Increasingly resistant to lessons on international politics, society often turns to television and film to engage the subject. Numerous movies made in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries reflect political themes that were of concern within the popular cultures of their times. For example, Norman Jewison's The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966) portrays the culture of suspicion between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, while several of Alfred Hitchcock's movies as well as the John Wayne film Big Jim McLain (1952) and John Milius's Red Dawn (1984) helped to raise and sustain skepticism about the Soviet Union. World Politics on Screen: Understanding International Relations through Popular Culture uses films and television shows like these as well as contemporary including 24, The Simpsons, South Park, and The Daily Show to guide readers to a deeper understanding of enduring issues in international politics. In this unique and insightful volume, author Mark Sachleben demonstrates that popular culture reflects societal beliefs about the world, and that the messages captured on television and film transcend time and place. Using films such as Secret Ballot (2001), Under the Bombs (2007), and Wall E (2008), he addresses topics such as international relations and diplomacy, the study of war, nuclear weapons, poverty, immigration and emigration, human rights, and genocide. An engaging read for students and for anyone with a general interest in politics and popular culture, World Politics on Screen succeeds in its argument by illuminating unexplored assumptions about international policy.

From its creation in 1950, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the German Democratic Republic’s Ministry for State Security closely monitored its nation’s citizens. Known as the Staatssicherheit or Stasi, this organization was regarded as one of the most repressive intelligence agencies in the world. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2006 film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) has received international acclaim—including an Academy Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and multiple German Film Awards—for its moving portrayal of East German life under the pervasive surveillance of the Stasi. In Totalitarianism on Screen, political theorists Carl Eric Scott and F. Flagg Taylor IV assemble top scholars to analyze the film from philosophical and political perspectives. Their essays confront the nature and legacy of East Germany’s totalitarian government and outline the reasons why such regimes endure. Other than magazine and newspaper reviews, little has been written about The Lives of Others. This volume brings German scholarship on the topic to an English-speaking audience for the first time and explores the issue of government surveillance at a time when the subject is often front-page news. Featuring contributions from German president Joachim Gauck, prominent singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, journalists Paul Hockenos and Lauren Weiner, and noted scholars Paul Cantor and James Pontuso, Totalitarianism on Screen contributes to the growing scholarship on totalitarianism and will interest historians, political theorists, philosophers, and fans of the film.

Hsiu-Chang Deppman puts landmark contemporary Chinese films in the context of their literary origins & explores how the best Chinese directors adapt fictional narratives & styles for film.

Cinematic depictions of real U.S. presidents from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush explore how Hollywood movies represent American history and politics on screen. Morgan and his contributors show how films blend myth and reality to present a positive message about presidents as the epitome of America's values and idealism until unpopular foreign wars in Vietnam and Iraq led to a darker portrayal of the imperial presidency, operated by Richard Nixon and Bush 43. This exciting new collection further considers how Hollywood has continually reinterpreted historically significant presidents, notably Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, to fit the times in which movies about them were made.

This examination of film genres discusses how various films in five genres reflect or comment on political themes and ideas. The author uses constructivist and feminist political theory to examine the development of the political discourse in these films, and considers new ways to conceptualize the relationship between film or television and politics.

This book explores the relationship between fictional television and American world politics in the period from 9/11 through to the presidency of Donald J. Trump. This period comprises a second golden age for fictional TV. The book therefore explores some of the best TV of all time across two decades of heightened political controversy.