Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film

Camera Politica is a book that I first read in college and have managed to keep a copy handy ever since. I would recommend this book for film buffs, political junkies, artists and auteurs alike. Although limited in scope ( it could have covered more films from earlier eras ), the book does shed light on the films of Hollywood and their cultural impact on society. My favorite chapters deal mainly with films of the tumultuous 60's and 70's. [...]

Camera Politica is a must for all who are interested in studying the development of film studies. In this book, Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner offer a plethora of studies of films from the late 60s to the 80s in order to make a larger argument about that period of history. Their basic premise is that these films are in a dialectical relationship to the rise of conservative politics in the 80s. Meaning, the growing sentiment of conservativism informs films like Dirty Harry and Rambo, but at the same time, the development of a full fledged conservative popular culture, in which these films are involved, creates a social milieu in which conservative politics appears attractive and the remedy to growing economic and social disturbances. They also criticize liberals for feeding into conservative filmic representations, often identifying the same ills as conservatives in their own attempts at cultural production. But, more significantly, liberal critics did not offer counter-representations that would do the same culture work that the conservative films of the late 70s and 80s did. Thus, they call for a new radical cinema. They are Marxist in orientation (though they are clearly aligned with feminisms, radical race theorists, and student radicals), and so they are suggesting that a Marxian culture and a Marxist cinema must come into being. This cinematic culture must diagnose problems but it also must offer remedies that speak to the large majority of people. Perhaps, most provocatively (especially for the time this book was written), Ryan and Kellner claim that this new Marxian cinema can take the form of the popular Hollywood film, and in fact it must if it wants to reach mainstream society. Though this book is a periodization of films, it also offers new theoretical devices. The first is the notion of transcoding: a film transcodes social attitudes. The second is ideology: the ideological work of Hollywood cinema is to try and offer remedies for social ills, but in so doing, it must admit ills do in fact exist. Thus ideology is double-edged. The third is diagnostic critique: the method of reading films that excavate both the ideological containment and the problem being identified. At this point in history, Camera Politica might appear a bit dated. But if anyone is interested in doing a historical periodization of American culture, this book is simply a MUST. If anyone is new to the area of visual and film culture and wants a book that might offer some theoretical methods as well as demonstrations of readings, then, they might want to pick this book up. This book is a bit of an overlooked classic, and it should be considered a staple in film studies.