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With strict guidelines on methodology and time frame -- films produced after September 2001, and a socio-semiotic theoretical framework -- Betty Kaklamanidou unpacks the problematic terms and ideas that go along with defining a new genre. Kaklamanidou considers a different sub-genre per chapter, placing each group of films in their socio-historical context to reach conclusions about the production of political films in millennial Hollywood. In shifting the terms of the debate, The "Disguised" Political Film in Contemporary Hollywood offers a fresh, new approach to the subject of the political film.The political film is not a clearly delineated object but rather an elusive one and resistant to clear boundaries. So, what is a political film? Can The Hunger Games (2012) belong to the same category as Lincoln (2012)? Is Jarhead (2005) a political movie simply because it is set during the Gulf War but with no reference to the motives of the conflict and/or American and Arab relations, and thus in the same group of war films such as The Three Kings (1999), another narrative that focuses on the same military conflict but includes direct commentary to governmental and military strategies? Are historical films by definition political since the majority deals with significant events and/or people in a specific socio-cultural landscape?>
Info autore
Betty Kaklamanidou is Professor in Film & TV History & Theory and Vice Chair of the School of Film, Aristotle University, Greece. A Fulbright scholar, she also chaired the Anglophone MA Program “Film & Television Studies” (2019-2024). She is currently heading the three-year Research Project titled “Plyta’s Unknown Cinema” (2025-2028), funded by H.F.R.I. Her monographs include, among others, Easy A: The End of the High-School Teen Comedy? (2018), The ‘Disguised’ Political Film in Contemporary Hollywood (2016), and Genre, Gender and the Effects of Neoliberalism (2013). Betty is also the editor of Maria Plyta. First Greek Female Director: 17 Films, 17 Readings (2025), New Approaches to Contemporary Adaptation (2020) and co-editor of several collections, such as Contemporary European Cinema (2018), Politics and Politicians in Contemporary U.S. Television (2016), and The 21st Century Superhero (2010). Betty’s articles have appeared in Television & New Media, Literature/Film Quarterly, Flow, Celebrity Studies, Filmicon, and The Journal of Popular Romance Studies.
