Hollywood's Role in Laying the Groundwork for the Global War on Terror

The ideological biases of the mainstream US entertainment industry are shown by the narrative constructions and visualization of enemies and victims, and the purported effectiveness of US violence in solving crises in innumerable films and TV shows. This chapter is a dialogue between Matthew Alford and emerging scholar, Ben Arthur Thomason. Alford presents his work on US media, the national security state, imperialism, propaganda, and the culture of militarism. The dialogue centers on film politics as an area of study, which addresses the mediated representation of Western power. Highlighting numerous examples, it also incorporates Alford’s analyses of the impact of the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US Department of Defense on the mainstream film industry. The engagement concludes with Alford’s reflections on the fragile international context into which such propagandistic products are dropped.