Cinema Wars explores the intersection of film, politics, and US culture and society through a bold critical analysis of the films, TV shows, and documentaries produced in the early 2000s

Offers a thought-provoking depiction of Hollywood film as a contested terrain between conservative and liberal forcesFilms and documentaries discussed include:Black Hawk Down,TheDark Knight,Star Wars,Syriana,WALL-E,Fahrenheit 9/11 and other Michael Moore documentaries, amongst othersExplores how some films in this era supported the Bush-Cheney regime, while others criticized the administration, openly or otherwiseInvestigates Hollywoods treatment of a range of hot topics, from terrorism and environmental crisis to the Iraq war and the culture wars of the 2000sShows how Hollywood film in the 2000s brought to life a vibrant array of social protest and helped create cultural conditions to elect Barack Obama

Douglas Kellner is George Kneller Chair of Philosophy of Education at UCLA. He is the author of many books on social theory, politics, history, and culture, includingCamera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film, co-authored with Michael Ryan, andMedia Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy. He is the co-editor ofMedia and Cultural Studies Keyworks (Wiley-Blackwell 2006). Kellner's most recent book isGuys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombings to the Virginia Tech Massacre. His website is at www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html.

Acknowledgments vii

List of Plates ix

Introduction: Film, Politics, and Society 1

Hollywood Film as a Contested Terrain 2

Cinema, Politics, and Social History: From Cinematic Realism to Allegory 13

Hollywood Film and the Contemporary Moment: Signs of the Times 18

Reading Film Diagnostically: Imagining Obama 34

In This Book 40

1 Confronting the Horrors of the Bush-Cheney Era: From Documentary to Allegory 51

The Golden Age of Documentary 52

Real Disaster Films: FromAn Inconvenient Truthand Environmental Documentaries to Animated Allegories 71

Allegories of Catastrophe: Social Apocalypse in Disaster, Horror, and Fantasy Films 80

2 Hollywoods 9/11 and Spectacles of Terror 98

9/11 as Disaster Film and Spectacle of Terror 99

Representations of 9/11 in Hollywood Film:United 93andWorld Trade Center101

Disney Television Republican Propaganda: The Path to 9/11108

Hollywoods Terror War 118

3 Michael Moores Provocations 132

Michael Moore, Emile de Antonio, and the Politics of Documentary Film 133

Roger and Meand the Documentary of Personal Witnessing 136

Bowling For Columbineand Exploratory Documentary Montage 140

Fahrenheit 9/11and Partisan Interventionist Cinema 146

Sickoand the Michael Moore Genre 155

4 Hollywood Political Critiques of the Bush-Cheney Regime: From Thrillers to Fantasy and Satire 163

The Hollywood Political Thriller Against the Bush-Cheney Regime 165

Star WarsPrequels as Anti-Bush-Cheney Allegory 173

From Satire to Dystopia 183

5 The Cinematic Iraq War 199

Documenting Iraq 200

Interpreting the Iraq Fiasco 208

Iraq and Its Aftermath in Fiction Films 219

Conclusion: Hollywood Cinema Wars in the 2000s 239

Critical Representations 240

History Lessons 250

Final Reflections 258

References 262

Index 269