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The politics of Hollywood cinema : popular film and contemporary political theory

The Politics of Hollywood Cinema takes concepts from the writings of several contemporary political theorists (Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Claude Lefort, Étienne Balibar and Jacques Rancière) and applies them to a number of films from classical Hollywood. In doing so, the book radically challenges existing conceptions of political cinema and invents an original understanding of what a politics of cinema is. In doing so, the book harks back to a formative age of film theory – the 1960s–1970s – when concepts gleaned from political philosopher Louis Althusser took centre stage in films studies. Where Althusser’s concepts were deemed central to a critique of Hollywood cinema, The Politics of Hollywood Cinema instead considers a series of post-Althusserian philosophers with an aim of redeeming classical Hollywood for politics.

The book offers close readings of a range of films – Marked Woman (1937), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1941), Born Yesterday (1950), On the Waterfront (1954) and It Should Happen to You (1954) – which mark the subtlety and complexity not only of some Hollywood films, but also of the kinds of political concepts such films are capable of elaborating. The readings offered here are thus positioned in relation to the myriad dismissals of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking that have for many years marked the field of film studies, especially in view of such films’ capacities for ideological distortion, illusionism and narrative transparency. Typically, Hollywood’s illusions have been pitted against anti-Hollywood, ‘political’ forms of filmmaking. It is this opposition that The Politics of Hollywood Cinema throws into question. The book therefore continues themes developed in my book The Reality of Film (published in 2011) which also tries to break down the binary opposition between reality and illusionism as it has been typically theorised in film studies.