Hollywood in the Age of Trump: USSO Special Series
Questions remain over whether former President Donald Trump will fade away or return, Grover Cleveland style, for another election cycle in 2024. Trump’s single term in office was memorable for its quality of sensory overload and contribution to a culture of partisan desensitisation in the Republican Party. The relationship between American Cinema and the political dynamics of the Trump years has, however, been less remarked on. This series explores both the allegorical and noticeably political relationship between Trump and American cinema. It focuses on issues as diverse as American politics’ recycling of Hollywood tropes, productions which grappled with the MeToo movement’s prominence in Trump’s single term and the cinematic role of nostalgia under the most ideologically unmoored administration in living memory. The series begins with an article by Anna Marini which discusses the allegorical representation of the US–Mexico border in Culture Shock (2019), the tenth installment of Hulu’s ‘Into […]