orion Pictures, Warner Bros; USA. Princess Diaries, The. 2001. Directed by Garry Marshall. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Private Benjamin. 1980. Directed by Howard Zieff. Warner Bros; USA. Prometheus. 2012. Directed by Ridley Scott. [Alien series, #5.] 20th Century Fox; UK, USA. Proposal, The. 2009. Directed by Anne Fletcher. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA. PS I Love You. 2007. Directed by Richard LaGravenese. Warner Bros Pictures (USA), Momentum Pictures (UK); USA. Psycho. 1960. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount Pictures; USA. Pulp Fiction. 1994. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Miramax Films; USA. Pursuit of Happyness, The. 2006. Directed by Gabriele Muccino. Columbia Pictures (Sony Pictures Releasing); USA. Quiet American, The. 2002. Directed by Phillip Noyce. Miramax Films; Germany, USA. Quo Vadis. 1951. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA. Rabbit-Proof Fence. 2002. Directed by Phillip Noyce. Becker Entertainment; Australia. Rambo series (1982–2008) — First Blood. 1982. Directed by Ted Kotcheff. (Rambo series #1.) Orion Pictures (USA), Carolco (international); USA. — Rambo: First Blood Part II. 1985. Directed by George P. Cosmatos. (Rambo series #2.) TriStar Pictures; USA. — Rambo III. 1988. Directed by Peter MacDonald. (Rambo series #3.) TriStar Pictures; USA. — Rambo. 2008. Directed by Sylvester Stallone. (Rambo series #4.) Lionsgate, The Weinstein Company; USA, Germany. Ratatouille. 2007. Directed by Brad Bird. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution; USA. Reader, The. 2008. Directed by Stephen Daldry. The Weinstein Company; Germany, USA. Rebel without a Cause. 1955. Directed by Nicholas Ray. Warner Bros; USA. Reds. 1981. Directed by Warren Beatty. Paramount Pictures; USA. Regeneration. 1915. Directed by Raoul Walsh. Fox Film Corporation; USA. Rendition. 2007. Directed by Gavin Hood. New Line Cinema; USA.

354 Filmography Requiem for a Dream. 2000. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Artisan Entertainment; USA. Resident Evil: Retribution. 2012. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Screen Gems; Germany, UK, USA, France, Canada. Restless. 2011. Directed by Gus Van Sant. Sony Pictures Classics; USA, UK. Return of the Living Dead series (1985–2005) — Return of the Living Dead, The. 1985. Directed by Dan O’Bannon. (Return of the Living Dead series #1.) Orion Pictures; USA. — Return of the Living Dead, Part II. 1988. Directed by Ken Wiederhorn. (Return of the Living Dead series #2.) Lorimar Motion Pictures; USA. — Return of the Living Dead 3. 1993. Directed by Brian Yuzna. (Return of the Living Dead series #3.) Trimark Pictures; USA. — Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis. 2005. Directed by Ellory Elkayem. (Return of the Living Dead series #4.) Denholm Trading Inc.; USA. — Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. 2005. Directed by William Butler. (Return of the Living Dead series #5.) Denholm Trading Inc.; USA. Ricki and the Flash. 2015. Directed by Jonathan Demme. TriStar Pictures; USA. Risky Business. 1983. Directed by Paul Brickman. Warner Bros; USA. RoboCop series (1987–93) — RoboCop. 1987. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. (RoboCop series #1.) Orion Pictures; USA. — RoboCop 2. 1990. Directed by Irvin Kershner. (RoboCop series #2.) Orion Pictures; USA. — RoboCop 3. 1993. Directed by Fred Dekker. (RoboCop series #3.) Orion Pictures; USA. — RoboCop. 2014. Directed by José Padilha. (RoboCop series #4.) Sony Pictures Releasing; USA. Rocky. 1976. Directed by John G. Avildsen. United Artists; USA. Rosemary’s Baby. 1968. Directed by Roman Polanski. Paramount Pictures; USA. Rules of Engagement. 2000. Directed by William Friedkin. Paramount Pictures; USA. Running Man, The. 1987. Directed by Paul Michael Glaser. TriStar Pictures (North America), Republic Pictures (Europe); USA. Samson & Delilah. 2009. Directed by Warwick Thornton. Madman Entertainment; Australia. San Andreas. 2015. Directed by Brad Peyton. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Sands of Iwo Jima, The. 1949. Directed by Allan Dwan. Republic Pictures; USA. Saving Private Ryan. 1998. Directed by Steven Spielberg. DreamWorks Pictures (USA), Paramount Pictures (international); USA. Schindler’s List. 1993. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures; USA. Scream. 1996. Directed by Wes Craven. Dimension Films; USA. Serendipity. 2001. Directed by Peter Chelsom. Miramax Films; USA. Sergeant York. 1941. Directed by Howard Hawks. Warner Brothers; USA.

Filmography 355 Sessions, The. 2012. Directed by Ben Lewin. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA. Sex & the City. 2008. Directed by Michael Patrick King. New Line Cinema (USA), Warner Bros Pictures (international); USA. Sex & the City 2. 2010. Directed by Michael Patrick King. New Line Cinema; USA. Shakespeare in Love. 1998. Directed by John Madden. Miramax Films (USA), Universal Pictures (international); USA. Shallow Hal. 2001. Directed by Peter Farrelly and Robert Farrelly. 20th Century Fox; USA. Shallows, The. 2016. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Columbia Pictures; USA. Shawshank Redemption, The. 1994. Directed by Frank Darabont. Columbia Pictures; USA. Sheik, The. 1921. Directed by George Melford. Paramount Pictures; USA. She’s all That. 1999. Directed by Robert Iscove. Miramax Films; USA. Shipping News, The. 2001. Directed by Lasse Hallström. Miramax Films; USA. Shopgirl. 2005. Directed by Anand Tucker. Buena Vista Pictures (USA), 20th Century Fox (international); USA. Siege, The. 1998. Directed by Edward Zwick. 20th Century Fox; USA. Silence of the Lambs, The. 1991. Directed by Jonathan Demme. Orion Pictures; USA. Sister Act. 1992. Directed by Emile Ardolino. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Skyjacked. 1972. Directed by John Guillermin. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA. Sleepless in Seattle. 1993. Directed by Nora Ephron. TriStar Pictures; USA. Slumdog Millionaire. 2008. Directed by Danny Boyle. Fox Searchlight Pictures (North America), Warner Bros Pictures (international); United Kingdom. Social Network, The. 2010. Directed by David Fincher. Columbia Pictures; USA. Something Borrowed. 2011. Directed by Luke Greenfield. Warner Bros; USA. Something’s Gotta Give. 2003. Directed by Nancy Meyers. Columbia Pictures (US), Warner Bros Pictures (international); USA. Soul Surfer. 2011. Directed by Sean McNamara. TriStar Pictures, FilmDistrict; USA. Soylent Green. 1973. Directed by Richard Fleischer. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA. Spartacus. 1960. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Universal International; USA. Species. 1995. Directed by Roger Donaldson. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures; USA. Spider-Man. 2002. Directed by Sam Raimi. Columbia Pictures; USA. Spotlight. 2015. Directed by Tom McCarthy. Open Road Films; USA. Spy Kids. 2001. Directed by Robert Rodriguez. Dimension Films; USA. Spy Kids 2: The Island Of Lost Dreams. 2002. Directed by Robert Rodriguez. Dimension Films; USA. Spygame. 2001. Directed by Tony Scott. Universal Pictures, Beacon Pictures; USA. Star Wars. 1977. Directed by George Lucas. 20th Century Fox; USA. Stepford Wives, The. 1975. Directed by Bryan Forbes. Columbia Pictures; USA.

356 Filmography Stepford Wives, The. 2004. Directed by Frank Oz. Paramount Pictures (US), DreamWorks Pictures (international); USA. Storks. 2016. Directed by Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Strangers, The. 2008. Directed by Bryan Bertino. Rogue; USA. Straw Dogs. 1971. Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Cinerama Releasing Corporation; UK, USA. Streetcar Named Desire, A. 1951. Directed by Elia Kazan. Warner Bros; USA. Suffragette. 2015. Directed by Sarah Gavron. Pathé; UK. Sullivan’s Travels. 1941. Directed by Preston Sturges. Paramount Pictures; USA. Sully. 2016. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Sum of all Fears, The. 2002. Directed by Phil Alden Robinson. Paramount Pictures (USA), United International Pictures (international); USA. Surrogates. 2009. Directed by Jonathan Mostow. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA. Survival of the Dead. 2009. Directed by George A. Romero. (Night of the Living Dead series #6.) E1 Entertainment, Magnet Releasing; USA, Canada. Sweet Home Alabama. 2002. Directed by Andy Tennant. Buena Vista Pictures; USA. Swing Shift. 1984. Directed by Jonathan Demme. Warner Bros; USA. Swing Vote. 2008. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA. Syriana. 2005. Directed by Stephen Gaghan. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Taps. 1981. Directed by Harold Becker. 20th Century Fox; USA. Taxi Driver. 1976. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Columbia Pictures; USA. Ten Canoes. 2006. Directed by Rold de Heer and Peter Djigirr. Palace Film; Australia. Ten Commandments, The. 1956. Cecil B. DeMille. Paramount Pictures; USA. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. 1991. Directed by James Cameron. TriStar Pictures; USA. Terminator, The. 1984. Directed by James Cameron. Orion Pictures; USA. Terms of Endearment. 1983. Directed by James L. Brooks. Paramount Pictures; USA. Thank You for Smoking. 2006. Directed by Jason Reitman. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA. They Made me a Criminal. 1939. Directed by Busby Berkeley. Warner Bros Pictures; USA. Thief of Bagdad. 1924. Directed by Raoul Walsh. United Artists; USA. Thelma & Louise. 1991. Directed by Ridley Scott. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA. There will be Blood. 2007. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Paramount Vantage, Miramax Films; USA. Thing with Two Heads, The. 1972. Directed by Lee Frost. AIP; USA. Thor. 2011. Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Paramount Pictures; USA. Titanic. 1997. Directed by James Cameron. Paramount Pictures (North America), 20th Century Fox (international); USA.

Filmography 357 To Hell and Back. 1955. Directed by Jesse Hibbs. Universal Pictures; USA. Top Gun. 1986. Directed by Tony Scott. Paramount Pictures; USA. Towering Inferno, The. 1974. Directed by John Guillermin. 20th Century Fox (USA), Warner Bros (international); USA. Toy Story 2. 1999. Directed by John Lasseter. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution; USA. Tracker, The. 2002. Directed by Rolf de Heer. Australia. Traffic. 2000. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. USA Films; USA. Training Day. 2001. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Warner Bros Picture; USA. Traitor. 2008. Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff. Overture Films (US), Paramount Pictures (international); USA. Transamerica. 2005. Directed by Duncan Tucker. The Weinstein Company, IFC Films; USA. Transformers. 2007. Directed by Michael Bay. DreamWorks Pictures (North America), Paramount Pictures (international); USA. Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. 2011. Directed by Michael Bay. Paramount Pictures; USA. True Lies. 1994. Directed by James Cameron. 20th Century Fox (North America), Universal Pictures (international); USA. Twilight series (2008–12) — Twilight. 2008. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. (Twilight series, #1.) Summit Entertainment; USA. — Twilight Saga, The: New Moon. 2009. Directed by Chris Weitz. (Twilight series, #2.) Summit Entertainment; USA. — Twilight Saga, The: Eclipse. 2010. Directed by David Slade. (Twilight series, #3.) Summit Entertainment; USA. — Twilight Saga, The: Breaking Dawn – Part 1. 2011. Directed by Bill Condon. (Twilight series, #4.) Summit Entertainment; USA. — Twilight Saga, The: Breaking Dawn – Part 2. 2012. Directed by Bill Condon. (Twilight series, #5.) Summit Entertainment; USA. Twister. 1996. Directed by Jan de Bont. Warner Bros (North America), Universal Pictures (international); USA. Two Night Stand. 2014. Directed by Max Nichols. Entertainment One; USA. Two Weeks Notice. 2002. Directed by Marc Lawrence. Warner Bros Pictures; USA, Australia. United 93. 2006. Directed by Paul Greengrass. Universal Pictures (US), United International Pictures (international); USA, UK, France. Unthinkable. 2010. Directed by Gregor Jordan. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Senator US; USA. Up. 2009. Directed by Pete Docter. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA. Victor/Victoria. 1982. Directed by Blake Edwards. MGM/UA Entertainment Company; UK, USA. Visit, The. 2015. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Universal Pictures; USA. Volcano. 1997. Directed by Mick Jackson. 20th Century Fox; USA. W. 2008. Directed by Oliver Stone. Lionsgate; USA.

358 Filmography Wag the Dog. 1997. Directed by Barry Levinson. New Line Cinema; USA. Walk the Line. 2005. Directed by James Mangold. 20th Century Fox; USA. Wall Street. 1987. Directed by Oliver Stone. 20th Century Fox; USA. WALL-E. 2008. Directed by Andrew Stanton. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; USA. War of the Worlds. 2005. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Paramount Pictures (North America), DreamWorks Pictures (international); USA. Warm Bodies. 2013. Directed by Jonathan Levine. Summit Entertainment; USA. Waterworld. 1995. Directed by Kevin Reynolds. Universal Pictures; USA. We Need to Talk about Kevin. 2011. Directed by Lynne Ramsay. Oscilloscope Laboratories; UK, USA. We Were Soldiers. 2002. Directed by Randall Wallace. Paramount Pictures; USA, Germany. Wedding Crashers. 2005. Directed by David Dobkin. Fox Searchlight Pictures; USA. Wedding Planner, The. 2001. Directed by Adam Shankman. Columbia Pictures; USA. What Drink Did. 1909. Directed by D.W. Griffith. USA. What Happens in Vegas. 2008. Directed by Tom Vaughan. 20th Century Fox; USA. What Lies Beneath. 2000. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. DreamWorks Pictures; USA. What’s Love Got to Do with It. 1993. Directed by Brian Gibson. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc.; USA. When a Stranger Calls. 1979. Directed by Fred Walton. Columbia Pictures; USA. When a Stranger Calls. 2006. Directed by Simon West. Screen Gems; USA. When Harry Met Sally. 1989. Directed by Rob Reiner. Columbia Pictures; USA. White House Down. 2013. Directed by Roland Emmerich. Columbia Pictures; USA. Wild Boys of the Road. 1933. Directed by William Wellman. Warner Bros; USA. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. 1996. Directed by Baz Luhrman. 20th Century Fox; USA. Windtalkers. 2002. Directed by John Woo. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA, Hong Kong. Wolf of Wall Street, The. 2013. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Paramount Pictures; USA. Wolfman, The. 2010. Directed by Joe Johnston. Universal Pictures; USA. Woman of the Year. 1942. Directed by George Stevens. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; USA. World Trade Center. 2006. Directed by Oliver Stone. Paramount Pictures; USA, UK, Germany. World War Z. 2013. Directed by Marc Forster. Paramount Pictures; USA. X2. 2003. Directed by Bryan Singer. (X-Men series, #2.) 20th Century Fox; USA. X-Men. 2000. Directed by Bryan Singer. (X-Men series, #1.) 20th Century Fox; USA.

Filmography 359 X-Men: The Last Stand. 2006. Directed by Brett Ratner. (X-Men series, #3.) 20th Century Fox; USA, UK. Yentl. 1983. Directed by Barbra Streisand. MGM/UA Entertainment Company; USA. Zero Dark Thirty. 2012. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Columbia Pictures (North America), Universal Pictures (international); USA. Zodiac. 2007. Directed by David Fincher. Paramount Pictures (USA), Warner Bros Pictures (international); USA. Zombieland. 2009. Directed by Ruben Fleischer. Columbia Pictures; USA.

Index

9/11 (September 11, 2001, events) 31–4, 65–6, 71–5, 102n.4, 107, 119–20n.8, 216, 260 dramatisations of 33 see also terrorism 12 Years a Slave 232 27 Dresses 149 28 Days Later 87 500 Days of Summer 148 ableism 140, 161–3, 234, 247n.12 see also disability Academy Awards see Oscars action movies 29. 32, 34, 70, 131, 134, 152–3, 216 adaptations 246n.9–11 addiction see drugs and alcohol advertising in movies see product placement Air Force One 95 Airport 97 allegory 19, 34, 39n.1, 75, 90, 97, 107, 112, 205, 214, 253 Ali 234 alienation, in films 206–7, 209–10, 218, 223n.10, 230, 234 American dream see myths American imperialism see imperialism American President, The 228

American Sniper 74 Amistad 232 Anderson, Eric 185 Annie Hall 136 anti-war films 63–4, 73 Antz 204, 271 Appadurai, Arjun 261–2 Argo 72 assassination, political 225n.19 audience studies 257–8 Australia 46, 48, 58n.5, 77n.1, 262–3, 265, 284–8, 291n.9,11 auteur filmmakers 25, 26 Bechdel, Alison Bechdel-Wallace test 128–31, 142n.11–12, 178, 169 Beck, Ulrich 103, 105 biopics 238–41, 243–4, 247n.12–13 Black Hawk Down 61–2, 63 blaxploitation 219, 225–6n.23 blockbusters 26–38 comic book characters 32, 35 genres 28–9 myth 31 special effects 30 see also franchises Bollywood see India Bourne Identity, The 134

Index 361 box office 35, 46–7 and blockbusters 27 and female protagonists 202 global 58n.4, 265–6, 274 romantic comedy 136–7 Bride Wars 134, 139, 149, 155 Boys Don’t Cry 53 Bratz 130 bromance 168–94, 142n.12, 143n.16, 143n.19 brotherhood 14, 166n.13, 170–5, 187–90 in war films 62, 70, 73–4, 87 Bug’s Life, A 204 Bush, George W. 33, 45, 72 Buzan, Barry 50–1, 54, 55–6, 78, 81, 116 capitalism 110, 204, 207, 237, 260, 277–8 ‘capital-P’ politics 2, 3, 6–8, 205, 228 casting 29 ‘celluloid ceiling’ 126 catharsis 84, 89, 90–2, 104 censorship and movie classification 2, 6, 24, 25, 125, 216 Change of Mind 219 chick flicks 13, 131–4, 140, 143n.15–16, 158, 188 see also wo-mance children as moviegoers 264–5, 270 children’s movies 4–5, 92, 94, 204 China 35, 47–8, 258–9, 266, 267n.5, 272, 273, 274, 278, 280–1, 283, 284, 290n.7 China Syndrome, The 231 Cinderella stories see fairy tales ‘cinematic jujitsu’ 236–7, 244 civil rights see racism, racial inequality class 97, 204, 210, 212 in romantic comedy 135, 149, 181 in zombie movies 110

climate change 112 Clinton, Bill 125, 205 Cloverfield 85–6, 91, 107 Cold War 67–8, 90, 91, 205, 212, 216, 224 collective identity and collectivism 29, 52, 56–7, 60–2, 172, 203–4, 208, 241, 254–5 in horror 83–4 and myth 19, 20 in romantic comedy 140, 145–6 colonialism 106 comic book characters and styles 32, 34–7, 68, 75, 253 commercialism 202–3, 243–4, 276–7 see also box office; product placement communism 112, 211–12, 91, 93 Comolli, Jean-Louis and Jean Narboni 3, 15–16n.2, 222n.1 ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ 151 Confessions of a Shopaholic 161 conglomerate Hollywood 31–8, 215–17, 253 Connell, Raewyn 172–3, 177, 267n.7 see also hegemonic masculinity conservative myths and messages 20, 52–3, 67, 104, 111, 118, 203, 210, 279 consumer culture, consumption 105–6, 108–9, 110, 112, 119n.4, 262 Contagion 112 co-production 258, 272–3 cosmopolitanism 94, 96 counter-hegemony 15, 200–1, 217, 227, 232, 236–7 Crane, Diana 255 Crazy Stupid Love 155 crime and criminal justice (in film) 210–11, 221

362 Index Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 278–9 cultural exchange 272–3 cultural politics 1, 6–12, 80 methodology 10–12 cultural sociology 7–8 cultural studies 8–9 Dallas Buyers Club 130–1, 241 Dances with Wolves 231 Danish Girl, The 239 dating and movie-going 133, 137–8 deculturalisation 255, 267n.5, 280–1 Definitely Maybe 139, 153 democracy 33, 47, 49–50, 55, 110, 171, 187, 205, 276, 288–9 Dendle, Peter 106, 110, 113, 115 Derrida, Jacques 171 Destiny see romantic comedy Die Hard 129–30 difference 149, 173–4 différance 192n.7 disability 16n.4, 140, 161–3, 167n.25 see also ableism disaster movies 96–9 see also fear films Disney 4–5, 40n.13 disorder see fear films; security ‘dreams can come true’ myth see myth drugs and alcohol 206–7, 209–10, 218. 223n.10, 230, 234 economics, Hollywood see global domination of Hollywood Egypt 283–4, 290n.7 Election 205 Emens, Elizabeth 147 environmentalism 98, 106, 207, 239 Equilibrium 231 Erin Brockovich 238–9

escapism, movies as escapist entertainment 1, 20, 201–2 fairy tales 14, 124, 139, 149, 150, 153–3, 156, 161, 166n.9, 180–1 and feminism 144n.22 fairy godmothers 157, 163, 167n.20, 189 fear films 13, 78–102 and genres 83 definition and key characteristics 79–85 disasters 96–9 monsters 99–101 ‘strangers’ 93–6 feminised men see gender norms and transgression feminism 98, 112, 124–5, 136–7, 139, 141n.4, 141n.6, 146, 158–60, 171, 199, 222n.4–5, 229 see also postfeminism Fever Pitch 150, 156 film studios see studios ‘final girl’ 89–90, 104, 119n.2 Five-Year Engagement, The 164 France 283–4, 290n.3, 290n.7, 291n.11 franchises 36–8, 253 ‘fear’ franchises 85 see also blockbusters fraternity see brotherhood free trade agreements 282–3, 290n.6 US/Australia 285–8, 291n.9 Freud, Sigmund 84 Friends with Benefits 138, 158 Garment Jungle, The 237 Gattaca 228 Gelder, Ken 83, 115 gender and popular culture 141n.4 and sexuality 207, 239, 241

Index 363 gendered power relations 13, 62, 125–32, 139, 170, 174, 179–82, 189–90, 199, 245n.1 gender equality 159–60, 179, 202–3 norms and transgressions 53, 89, 179–82 gender polarity 148–53, 156, 157, 158, 191 Gianos, Phillip L. 6, 124, 198–9, 242 Gift, The 82 Giglio, Ernest D. 7, 80, 124, 202 global domination of Hollywood 1, 15, 47–8, 58n.4, 251–68, 269–91 see also imperialism globalism and globalisation 251–68, 269–91 definition 259–60, 268n.9 glocalization 262 globo-caution 279–81 globophilia 269, 270–5, 290n.2 globophobia 269, 275–9 Golden Age of Hollywood 22–5, 28, 30 and social problem films 209–13 government 6–7, 20, 46, 86, 90, 101n.1, 243 governmentality 126, 141n.4 Gramsci, Antonio 5–6, 55–6, 65–75, 116, 127, 132, 172, 200–1, 245n.3 Green Zone 73 Hangover, The 175, 178, 179–80, 182–3 happy endings 36, 85, 164–5, 176, 187, 192n.10 Happy Feet 231 hard power 3 Hays, Will 201 Hays Code 24, 25, 40n.9 Heaven’s Gate 26

hegemonic masculinity 170, 172–3, 180, 185, 190 hegemony 5–6, 38, 50, 55–6, 116, 127, 132, 172, 200, 208, 221, 237 and securitisation 55–6 and ‘common sense’ 245n.3 Help, The 235, 241 heteronormativity 14, 133–4, 138, 146–7, 163, 167n.26, 169, 177, 188–90 history, of Hollywood 21–38 Hoerl, Kristen 236–7, 245 Holiday, The 152, 153 Hollywood’s global domination see global domination of Hollywood homophobia 183–6, 189–90 homosexuality, homoerotics 141n.2, 146, 163, 165n.1, 167n.26, 172, 175, 182–7, 188– 9,193n.17, 194n.34–5, 194n.37 homosociality 168–9, 172–4, 178, 183, 190 horror 79, 83, 92, 141n.1 House Un-American Activities Committee 211–12, 216, 224n.14 How to be Single 149 Hurt Locker, The 5, 73 hybrid genres and formats 215, 218–20, 233 hybridisation, cultural 279–81 see also transnationalism hypermonogamy 14, 147–8, 161, 163 Ice Age 271 identification, cultural 262–3, 266 I Love You, Man 176–7, 178–9, 181–2, 186 imaginary, political see political imaginary

364 Index imperialism, American cultural 255, 262–4, 267n.4, 274, 275, 279, 280, 283 political 266 independent filmmakers 16n.7, 210, 224n.13 India 47, 266, 278 individualism 4–5, 21, 29, 34, 61, 86, 97–8, 104, 110, 203–4, 208, 214, 222–3n.8, 231, 234, 240, 242–3 Insider, The 239–41, 276 Insidious 82 instructional movies romantic comedies 147 socially critical 229 international co-production see co-production intertextuality 138, 166n.14, 185 Interview, The 2 Jaws 26 JFK 238 Jim Crow laws 246n.8 Johnson, Allan G. 13, 123, 126, 140, 177 Killing Jessica Stein 154–5 Kimmel, Michael 192n.15, 262 kinship 188–9, 191 leadership, mythologised see myths Letters to Juliet 149 liberalism 240, 247n.15 Living Dead series see Romero, George A. Love Story 135 Maid in Manhattan 155–6 makeovers 156 Malcolm X 236–7 male centredness 126–30, 140, 143n.14

male domination 126–9, 140, 177–8, 192n.13, 202, 222n.7 male gaze 90, 126, 132, 142n.10, 142n.13 male identification 126–7, 130–1, 140, 143n.14 marriage 177, 186, 187–9, 191, 192n.11, 194n.28 patriarchal marriage 98 Marx, Marxism 15n.2, 276 masculinities 152–3, 168–194 Mask, The 30 Me before You 162 media conglomerates 25–7, 36–7, 70 ‘meet cute’ 153–4, 157, 177–8 Meet the Parents 149 melodrama 133 manhood melodrama 74–5 men and masculinities studies 146, 165n.2, 170, 172–3 Midnight Cowboy 213 militarism and anti-militarism 4, 6, 50–1, 53,59–77, 95, 104, 106, 204, 213, 264 military influence and involvement in Hollywood 4, 6, 65–8, 71 Miracle Decision 24 monomyth see myths monster movies 99–101, 103–20 see also fear films Moonstruck 152 Mortimer, Claire 136, 151–2, 187 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) 24, 40n.9– 10, 71, 201, 265, 273 movies within movies see intertextuality Mulan 280–1 Munich 215 myths 17–21, 32, 34, 35, 48–9, 59, 63, 229 American Dream 242, 271 ‘dreams can come true’ 5, 21, 53

Index 365 leadership 64–5, 96, 104 monomyth 252–3 saviour 20, 32, 34, 35, 64–5, 208 national cinemas 257, 269–91 nationalism, national identity 4, 21, 32, 59–60, 72, 203, 255–6 neoliberalism 86, 160, 167n.23 Newbury, Michael 108–9, 114–15 ‘New Hollywood’ 25–31, 213–15 Notebook, The 135 Nye, Joseph 3–5, 13, 55, 67, 73, 127, 129, 172 Obama, Barack 223n.10 Oscars 128, 243, 278–9, 225n.17, 278 Other, the 51, 58n.7, 94–5, 108, 112, 115 Parkland 238 Pateman, Carole 171–2, 187 patriarchal legacy 13, 126–7, 140, 169, 177 see also male centredness; male domination; male identification patriarchy 126, 141–2n.9, 171, 187 patriotism 64, 65, 66, 203 ‘new patriotism’ 66–7, 71–5 Pearl Harbor 67 Playing it Cool 153, 155 policy (film, culture) 281–8 protectionism 282–4 political imaginary 254, 267n.2 political myths see myths political technologies 1–3, 11, 15–16, 18, 28–9, 51, 251, 253 Poseidon Adventure, The 98 postfeminism 137, 158–60 poverty 212, 224n.12–13 Pretty Woman 149, 181 Prince of the City 214–15 product placement 258, 276–7

profitability see box office propaganda 49–50, 55–7, 67–8, 73, 117, 258 protectionism 282–4 PS I Love You 151 psychoanalytical and psychological approaches 16n.5, 83–5, 113, 124, 141n.1 queer studies/cinema 146, 194n.35, 217, 225n.22 see also gender and sexuality racism, racial inequality 62–3, 64, 77n.1, 96, 106, 112, 207, 211, 212, 218–19, 224n.11, 225n.18, 230, 244, 258 Ali 234 Malcolm X 236–7 The Help 235–6 rape see sexual assault Reagan, Ronald 67, 69–70, 73, 90, 119n.5, 214, 224n.16, 225n.20 realism 15–16n.2, 28, 40n.16, 60, 204, 222n.1, 232, 237, 239–40 Rebel without a Cause 206 religion 2, 5, 95, 98, 110, 111–12, 119–20n.8, 215 repression, ‘return of the repressed’ 84–5, 101n.2, 104, 107, 113 Requiem for a Dream 207, 234 romance 13, 145–67 romantic comedy 136–9 destiny, and 153–5 gender polarity, in 148–53 transformation, in 155–8, 176 romantic drama 135–6 Romeo and Juliet 135 Romero, George A. 105–6, 107–8, 113–14, 119n.1, 119n.3, 120n.10

366 Index Ryan, Michael and Douglas Kellner 10, 66, 81, 92, 96, 97–8, 103–4, 111, 113, 114, 137, 199, 212 Sands of Iwo Jima, The 67 Saving Private Ryan 65, 71, 76 saviour myth see myths science fiction 91, 204, 219–20 screenwriting 127 securitization 51, 54–6, 81, 91 security 12–13, 36, 45–58 and government 86 definition 50–2 emphasising disorder 52, 54, 56, 78–102 emphasising order 52, 54–6, 59–77, 82 Serendipity 152, 153 Sergeant York 68 sexual assault 89, 193n.16, 193n.21, 193n.24 in Wedding Crashers 183–5 sexual contract 187 sexualities 141n.2, 146–8, 163, 167n.26, 175, 217, 218 see also gender and sexuality Shallow Hal 157, 162 Shakespeare in Love 158 Siege, The 5, 95 singleness 154, 156, 161 slasher movies 88–9 Sleepless in Seattle 138 social contract 171, 194n.29, 87–8 socially critical films 197–226, 227–47 axiomatic formulas in 241–3 definition, key characteristics 200–4 format, genres 204–6 history, periodisation of 208–17 hybridity in 217–20 key topics 206–8 as warnings 229–33

soft power 3–6, 32–3, 35, 38, 54–6, 71, 73, 76, 127, 129, 172, 208, 251, 258, 283 Something Borrowed 148 Soul Surfer 234 special effects 30, 32, 34 Stanley, Jason 49–50, 55, 67, 73 ‘star system’ 23 Stockett, Kathryn 235–6 ‘stranger’ films 93–6, 99 see also fear films studios and the ‘studio system’ 23, 24–6 substance abuse see drugs and alcohol superheroes see comic book characters and styles supermonogamy 147 Surrogates 232 surveillance 216 Sweet Home Alabama 149 Swing Vote 205 synecdoche 19, 39n.1, 88–9, 252 Taxi Driver 213–14 terrorism 45, 72, 95–6, 103n.4, 107, 112, 118, 215–16, 218, 229 ‘war on terror’ 33–4 see also 9/11 There will be Blood 207 Thing with Two Heads, The 219 transnationalism 255–7, 269–91 see also co-production transsexuality see gender and sexuality Trump, Donald 118 Twilight series 109–10, 113 Two Night Stand 155 unionism (in film) 212, 237 universalism 240–1, 270–2, 275, 276

Index 367 Valenti, Jack 65–6, 73–5 vampire movies 100, 109–10 verisimilitude 237–40 Vietnam War 53, 61, 69, 70–2, 74, 77n.4, 107, 108, 214 Wag the Dog 205 WALL-E 98 war movies 13, 33, 59–77, 81, 87, 90, 211 definition and key characteristics 60–5 history 67–75 Wedding Crashers 150, 156, 175, 178, 180–1, 183–6 wedding movies 177, 187–8, 192n.11

Wedding Planner, The 138, 153–4 We Were Soldiers 53, 61 What Drink Did 209 What Happens in Vegas 130, 149, 161 When a Stranger Calls 88 When Harry Met Sally 138 wo-mance 143n.16, 192n.9 women’s movement see feminism Wood, Robin 105, 115 Zero Dark Thirty 72 Zombieland 108 ‘zombie categories’ 105 zombie movies 13, 81, 103–20