IAS Talking Points Seminar: “America’s story” - The War Film as Cultural Battleground

Terence McSweeney explores the efficacy and resonance of the cinematic medium in his presentation interrogating the social, historical and political role of the American war film. Should we understand films about the Second World War, the Vietnam War and the more recently the ‘9/11 Wars’ as disposable popular culture texts or might they have been able to shape how the United States has come to understand and even remember these conflicts in the cultural imaginary?

Covering a broad range of films from Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), to Platoon (1986), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and American Sniper (2014), Terence examines their relevance for audiences at the time of their release and, perhaps even more importantly, for the generations that follow, as for a great many people around the globe these wars have become “America’s story” as Steve Martin’s Norm Oglesby tells the eponymous protagonist of Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk (2016).

Terence is a Senior Lecturer in Film at Solent University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the IAS. He is the author and editor of a number of books on the relationship between film and society including The 'War on Terror' and American Film: 9/11 Frames per Second (2014) and American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11 (2016). His most recent book was released in the summer of 2018 entitled Avengers Assemble! Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2018). He is currently writing a monograph about the representation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in international cinema called Blowback: The ‘9/11’ Wars in Global Film.

All welcome. Please note that there may be photography and/or audio recording at some events and that admission is on a first come first served basis. Please follow this FAQ link for more information.