World Politics on Screen
World Politics on Screen

Author: Mark A. Sachleben

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-03-04

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0813143128

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Increasingly resistant to lessons on international politics, society often turns to television and film to engage the subject. Numerous movies made in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries reflect political themes that were of concern within the popular cultures of their times. For example, Norman Jewison's The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966) portrays the culture of suspicion between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, while several of Alfred Hitchcock's movies as well as the John Wayne film Big Jim McLain (1952) and John Milius's Red Dawn (1984) helped to raise and sustain skepticism about the Soviet Union. World Politics on Screen: Understanding International Relations through Popular Culture uses films and television shows like these as well as contemporary including 24, The Simpsons, South Park, and The Daily Show to guide readers to a deeper understanding of enduring issues in international politics. In this unique and insightful volume, author Mark Sachleben demonstrates that popular culture reflects societal beliefs about the world, and that the messages captured on television and film transcend time and place. Using films such as Secret Ballot (2001), Under the Bombs (2007), and Wall E (2008), he addresses topics such as international relations and diplomacy, the study of war, nuclear weapons, poverty, immigration and emigration, human rights, and genocide. An engaging read for students and for anyone with a general interest in politics and popular culture, World Politics on Screen succeeds in its argument by illuminating unexplored assumptions about international policy.

World Politics on Screen
World Politics on Screen

Author: Mark Sachleben

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-01-29

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0813143136

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Few American military figures are more revered than General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing (1860--1948), who is most famous for leading the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. The only soldier besides George Washington to be promoted to the highest rank in the U.S. Army (General of the Armies), Pershing was a mentor to the generation of generals who led America's forces during the Second World War. Though Pershing published a two-volume memoir, My Experiences in the World War, and has been the subject of numerous biographies, few know that he spent many years drafting a memoir of his experiences prior to the First World War. In My Life Before the World War, 1860--1917, John T. Greenwood rescues this vital resource from obscurity, making Pershing's valuable insights into key events in history widely available for the first time. Pershing performed frontier duty against the Apaches and Sioux from 1886--1891, fought in Cuba in 1898, served three tours of duty in the Philippines, and was an observer with the Japanese Army in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War. He also commanded the Mexican Punitive Expedition to capture Pancho Villa in 1916--1917. My Life Before the World War provides a rich personal account of events, people, and places as told by an observer at the center of the action. Carefully edited and annotated, this memoir is a significant contribution to our understanding of a legendary American soldier and the historic events in which he participated.

Adapted for the Screen
Adapted for the Screen

Author: Hsiu-Chuang Deppman

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2010-04-30

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0824833732

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Hsiu-Chang Deppman puts landmark contemporary Chinese films in the context of their literary origins & explores how the best Chinese directors adapt fictional narratives & styles for film.

Totalitarianism on Screen
Totalitarianism on Screen

Author: Carl Eric Scott

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-07-11

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 081314499X

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From its creation in 1950, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the German Democratic Republic’s Ministry for State Security closely monitored its nation’s citizens. Known as the Staatssicherheit or Stasi, this organization was regarded as one of the most repressive intelligence agencies in the world. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2006 film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) has received international acclaim—including an Academy Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and multiple German Film Awards—for its moving portrayal of East German life under the pervasive surveillance of the Stasi. In Totalitarianism on Screen, political theorists Carl Eric Scott and F. Flagg Taylor IV assemble top scholars to analyze the film from philosophical and political perspectives. Their essays confront the nature and legacy of East Germany’s totalitarian government and outline the reasons why such regimes endure. Other than magazine and newspaper reviews, little has been written about The Lives of Others. This volume brings German scholarship on the topic to an English-speaking audience for the first time and explores the issue of government surveillance at a time when the subject is often front-page news. Featuring contributions from German president Joachim Gauck, prominent singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, journalists Paul Hockenos and Lauren Weiner, and noted scholars Paul Cantor and James Pontuso, Totalitarianism on Screen contributes to the growing scholarship on totalitarianism and will interest historians, political theorists, philosophers, and fans of the film.

Politics Go to the Movies
Politics Go to the Movies

Author: Joel R. Campbell

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-03-14

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 179363517X

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Movies and television series are excellent tools for teaching political science and international relations. Understanding how stories in various film and television genres illustrate political ideas can better assist students and fans understand and appreciate the political subtext of these media products. This book examines politics through five film genres and their variants. Gangster movies focus on American and other organized crime. They reached their zenith in the films of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Political thrillers express paranoia about secrecy and political conspiracies, while action movies channel anger at foreign and domestic threats to order. Superhero films and TV present modern characters who seek to serve society as they face personal struggles about their individual identities. War movies promote positive images of wars when conflicts are perceived as successful, but often include antiwar messages when wars turn out badly. Western movies fell out of favor in the 1970s and 1980s but have undergone a renaissance since the 1990s. Westerns can be taken as either political parables, or as meditations on policing, anarchy, community organization. The author argues that while these genres all offer escape, they also offer important political lessons.

Algeria on Screen
Algeria on Screen

Author: NABIL. BOUDRAA

Publisher:

Published: 2020-01-15

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9781621965008

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This study explains how Merzak Allouache broke away from Algerian state-run cinema to create an original style that makes him both unique and extremely interesting. This book provides context and analysis of his films.

The Politics of James Bond
The Politics of James Bond

Author: Jeremy Black

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9780803262409

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The adventures and antics of James Bond have provided the world with many of the most gripping story lines of the last half-century. Fleming?s novels were bestsellers in their day, and the Bond films have been even more popular, becoming the most enduring and successful film franchise in history. By some estimates, half of the world?s population has seen a James Bond movie. A fascinating and accessible account of this global phenomenon, The Politics of James Bond uses the plots and characterizations in the novels and the blockbuster films to place Bond in a historical, cultural, and political context. ø Jeremy Black charts and explores how the settings and the dynamics of the Bond adventures have changed over time in response to shifts in the real-world environment in which the fictional Bond operates. Sex, race, class, and violence are each important factors, as Agent 007 evolves from Cold War warrior to foe of SPECTRE and eventually to world defender pitted against megalomaniacal foes. The development of Bond, his leading ladies, and the major plots all shed light on world political attitudes and reflect elements of the real espionage history of the period. This analysis of Bond?s world and his lasting legacy offers an insightful look at both cultural history and popular entertainment.

Hollywood Goes to War
Hollywood Goes to War

Author: Clayton R. Koppes

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1990-08-16

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780520071612

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The little-explored story of how politics, propaganda, and profits were combined to create the drama, imagery and fantasy that was American film during World War II. 32 black-and-white photographs.

Seeing Politics
Seeing Politics

Author: Sophie Harman

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2019-07-04

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0773557881

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Visual politics and the aesthetic turn in international relations have emphasized the power of the image in world politics. Postcolonial and decolonial feminist theory shows the urgent need to rethink research and teaching methods. What happens when these concepts converge and such thinking is translated into practice? Engaging with a broad range of topics – the politics of everyday life, health, HIV/AIDS, Africa, post-colonialism, gender/feminist theory, visuality, film, and method – in Seeing Politics Sophie Harman looks at scholars who are pushing the boundaries of how they do research, how they communicate their research to a broader audience, and what counts as scholarship in world politics. Through a detailed exploration of the political process of film production, from inception and co-production to distribution and exhibition, she addresses the tricky transnational relationships, government gatekeeping, and global hierarchies of film governance that control and marginalize the stories and people we see. Fundamentally, Seeing Politics is about how narrative feature film challenges and advances the discipline of international relations, revealing aspects of politics that would otherwise remain unseen and unaddressed. Film is not just a way of communicating research. It is a method that produces research and visibility, advancing research practice and knowledge in international relations. Innovative and compelling, this book is about the politics of seeing, being seen, and what stops us from seeing.