Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy
Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy is a 2010 book by Matthew Alford, which argues that even many of the most politically subversive films, such as Hotel Rwanda, Thirteen Days and Three Kings, provide favourable mythology for the United States' government. Alford draws attention to the power of corporate moguls and the role of the government in the production of films, such as Black Hawk Down, Terminator Salvation, and Transformers. The book is based on Alford's PhD thesis, which applied Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's Propaganda Model to the motion picture industry. Published in English by Pluto Press with a foreword by Michael Parenti, French translations then appeared in August 2018 and April 2023 which contained new introductory material by the author.
Reception
In the British
Criticisms
Roy Stafford, former editor of In the Picture magazine, says that Reel Power is a "solid introduction" to Hollywood and American politics but one which is a journalistic popularisation of Alford's more overtly academic work and as such, he implies unfortunately, "renders much that Film Studies has tried to do over the last fifty years... as effectively wasted effort."[6]
In The Scotsman, Hannah McGill, artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival opined that Reel Power "has its valid points to make [and] is at its best when it identifies and analyses cases of direct influence being brought to bear on film production by the US political establishment [...] its stonewalling of more contentious projects [...] or individuals in positions of constant influence" but that "I felt, on frequent occasion, as if I was in the company of the character Jane Horrocks played in Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet: the moodily self-righteous teen who hurled the word "FASCIST!" at anyone who failed to mirror her every conviction and desire."[7]
Further Work
A 2017 book, National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood, by Matthew Alford and Tom Secker, uses the Freedom of Information Act to establish in more detail how certain films and TV shows have been affected by the state. Director
See also
- Investigative journalism
- Military-industrial complex
References
- ^ James Walsh Review: Reel Power, Morning Star, 9 November 2010
- ^ Journal of Popular Culture Volume 45, Number 4 (August 2012), p. 908-10
- ^ Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews July 2011 vol. 40 no. 4 501
- ^ Simon Kinnear "Reel Power: Book Review", Total Film, December 2010, p.160
- ^ Robin Ramsay Book Review: Reel Power, Lobster, Winter 2010, pp. 148-150
- ^ Roy Stafford Book Review: The Case for Global Film, 15 October 2010
- ^ Book Review: Reel Power, The Scotsman, 9 October 2010
- ^ "Grounded with Louis Theroux: 16. Oliver Stone on Apple Podcasts".
- ^ "News Brief - Hollywood and the Pentagon: A Follow up Conversation with Oliver Stone".
External links
- Matthew Alford at SourceWatch