The U.S. Politics and the Film Industry:The Role of Hollywood in Bush’s “War on Terror”

Abstract

Many Hollywood narrative films bear in the background a hidden charge of cultural and political orthodoxy and revisionism. These films target large audiences to primarily entertain them but on another level, they greatly influence them in shaping their political vision of social facts. This research aims at unveiling the subtilities with which the Hollywood film industry shapes unconsciously the U.S. political ideologies, nationally and internationally, and how Hollywood films psychologically affect viewers. It also discusses the nature of the relationship between Hollywood and the US administration and their use of film to promote their internal and external policy. Hollywood’s popularity around the world became the channel through which the US administration formulate and shape people’s political perspectives. It became the main means to spread the “Global War on Terror” cry that George W. Bush launched in the aftermath of the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and Washington DC. This study discusses the overwhelming role of movies on being part of the US Foreign Policy after the 9/11 events. We conclude with the undeniable fact that Hollywood was an extension and a backbone of the 9/11 war on terror and its subsequent engine, the new American domestic and foreign policy ideology.