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 and, for the aftermath, T McCrisken 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 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.