Abstract
Does cinema express or engender political thought? Can we think of cinema, or certain specific cinematic texts, as bodies of political theory? In this paper I provide a positive response to such questions by arguing for a notion of, what I want to call, cinema as political critique. In order to make sense of this idea and render it more concrete, I will draw on fragments of the political theory of Jürgen Habermas and will discuss and give an analysis of a popular and relatively recent Hollywood film: Gary Ross's Pleasantville (1998). Reading Habermasian themes in and through Pleasantville, I will argue that this text can be seen as a concrete instance of political critique and, more particularly, as a form of political critique that ethically implies a certain conception of freedom.
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Notes
I would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for clarifying the importance of this point in my mind. It is a claim I make, albeit in a slightly difference form, in Porter (2006, 47). More generally, I would like to thank both reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Porter, R. Habermas in Pleasantville: Cinema as Political Critique. Contemp Polit Theory 6, 405–418 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300300
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300300