American Cinema and Cultural Diplomacy

This book contends that Hollywood films help illuminate the incongruities of various periods in American diplomacy. From the war film Bataan to the Revisionist Western The Wild Bunch, cinema has long reflected US foreign policy’s divisiveness both directly and allegorically. Beginning with the 1990s presidential drama The American President and concluding with Joker’s allegorical treatment of the Trump era, this book posits that the paradigms for political reflection are shifting in American film, from explicit subtexts surrounding US statecraft to covert representations of diplomatic disarray. It further argues that the International Relations theorist Walter Mead’s concept of a US polity dominated by contesting beliefs, or a ‘kaleidoscope’, permeates these changing paradigms. This synergy reveals a cultural milieu where foreign policy fissures are increasingly encoded by cinematic representation. The interdisciplinarity of this focus renders this book pertinent reading for scholars and students of American Studies, Film Studies and International Relations, along with those generally interested in Hollywood filmmakers and foreign policy.

Introduction.- Chapter 1: Rehabilitations of idealism - action, satire and the late 1990s.- Chapter 2: Unanticipated synergy - lost innocence in early 2000s war cinema.- Chapter 3: ‘The thaw’ - the 2004 election and questions of cultural diplomacy.- Chapter 4: Imperial overstretch and the nihilistic frontier - Western political allegory in the late 2000s.- Chapter 5: Apex of allegory - Blockbuster responses to the end of the Bush era.- Chapter 6 (concluding chapter): Forever fragmented - Obama to Trump and the new identitarianism of IR dichotomies.