The Hollywood War Machine
U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture
Preview
Book Description
The newly expanded and revised edition of The Hollywood War Machine includes wide-ranging exploration of numerous popular military-themed films that have appeared in the close to a decade since the first edition was published. Within the Hollywood movie community, there has not been even the slightest decline in well-financed pictures focusing on warfare and closely-related motifs. The second edition includes a new chapter on recent popular films and another that analyzes the relationship between these movies and the bourgeoning gun culture in the United States, marked in recent years by a dramatic increase in episodes of mass killings.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS Preface Chapter One: Media Culture in the Imperial System Chapter Two: Militarism in American Popular Culture Chapter Three: War and Cinema: The Historical Legacy Chapter Four: The Vietnam Syndrome: Politics and Cinema Chapter Five: Recycling the Good War Chapter Six: Cinematic Warfare in the New World Order Chapter Seven: Hollywood After 9/11
Author(s)
Biography
Carl Boggs is Professor of Social Sciences at National University in Los Angeles, Adjunct Professor at Antioch University in Los Angeles, and author or editor of numerous books including Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War (Rowman & Littlefield 2004) and Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in an Era of American Empire (Routledge 2003).
Tom Pollard is Professor of Social Sciences at National University in San Jose and a documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared on BBC, the Discovery Channel, the Life Network, Canadian Broadcasting System, and various PBS channels. His most recent book is Sex and Violence: The Hollywood Censorship Wars (Paradigm, 2010) and he has coauthored with Carl Boggs The Hollywood War Machine (Paradigm, 2007) and A World in Chaos: Social Crisis and the Rise of Postmodern Cinema (Rowman & Littlefield 2003).
Reviews
Praise for the First Edition
“This politically informed book demonstrates how war movies are more than just entertainment. They serve—intentionally or not—as a cultural weapon of global empire. Clearly written, richly researched, and persuasively argued, The Hollywood War Machine is a feast for any opponent of militaristic propaganda.”
—Michael Parenti, author of Superpatriotism and The Culture Struggle
“From Tom Cruise in Top Gun down to United 93, about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hollywood has played a crucial role in implanting militarism, hypermasculinity, and racism deep in the American psyche. Carl Boggs and Tom Pollard’s The Hollywood War Machine is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of American imperialism.”
—Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire
“A critical cultural chronicle of postwar American political history. Engaging and penetrating. . . . It patiently relates the complicity of Hollywood in the culture of American militarism.”
—Jan Nederveen Pieterse, author of Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange
“Opinionated and witty . . . it has fizz.”
—Terrell Carver, author of Engels: A Very Short Introduction
“American intervention and empire since the Progressive Era have not come out of thin air. Instead their politics have been colonizing popular culture at the cinema in Westerns, sci-fi films, spy movies, and political thrillers for decades. Boggs and Pollard develop an excellent critical overview of how and why the military-industrial-entertainment complex has become so powerful during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in this wide-ranging study of American film. Reading The Hollywood War Machine helps us understand why many think violence is truly as American as apple pie.”
—Timothy W. Luke, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University