Top Gun Maverick: Hollywood Sells Nationalism as Social Service
“Revvin’ up your engine Listen to her howlin’ roar Metal under tension Beggin’ you to touch and go Highway to...
Film
Can Cinema’s Soft Power Change Antigay Culture in Arab Countries?
The idea made sense commercially. After all, Paolo Genovese’s comedy-drama Perfetti Sconosciuti (Perfect Strangers) grossed more than €16 million in...
The Real Message Behind “Don’t Look Up”
Released just before Christmas on Netflix, Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” instantly became the most talked about movie of 2021....
JFK Is Not James Bond
In this age of social media and artificial intelligence (AI), the dominant model for modern systems of government has now...
Bollywood Misses Out Again at the Oscars
In 2019, India produced over 1,800 movies, making it the world’s largest film industry in terms of numbers; this dwarfs...
The Not-So Private Life of Elizabeth Taylor
“The Elizabeth Taylor who’s famous, the one on film, really has no depth or meaning to me,” the Hollywood icon...
Will China’s Soft Power Project Succeed?
With movie theaters closed all over the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hollywood studios had little reason for celebration...
Foreign-Language Entertainment Takes on English Soft Power
Since the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, non-English films from all over the world used to compete for a...
Johnny Depp’s Astonishing Gamble
Is Johnny Depp mad? Why on earth did he start legal action that could end in the destruction of his...
The Radical Right’s Fictions of a Better World
Science fiction has a long history of progressive politics. Probably the best-known example is the Star Trek franchise that started...
