major thesis of this challenging, stimulating book rests on the proposition that the historical record is not fixed, inviolate, and unchanging. Both thoughtful and engaging scholars, McCrisken and Pepper reach fascinating, provocative conclusions. Those interested in the intersection of film and history will appreciate this unique study. Essential.-Choice Magazine Hollywood has always been fascinated by America's past, but never more so than in the past fifteen years. Bringing exciting new perspectives to how and why Hollywood has sought to repicture American history, this book offers analysis of more than twenty mainstream contemporary films, including The Patriot, Amistad, Glory, Ride with the Devil, Cold Mountain, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Pearl Harbor, U-571, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven and Earth, JFK, Nixon, Malcolm X, Ali, Black Hawk Down, and Three Kings. Both authoritative and engaging, American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film is the first book to comprehensively explore the post-cold war period of filmmaking, and to navigate the complex ways that film mediates history-sometimes challenging or questioning, but more frequently reaffirming traditional interpretations. The authors consider why such films are becoming increasingly integral to the ambitions of a globally focused American film industry. Structured by historical periods, chapters cover significant events and eras such as the American Revolution, slavery and the Civil War, World War II, the sixties and seventies, civil rights and black nationalism, the Vietnam War, and post-cold war global conflicts. The lessons learned from the examples will be illuminating for general readers and college students alike. Trevor McCrisken is lecturer in American politics and international studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of American Exceptionalism and the Legacy of Vietnam: US Foreign Policy Since 1974. Andrew Pepper is lecturer in English and American literature at Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of The Contemporary American Crime Novel.
In pointing out that beginnings and endings merge in Don Winslow's ‘drug war’ trilogy – The Power of the Dog (2005), The Cartel (2015), and The Border (2019) – I argue that his narratives, like the ‘war on drugs’ itself, are ‘ongoing.’ Taking the resulting tension whereby this open-endedness or ongoing-ness is set against crime fiction's more typical generic push to resolution, as a starting point, I use and develop Mittell's concept of ‘complex TV’ to account for the complexities and continuities of Winslow's fiction. In one sense, this ongoing-ness is occasioned by Winslow's subject matter: it is the sociopolitical realities of the ‘war on drugs’ which determine the trilogy's structural and generic qualities. But what makes Winslow such an important writer are the particular ways he reshapes and pushes against the limits of narrative and genre, something that is made possible by and in turn makes possible a particular understanding of political struggle as ongoing and irresolvable. In my essay I explore the political implications of Winslow's fiction through a close examination of narrative and genre and where the emphasis is placed on breakdown and glitch rather than the successful realisation of totality.
Holography is now featured regularly on the Internet, particular on the World Wide Web (WWW) which provides text, still and animated graphics, video and sound information on an ever expanding catalogue of subjects to an ever expanding audience of users. During the last year the number of holography sites on the WWW has increased rapidly and now includes institutions, private individuals, commercial holography companies, publishers and enthusiasts. Is what they provide useful and are there any major benefits to this system which could not be achieved with more traditional methods of communication? A review of several holography sites is provided, a case study of the development of one of those sites is given in detail and an extensive reference list of WWW addresses is included.
Abstract This chapter examines the vexed question of historical accuracy and the now familiar complaint that Hollywood films deliberately falsify the historical record, as though that record itself is somehow inviolate and unchanging. It explores the ways in which filmmakers have used, and are using, American history as a way of engaging with the question of what ‘America’ stands for, culturally and politically, in the post-Cold War world. It focuses on how an event as sanctified as the American Revolution is used and transformed by filmmakers both to reveal something about the event itself and to shed some light on our own cultural and political moment. This chapter discusses two films: Hugh Hudson's Revolution (1985) and Roland Emmerich's The Patriot (2000). It analyses how Revolution tackles history, myth and subversion and how The Patriot is linked to history and the politics of authenticity.
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