The 'War on Terror' and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second

ISBN-13: 9781474413060 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 256 str.

Terence McSweeney

Opis

American film in the first decade of the 21st century became a cultural battleground on which a war of representation was waged, but did these films endorse the 'War on Terror' or challenge it? More than just reproducing these fears and fantasies, The 'War on Terror' and American Film argues that American cinema has played a significant role in shaping them, restructuring how audiences have viewed this most tumultuous of decades in particularly influential ways.
This compelling and theoretically informed exploration of contemporary American cinema charts the evolution of the impact of 9/11 on Hollywood film through a range of genres - war films, superhero movies, historical dramas, horror and even alien invasion films - each revealing a cinema not of escapism but one that engages profoundly with the turbulent era in which their films were made. Through a vibrant analysis of films as diverse as War of the Worlds (2005), United 93 (2006), 300 (2007), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Marvel Avengers Assemble (2012) and many others, The 'War on Terror' and American Film explores the influence of the cultural trauma of 9/11 and the subsequent 'War on Terror' on American cinema in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond.

Spis treści

List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The Lives of Others: Vulnerability in Post 9/11 American Cinema; 2. Boots on the Ground: the New Millennial Combat Film as Cultural Artefact; 3. "Masters of our own Security": Redemption Through Violence in the Post 9/11 Action Genre; 4. Turning to the Dark Side: Questioning American Mythology in the Superhero Genre; 5. Remaking 9/11: Imagining the Unimaginable in the Alien Invasion Film; 6. Decade of the Dead: Zombie Films as Allegory of National Trauma; 7. The Rise and Fall of Empires: The 'War on Terror' as Allegorical Moment in Historical Film; Conclusion; Works cited; Index.