| dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates the ways representations of terrorism in Hollywood,
German and British cinema embody what Slavoj Žižek describes as the postpolitical,
that is the current state of denial of alternatives within global politics
and a directionlessness within cultural theory, which set in after the apparent
defeat of the possibility of a radical alternative to capitalism. Moreover, this
thesis proposes that films about terrorism are not only cultural expressions of
the post-political, but also show the post-political condition to be problematic,
displaying as they do symptoms such as the devaluation of human subjectivity
and its concomitant failure to achieve progressive political change.
Žižek’s philosophical approach as a method of interpreting the postpolitical
is applied to the films Munich (2005), Zero Dark Thirty (2012) The
Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) Die Kommenden Tage/The Coming Days,
(2010) Four Lions (2010) and Hunger (2008). As well as Žižek’s work, the
writings of other critics and commentators and such as Frank Furedi, Thomas
Elsaesser, Kenan Malik and others are drawn on. The aesthetic and formal
properties of these films are read against Žižek’s texts on ideology critique,
which are primarily directed at the post-political. The films shown exhibit
expressions of the post-political in notions of empathy and sustainability,
campness, and postmodern forms of narrative, which Žižek calls filling in
gaps, and Žižek’s concept of ‘the act’.
By mapping the post-political in Hollywood, British and German cinema
this research assays the manner in which screen terrorism is symptomatic of
the post-political condition. | en_US |
