American Cinema and Cultural Diplomacy

This book contends that Hollywood films help illuminate the incongruities of various periods in American diplomacy. From the war film Bataan to the Revisionist Western The Wild Bunch, cinema has long reflected US foreign policy’s divisiveness both directly and allegorically. Beginning with the 1990s presidential drama The American President and concluding with Joker’s allegorical treatment of the Trump era, this book posits that the paradigms for political reflection are shifting in American film, from explicit subtexts surrounding US statecraft to covert representations of diplomatic disarray. It further argues that the International Relations theorist Walter Mead’s concept of a US polity dominated by contesting beliefs, or a ‘kaleidoscope’, permeates these changing paradigms. This synergy reveals a cultural milieu where foreign policy fissures are increasingly encoded by cinematic representation. The interdisciplinarity of this focus renders this book pertinent reading for scholars and students of American Studies, Film Studies and International Relations, along with those generally interested in Hollywood filmmakers and foreign policy.

“This book is a good example of extenuating research, elaborated analysis and the open possibilities of interdisciplinary studies.” (Elmy Lemus Soriano, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 41 (3), 2021)

“Thomas J. Cobb has written a compelling and engaging book which weaves familiar texts of popular cinema into a fresh portrait of a country locked in self-examination of its role in the world.  This is not the ‘Cultural Diplomacy’ that readers may expect.  This is not a story of cinema winning friends around the post-Cold War World in the manner of the Jazz Ambassadors of the 1950s, rather Cobb uses culture, as displayed in three decades of Hollywood fantasy to illuminate the contradictions and tensions within US foreign policy.  The world watches and – despite or even because of the contradictions – has, on balance, been drawn towards the United States.” (Professor Nicholas J. Cull, University of Southern California)

“Thomas Cobb's American Cinema and Cultural Diplomacy offers a timely interrogation of the relationship between contemporary film and the shifting coordinates of American foreign policy. Interrogating a remarkably diverse rangeof case studies, genres and theorists, it makes a striking and original contribution to the field.” (Terence McSweeney, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, Solent University)

“American Cinema and Cultural Diplomacy is a very welcome - and highly topical - intervention in important debates around Hollywood's combination of soft power and box-office clout. Thomas Cobb provides an exemplary analysis of the complex allegorical strategies of contemporary American films and their reception discourses. Empirically based, theoretically informed and persuasively argued, this masterful study invites us to rethink the political significance of popular film. It also marks the arrival of a major new scholar and original thinker in the field.” (Professor James Chapman, editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television)

“The course of American foreign policy is never smooth --- including in the movies. Thomas Cobb deftly takesus inside the films to show the tension between America's ideals and its quests for power, between the national and the international, and between American exceptionalism and a declaration of the universal for all of us.” (Professor Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham)

Dr Thomas J. Cobb is an Academic Writing Tutor at Coventry University, UK. He explored cinematic allegories of US diplomacy for his doctoral thesis at the University of Birmingham, UK, where he also tutors in American and Canadian Studies. He has publications in American Studies in Scandinavia and Film International.