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Government on the Silver Screen: Contemporary American Cinema's Depiction of Bureaucrats, Police Officers, and Soldiers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2013

Michelle C. Pautz  and
Megan K. Warnement
Michelle C. Pautz
Affiliation:
University of Dayton
Megan K. Warnement
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University
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Abstract

Movies continue to be the most accessible art form to Americans and that reach allows films to have a tremendous effect on moviegoers. With more than a billion movie tickets sold annually in the United States, the ability of movies to influence the perceptions of moviegoers is pronounced. Frequently, the government is part of those depictions. Although film is routinely studied in a host of disciplines, a focus on the portrayal of government generally and government officials more specifically, remains elusive. Instead of using a case-study approach, we examine recent, popular films to investigate how government is portrayed generally and how individual governmental characters are depicted. For our sample, we use the top-10 box office grossing films from 2000 to 2009 to assess how government is depicted in the films most likely seen by the majority of movie-watching Americans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that films generally have a mixed view of government with more negative depictions than positive. However, in examining bureaucrats, police officers, soldiers, and politicians, we found a much more positive depiction of these individual government characters. Americans may view government negatively, but in film they see positive depictions of individual civil servants.

Type
Features
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 569 - 579
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

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