ASTK18183U Cancelled Political Cinéma

Personal politics, institutional politics, and international politics are popularly represented and understood through the medium of cinema. Analysing the production and construction of political cinema involves studying the cinema aesthetic, political representation, and emotional impact of film.

The course uses the medium of Political Cinéma to study nine central dimensions of contemporary politics: ideology, the environment, the postcolonial, society, political economy, conflict, gender, international politics, and the state. For each dimension political cinema will be interrogated to understand how films act as factually-accurate empirical representations, theoretically-revealing analogous representations, and intellectually-heuristic metaphorical representations.  Using this approach, the course encourages participants to understand how films represent reality (e.g. Gregg, IR on Film, 1998), represent theory (e.g. Weber, IR Theory, 2013), and represent ideas (e.g. Sachleben, World Politics on Screen, 2018). In this respect film does not simply reflect contemporary politics but also constructs them.

The course begins by using Plato’s allegory of the cave to introduce how political cinema helps construct and reinforce ideological ‘common sense’ focusing on films such as The Truman Show, The Matrix, and City of Ember. Environmental politics and the absence of a precautionary approach to climate change examines Tomorrowland, The Day After Tomorrow, and Promised Land. Postcolonial Politics and its repression in western societies is studied through the film series Westworld, The Constant Gardener, and Black Panther. Cosmopolitical society and the culture shifts of local, global, and reactionary politics is approached through Sense8, Babel, and Traffic. International political economy and the financialisation of both the public and the private is looked at through In Time, Margin Call, and The International. Global conflict and the interplay between hegemony, injustice, and violence is explored through Syriana, Lord of War, and Blood Diamonds. Gender politics, the subjugation and exploitation of women, and misogyny is realised through analysing the film series The Handmaid’s Tale, The Whistleblower, and North Country. International Politics, the forgetting of the past, denial of the future, and conservative essentialisation of nation states is interrogated through Arrival, Contact, and Blade Runner. Finally the course concludes by drawing all of these dimensions together to understand how ideology, leadership, and state politics are legitimated through V for Vendetta, 1984, and The Great Dictator.

Preliminary plan:

1.           Plato’s Cave as Political Cinéma

2.           Tomorrowland: Critical Social Theory of Planetary Politics

3.           Westworld as Postcolonial Politics

4.           Sense8 Cosmopolitical Society

5.           In Time: International Political Economy

6.           A Syriana of Conflict

7.           Handmaid’s Tale of Gender Relations

8.           Arrival of Normative Power in Planetary Politics

9.           The State of Political Cinéma