National Security Cinema
National Security Cinema

Author: Matthew Alford

Publisher:

Published: 2017-06-27

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9781548084981

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This is a book about secrecy, militarism, manipulation, and censorship at the heart of the world's leading democracy-and about those who try to fight them. Using thousands of pages of documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act National Security Cinema exclusively reveals that the national security state-led by the CIA and Pentagon-has worked on more than eight-hundred Hollywood films and over a thousand network television shows. The latest scholarship has underestimated the size of this operation, in part because the government has gone to considerable lengths to prevent data emerging, especially in the 21st Century, as the practice of government-Hollywood cooperation has escalated and become more aggressive. National Security Cinema reveals for the first time specific script changes made by the government for political reasons on dozens of blockbusting films and franchises like Transformers, Avatar, Meet the Parents, and The Terminator. These forces have suppressed important narratives about: CIA drug trafficking; illegal arms sales; military creation of bio-weapons; the interaction of private armies and oil companies; government treatment of minorities; torture; coups; assassinations, and the failure to prevent 9/11.

Reel Power
Reel Power

Author: Matthew Alford

Publisher: Pluto Press

Published: 2010-09-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780745329833

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Hollywood is often characterized as a stronghold of left-liberal ideals. In Reel Power, Matthew Alford shows it is in fact deeply complicit in serving the interests of the most regressive U.S. corporate and political forces. Films like Transformers, Terminator: Salvation and Black Hawk Down are constructed with Defense Department assistance as explicit cheerleaders for the U.S. military, but Matthew Alford also emphasizes how so-called radical films like Three Kings, Hotel Rwanda and Avatar present watered-down alternative visions of American politics that serve a similar function. Reel Power is the first book to examine the internal workings of contemporary Hollywood as a politicized industry as well as scores of films across all genres. No matter what the progressive impulses of some celebrities and artists, Alford shows how they are part of a system that is hard-wired to encourage American global supremacy and frequently the use of state violence.

Movies, Myth, and the National Security State
Movies, Myth, and the National Security State

Author: Dan O'Meara

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 9781626374591

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"A valuable book.... highly engaging and thought provoking. Sweeping in its analysis, it brings together a sophisticated discussion of US political history since World War II with a very sharp evaluation of movies during the distinct eras of these years." --Robert Snyder, Southwestern University While analysts may agree that Hollywood movies have always both mirrored and helped to shape the tenor of their times, the question remains: Just how do they do it? And beyond that, how do we identify the political/ideological content of any film? The authors of Movies, Myth, and the National Security State offer answers to these questions, exploring how Hollywood movies have functioned to propagate, or to debate, or sometimes to contest the evolving US national security state since 1945. Drawing on more than a thousand films released since 1948, and focusing in detail on 48 films that address key issues and dilemmas confronting the US and its sense of self and role in the world, they provide insights into US political life as it has developed across some seven decades. Dan O¿Meara and Alex Macleod are professors of international relations at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). Frédérick Gagnon is assistant professor of political science at UQAM. David Grondin is assistant professor of American studies and international relations at the University of Ottawa.

Hollywood and the CIA
Hollywood and the CIA

Author: Oliver Boyd Barrett

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2011-03

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1136806768

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This book investigates representations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Hollywood films, and the synergies between Hollywood product, U.S. military/defense interests and U.S. foreign policy. As probably the best known of the many different intelligence agencies of the US, the CIA is an exceptionally well known national and international icon or even "brand," one that exercises a powerful influence on the imagination of people throughout the world as well as on the creative minds of filmmakers. The book examines films sampled from five decades - the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s - and explores four main issues: the relative prominence of the CIA; the extent to which these films appeared to be overtly political; the degree to which they were favorable or unfavorable to the CIA; and their relative attitude to the "business" of intelligence. A final chapter considers the question: do these Hollywood texts appear to function ideologically to "normalize" the CIA? If so, might this suggest the further hypothesis that many CIA movies assist audiences with reconciling two sometimes fundamental opposites: often gruesome covert CIA activity for questionable goals and at enormous expense, on the one hand, and the values and procedures of democratic society, on the other. This interdisciplinary book will be of much interest to students of the CIA/Intelligence Studies, media and film studies, US politics and IR/Security Studies in general.

Chinese National Cinema
Chinese National Cinema

Author: Yingjin Zhang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-08-02

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1134690878

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Chinese National Cinema, written for students by a leading scholar, traces the formation, negotiation and problematization of the national on the Chinese screen over ninety years.

Hollywood, the Pentagon and Washington
Hollywood, the Pentagon and Washington

Author: Jean-Michel Valantin

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1843311704

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A concerned investigation of the curious relationship between Hollywood and the US Department of Defense that exposes some distressing collaborations.

The German Cinema Book
The German Cinema Book

Author: Tim Bergfelder

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-02-20

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 1911239422

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This comprehensively revised, updated and significantly extended edition introduces German film history from its beginnings to the present day, covering key periods and movements including early and silent cinema, Weimar cinema, Nazi cinema, the New German Cinema, the Berlin School, the cinema of migration, and moving images in the digital era. Contributions by leading international scholars are grouped into sections that focus on genre; stars; authorship; film production, distribution and exhibition; theory and politics, including women's and queer cinema; and transnational connections. Spotlight articles within each section offer key case studies, including of individual films that illuminate larger histories (Heimat, Downfall, The Lives of Others, The Edge of Heaven and many more); stars from Ossi Oswalda and Hans Albers, to Hanna Schygulla and Nina Hoss; directors including F.W. Murnau, Walter Ruttmann, Wim Wenders and Helke Sander; and film theorists including Siegfried Kracauer and Béla Balázs. The volume provides a methodological template for the study of a national cinema in a transnational horizon.

The CIA in Hollywood
The CIA in Hollywood

Author: Tricia Jenkins

Publisher: Univ of TX + ORM

Published: 2016-03-08

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0292772475

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An in-depth study of the CIA’s collaboration with Hollywood since the mid-1990s, and the important and troubling questions it creates. What’s your impression of the CIA? A bumbling agency that can’t protect its own spies? A rogue organization prone to covert operations and assassinations? Or a dedicated public service that advances the interests of the United States? Astute TV and movie viewers may have noticed that the CIA’s image in popular media has spanned this entire range, with a decided shift to more positive portrayals in recent years. But what very few people know is that the Central Intelligence Agency has been actively engaged in shaping the content of film and television, especially since it established an entertainment industry liaison program in the mid-1990s. The CIA in Hollywood offers the first full-scale investigation of the relationship between the Agency and the film and television industries. Tricia Jenkins draws on numerous interviews with the CIA’s public affairs staff, operations officers, and historians, as well as with Hollywood technical consultants, producers, and screenwriters who have worked with the Agency, to uncover the nature of the CIA’s role in Hollywood. In particular, she delves into the Agency’s and its officers’ involvement in the production of The Agency, In the Company of Spies, Alias, The Recruit, The Sum of All Fears, Enemy of the State, Syriana, The Good Shepherd, and more. Her research reveals the significant influence that the CIA now wields in Hollywood and raises important and troubling questions about the ethics and legality of a government agency using popular media to manipulate its public image. “Fascinating, highly readable . . . Overall, Jenkins’s work is fresh and original, and demonstrates sound scholarship. The author has a passion for the topic that translates to vibrant writing. It is also a concise as well as entertaining look at an aspect of the CIA—its media relations with Hollywood—of which little is known. Enthusiastically written and incorporating effective, illustrative case studies, The CIA in Hollywood is definitely recommended to students of film, media relations, the CIA, and U.S. interagency relations.” —H-War

Cinema's Military Industrial Complex
Cinema's Military Industrial Complex

Author: Haidee Wasson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2018-01-23

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 0520291506

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The vast, and vastly influential, American military machine has been aided and abetted by cinema since the earliest days of the medium. The US military realized very quickly that film could be used in myriad ways: training, testing, surveying and mapping, surveillance, medical and psychological management of soldiers, and of course, propaganda. Bringing together a collection of new essays, based on archival research, Wasson and Grieveson seek to cover the complex history of how the military deployed cinema for varied purposes across the the long twentieth century, from the incipient wars of US imperialism in the late nineteenth century to the ongoing War on Terror. This engagement includes cinema created and used by and for the military itself (such as training films), the codevelopment of technologies (chemical, mechanical, and digital), and the use of film (and related mass media) as a key aspect of American "soft power," at home and around the world. A rich and timely set of essays, this volume will become a go-to for scholars interested in all aspects of how the military creates and uses moving-image media.

Operation Hollywood
Operation Hollywood

Author: David L. Robb

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2011-04-29

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1615924515

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Directors of war and action movies receive access to billions of dollars worth of military equipment and personnel, but it comes with a hidden cost. As a veteran Hollywood journalist shows, the final product is often not just what the director intends but also what the powers-that-be in the military want to project about America's armed forces.