Abstract
Since the 20th century, cinema and television have been preeminent samples of cultural production under various regimes, especially authoritarian ones. Film and television provide a dual lens, simultaneously diagnostic and prognostic, to reclaim and define the producing nation’s identity, partly through the use of nationalist iconography, for “[i]t is here, in television and cinema, that state efforts to control public opinion are most pronounced” (Wijermars, Memory Politics in Contemporary Politics 3). In this paper, we use formal cinematic analysis to explore how nationalist iconography in representative contemporary cinema and television produced under three regimes—two democratic (U.S. and Germany) and one authoritarian (Russia)—mediates, reflects, transforms, and defines national identity in a global circuitry of meaning. Texts analyzed include recent German period dramas like the Deutschland ‘83-’89 series and examples of post-2014 Russian cinema, which, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, schismed roughly into two camps, one featuring Kremlin-aligned “court bards” and another of more independent filmmakers, with both camps seeking to dictate the dominant portrayal of Russian national and cultural identity. In comparing these German shows and Russian films to Mad Men, Scandal, and The Americans, and a few representative American films of the past decade, we will analyze how mise-en-scène and videography are culturally and politically inflected and how they produce instances of surreptitious messaging often countering official historiography.
Presenters
Sunka SimonProf. of German, Film and Media Studies, Film and Media Studies, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, United States Alexander Rojavin
Foreign Media Analyst, Vannevar Labs, Pennsylvania, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Contemporary Film and Television, Germany, Russia, United States, National Identity
