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The Cinematic Political Discourse And Its Effect On Society Essay

¶ … Cinema and American Politics I will address the relationship between film and politics in the U.S.

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The modern politics of the U.S. has often been reflected in the mainstream Hollywood films of the era yet simultaneously criticized and satirized by auteur and/or independent filmmakers, such as Kubrick with his 1964 Dr. Strangelove or Oliver Stone's JFK. While political science is a field in which the dynamics of political discourse may be examined more directly, an analysis of the cinematic representation of American politics as depicted in film can provide an alternative assessment of the life of U.S. political forces, how they are perceived to operate in popular film, and how popular political beliefs are shaped and communicated to citizens as a result.

For instance, Spielberg's Lincoln and his recent Bridge of Spies are two films that celebrate some aspect of the American political ideal (such as freedom, unity, integrity, and democracy). Yet other filmmakers use film to reflect some aspect of the political scene that is troubling (Stone's upcoming Snowden picture, for instance, which focuses on the overreach of government agencies or the upcoming documentary Weiner, which focuses on the maligned candidacy of Timothy Weiner). This paper proposes to assess the manner in which Hollywood/independent films support and/or undermine the American political scene, depending on their depictions and their popular reception.

In-Progress Thesis Statement:

The thesis...

Thus identifying the role that cinema plays in influencing ideas about American politics can benefit the field of political science by showing how thoughts, beliefs, ideals and criticisms are manifested, communicated, reinforced and rejected over time.
Body Paragraph 1 -- Zero Dark Thirty showed moviegoers the behind-the-scenes processes that went into tracking down U.S. public enemy no. 1 Osama Bin Laden (and raised controversial questions about the efficacy of torture). And recently 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi painted the American mercenary forces in the Middle East in a positive light, though critics of these same forces have pointed to videos released via WikiLeaks as evidence of mercenary mayhem.

Body Paragraph 2 -- Some of these films have been received more strongly than others; some have been roundly condemned by the political establishment; some have been largely ignored by the mainstream press and by moviegoers as well; and some have been so controversial and caused so much uproar that American policy has changed as a result (Stone's JFK for instance essentially brought the significance of the Kennedy assassination before an entirely new generation that…

Sources used in this document:
In this article, Grenier discusses the history of paranoia in political classes, dissecting groups according to ethnicity, political affiliation, and culture. He points to Stone's film on JFK as evidence that the paranoid class has evolved into a force worth reckoning. This article will be helpful to my paper because it highlights one of the ways in which the political establishment views critically the success of Stone's work.

King, Noel. "Reconsidering the film-politics relation." Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 6, no. 1 (1992): 228-235.

This study focuses on the way in which society is shaped by a film-political discourse, with cinema both reflecting the political ideology and attacking it at alternate intervals. Thus there is a tendency for the political establishment to reach out to and use Hollywood and a tendency for Hollywood to be both receptive to the embrace and resistant to it. The article is helpful to this paper because it shows how there is an uneven relationship between the political field and cinema and how a two-way flow can be perceived.
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