Abstract

In this article I will try to show how the administrative and political power of violence is not only associated with hard power but also plays a role in propaganda and soft power as a passive, coercive, threatening violence of sorts, and an agent intended to change or perpetuate societies. To this end, I will review the history of American cinema and its relationship with the White House and the Pentagon in what might be considered a conquest of opinions, fears, and societies at an international scale thanks to Hollywood during the twentieth century. This American film empire may well find its first international crisis in the twenty-first century, both due to the emergence of new economic powers like China, with their own film industries linked to their governments, and the impoverishment of the population that once guaranteed its consumption in the Western world.