Hollywood politics: Attack of the moral clones

Abstract

The central argument of this paper is that in light of the extensive debates on globalisation that it is essential to rethink the issues of the global, the imperialist and the national in regard to forms of cinema. To unravel the paradox of the national, the imperial and the global, the paper will be divided into three sections, the first, outlines and critiques Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s idea of Empire.1 Part two then details how the paradox of competing sources of power relates to the Hollywood film industry and to the depictions of American politics in films. The argument is that there are specific tropes to that cinema that have mythical, symbolic and ideological effects which are stronger in the United States than outside that country. Concomitantly, there are aspects of the Hollywood trope (notably its aesthetic) that have global appeal and this is a major reason for the success of Hollywood in capturing global audiences. Nevertheless, the case will be made that there still remains elements of the American economic and state power that also explains why American films have international dominance. Lastly, the paper uses the case of George Lucas’s blockbuster epic, Star Wars, to illustrate the paradox of the imperialist, the global and the national. Moreover, this section will illustrate how American films present an antithetical response to democratic politics, with the standard trope being that the ‘people’ are best regarded as clones led by men of moral fortitude who defend democracy.