Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the War on Terror

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes The help and support of Jason Dittmer, Mark Lacy and TWQ editor Shahid Qadir are gratefully acknowledged. 1 This list is in no way exhaustive and could include other recent releases such as Standard Operating Procedure (2008) and Stop-Loss (2008), which address prisoner abuse and the war experiences of a group of Texan soldiers in Iraq, respectively. The agitprop of Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and the puppet-based satire of Team America (2004) offer further evidence that post-9/11 Hollywood cinema is not easily summarised. For one reflective piece, see B Rich, ‘After the fall: cinema studies post 9/11’, Cinema Journal, 43, 2004, pp 109–115. 2 For details on box office receipts, see http://www.boxofficemojo.com 3 A Light, Reel Arguments, Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001. 4 US presidents have self-consciously deployed movie references such as Ronald Reagan referring to Rambo and George W Bush recreating a so-called Top Gun moment when he landed a plane on a US aircraft carrier and then emerged later to declare that combat operations were over in Iraq in May 2003. For one analysis of that filmic inspired spectacle, see F Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, London: Penguin, 2008. 5 M Lacy, ‘War, cinema and moral anxiety’, Alternatives, 28, 2003, pp 611–636. 6 For a larger discussion of the military–industrial–media–entertainment complex, see J Der Derian, Virtuous War, Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001. 7 On the iconography of the global, see D Cosgrove, Apollo's Eye, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. 8 C Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004. 9 D Holloway, 9/11 and the War on Terror, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008, p 86. 10 There is a growing and intellectually diverse literature exploring the role of popular culture within the discipline of International Relations. See, for example, R Gregg, International Relations on Film, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998; C Weber, International Relations Theory, London: Routledge, 2001; and Weber, Imagining America at War, London: Routledge, 2005. 11 See, for example, Weber International Relations Theory. 12 For one overview, see M Power & A Crampton (eds), Cinema and Popular Geo-Politics, London: Routledge, 2006. An early example of popular geopolitics involving magazines was J Sharp, Condensing the Cold War, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. The most important book length exposition on critical geopolitics remains G Toal, Critical Geopolitics, London: Routledge, 1996. On tabloid geopolitics, see F Debrix, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture and Geopolitics, London: Routledge, 2008. 13 For one analysis of the film and its impact on US–Turkish relations, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4700154.stm, accessed 16 June 2008. 14 For more information on the 4 July 2003 incident (the so-called bag affair) involving US special forces and Turkish forces, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3049590.stm, accessed 16 June 2008. 15 Various films, such as the Rambo series, arguably not only address the issue of missing POWs in Vietnam but also, alongside others such as Missing in Action (1986), suggest that hostage/captivity crises can be resolved successfully. Later variants on this theme would include Behind Enemy Lines (2001), which deals with the successful rescue of a naval airman in Serb-occupied Bosnia. 16 The film is also significant in terms of US–Turkish cinematic engagements, given the unpopularity in Turkey of Midnight Express (1978), which dealt with the jailing of an American citizen after he was found to possess drugs while in the country. For a brief discussion, see Z Sardar, Orientalism: Concepts in the Social Sciences, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2000, pp 105–106. 17 On 1980s Hollywood and Reagan's America, see J Valantin, Hollywood, the Pentagon and Washington, London: Anthem, 2001; and, for the aftermath, T McCrisken & A Pepper, American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. 18 R Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. 19 M Anderson, Cowboy Imperialism and Hollywood Film, London: Peter Lang, 2007. 20 S Neale, Genre and Hollywood, London: Routledge, 2000. 21 K Dodds, ‘Screening geopolitics: James Bond and the early cold war films 1962–1967’, Geopolitics, 10, 2005, pp 266–289. 22 S Higgins, ‘Suspenseful situations: melodramatic narrative and the contemporary action film’, Cinema Journal, 47, 2008, pp 74–96. 23 E Anker, ‘Villains, victims and heroes: melodrama, media and the 9/11’, Journal of Communication, 55, 2005, pp 22–37. 24 C Collins, Homeland Mythology, College Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2007. 25 On post-9/11 cinema and television, see W Dixon (ed), Film and Television after 9/11, Carbondale, IL: University of Southern Illinois Press, 2004. On Hollywood in recent pre- and post-9/11 times, see B Dickenson, Hollywood's New Radicalism, London, IB Tauris 2006. 26 Holloway, 9/11 and the War on Terror, p 83. 27 Maltby, Hollywood Cinema. 28 See S Dalby, ‘Warrior geopolitics: gladiator, Black Hawk Down and the Kingdom of Heaven’, Political Geography, 27, 2008, pp 439–455. 29 Ibid. 30 C Weber, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11: the temperature where morality burns’, Journal of American Studies, 40, 2006, pp 113–131. 31 C Weber, ‘Not without my sister: imagining a moral America in Kandahar’, at http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-resolution_1325/kandahar_3006.jsp, accessed 16 June 2008. 32 On masculinities and hegemonic forms, see R Connell, Masculinities, London: Allen and Unwin, 1995. For a feminist approach to gender and militarization, see C Enloe, Does Khaki Become You?, London: Pluto, 1983; and Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. On masculinity and UN peacekeepers, see S Whitfield, Men, Militarism and UN Peace-Keeping, Boulder, CO: Lynne Riener, 2008. 33 M Hannah, ‘Virility and violation in the US “war on terrorism”’, in L Nelson & J Seager (eds), A Companion to Feminist Geography, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, pp 550–564. 34 On US national mythologies including the frontier, see R Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, New York: Athenaeum, 1992. 35 B Malin, American Masculinity under Clinton, London: Lang, 2005. 36 S Jeffords, Hard Bodies, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994. 37 S Faludi, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007. 38 W Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World, London: Routledge, 2002. 39 On neoconservative thought and the Bush administration, see, for example, D Frum & R Pearle, An End all Evil, New York: Random House, 2003. For a dissenting view from a former neo-conservative supporter, see F Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. 40 For one persuasive reading of The Siege (1998), see M McAlister, Epic Encounters, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. 41 E Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Vintage, 1994. On Hollywood and oriental representations, see L Khatib, Filming the Modern Middle East, London, IB Tauris, 2006. 42 See, for example, J Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs, New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001. 43 S Graham, ‘Cities and the war on terror’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30, 2006, p 256. More generally, see D Gregory, The Colonial Present, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. 44 M Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics, London: Routledge, 2008; and Shapiro, Violent Cartographies, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 45 Lacy, ‘War, cinema and moral anxiety’, p 634. See also J Butler, Precarious Life, London, Verso 2004.