Reading films through political classics

Genres of politics in popular cultures

Authors

• John S. Nelson

Abstract

This article argues that there is a need to study the political myths in popular genres without accepting the prejudicial supposition that they are popular falsehoods, romantic mistakes, or other species of political error to be overcome by academic analysis. The need is to approach them as cultural practices and political realities with varying dynamics in terms of truth and power. The method is to move back-and forth among contrasting genres, seeking to fathom their politics through myriad comparisons among their conventional characters, settings and events. The article means to pay homage to Arendt, not so much by addressing directly what she wrote, but rather by producing theory of her kind in tune with our times. The mass-mediated, popular genres are our ways to theorize about post-modern and post-western politics. These genres are modes of practical action, because they remake the political myths we live every day. The theories articulated in popular genres are often as good or better than political theories in more scholarly form because they are more vivid in evoking present phenomena, past sources, and future prospects. They are better, too, because they can attain greater accuracy, insight, and effectiveness for politics in the everyday situations where most of us live the rest of our lives, political and otherwise.