Hollywood and the Spectacle of Terrorism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6307889
AutoresCarl Boggs, Tom Pollard (0000-0002-5676-7898)
Año2006
Volumen28
Número3
Páginas335-351
Fecha de publicación2006-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNew Political Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0739-3148 • E-ISSN: 1469-9931
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1080/07393140600856151
OpenAlexW1991176637
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas25

As terrorist actions, both state and non-state, have spread in both frequency and destructive power since the 1960s, the topic has become an enduring source of narratives, fantasies, and myths that have contributed to Hollywood filmmaking with its familiar emphasis on international intrigue, exotic settings, graphic violence, and the demonization of foreign threats. Images of political violence have a strong appeal in the US, where the gun culture, civic violence, crime sprees, and a thriving war economy permeate the landscape. The al Qaeda attacks of 9/11 heightened public fascination with terrorism, fueled by mounting fear and paranoia, and this was destined to inspire a new cycle of films in which on-screen terrorism dramatizes elements of real-life threats that now include possible weapons of mass destruction. The "war on terror," driven as much by US strategy to reconfigure the Middle East as by the events of 9/11, serves as the perfect backdrop for film industry productions of violent high-tech spectacles, now a major staple of media culture. For cinema as for politics, the "Middle East" now exists as a mystical category largely outside of time and space, a ready source of dark fears and threats. At the same time, corporate-driven globalization, viewed as a cultural as well as economic and political process, feeds into modern terrorism as political violence (including militarism) sharpens its capacity to attack, disrupt, and surprise—the same features now so integral to the Hollywood film industry. We see jihadic terrorism as not only a virulent form of blowback against US imperial power but as possibly the darkest side of neo-liberal globalization

Aesthetics · Art · Hollywood · Kitsch · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spectacle · Terrorism · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Law