Political Fiction Research Articles

Review: Costa-Gavras: The Political Fiction Film by John J. Michalczyk

Book Review| July 01 1985 Review: Costa-Gavras: The Political Fiction Film by John J. Michalczyk Costa-Gavras: The Political Fiction FilmJohn J. Michalczyk Fabrice Ziolkowski Fabrice Ziolkowski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Film Quarterly (1985) 38 (4): 35. https://doi.org/10.2307/1212405 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Fabrice Ziolkowski; Review: Costa-Gavras: The Political Fiction Film by John J. Michalczyk. Film Quarterly 1 July 1985; 38 (4): 35. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/1212405 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1985 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Political Fictions

Political Fictions

Russell Baker to Michael Halberstam

96 LETTERS Eskimo and Indian days) participated in a good deal of semi-primitive medicine. I like the idea of being occasionally controversial or opinionated, in columns specifically labeled as opinion. I think that what will make the column different from other ones is the fact that I occassionally shoot off my mouth—after all, almost anyone can look up the latest treatment for athlete's foot and write a rather solemn column about it. If you need any additional biographical material, please let me know. I do think, by the way, that the little identifying slug that goes with the column should read something like, "Michael Halberstam, a practicing internist, is also . . ." Yours truly, Michael J. Halberstam, M.D. MJH:mpi:bjc Russeli Baker to Michael Halberstam November 28, 1977 Dear Michael, Mimi and I both read your novel over the weekend and enjoyed it, both. I have sent some incoherent blurb material to Kinney, which of course makes no attempt to do a fine critique. Nor will I try that here. The first thing to be noted is that the book reads damn fast. We both sailed right through it. This as you know is good. Second, Levine is just a very good strong character of the sort political fiction is usually very weak on. This should be a big plus in promoting a movie sale. I trust and hope you have a first-rate agent, or lawyer, as Lippincott in my experience is woefully unaggressive in the commercial arts, and it seems to me you have very good spin-off possibilities from this one. On the captious side: I am a bit confused about your dates. The New Hampshire primary, e.g., is always held in March, deep winter up there. The only thing that gives it any importance is its earliness. Held two weeks later, it would barely make the papers. You have it dated well up in April, as I recall. A small point, to be sure, but one that will make nitpickers say Halberstam doesn't know the first fucking thing about politics. I find the timing odd in other places, particularly at the end when Letters 97 we are in September and the party doesn't seem yet to have chosen between Levine and his opponent for the nomination. Captious Point Two: The opening pages describing America in 1988 are extremely interesting, but they make me feel that some kind of black comedy is about to be unfolded, and of course the story turns out to be something else altogether. I don't know that this is bad. You had me interested from the start. But it was a somewhat jarring switch to expectations when you shift gears and begin showing us Levine in human depth. I think the crux of the matter may be in the abrupt way you dispose of the Inevitable Candidate—the news that he has gone haywire with guns comes and goes like an episode of Joseph Heller. On the negative critical side, I must say that I think it a dreadful loss to the society that yet another doctor appears determined to spend himself on the typewriter. The country has far more books than it needs, and far fewer doctors, yet you sawbones all appear intent on widening the gap even further. An apparently capable doctor has just given us "Coma." At Yale the brilliant Doctor Seltzer fritters good clinical time away over the typewritter. Michael Crichton, if I'm not mistaken, is also a doctor, yet how little time he must have for sawing at gall bladders and palpating the trunk as he toils at his fiction. Surgeon Nolen writes when he should be groping in abdominal cavities. Over in Baltimore Edgar Berman is clacking out funny assaults on his profession and Betty Friedan, disdaining the scalpel forevermore, so far as I can make out. I ask you, Michael, do I abandon my typewriter and go about the office prescribing long vacations, less alcohol and an end to cigarettes for the coronary candidates who run my paper? Does your brother David administer poultices at Bellevue? Even Normal Mailer—God save the mark!—has refused to leave...

Political Fictions

Michael Wilding. Political Fictions. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1980. ix plus 266 pages. $25.00.

Political Fictions

Political Fictions

The Christian Movement and the Demand for a Theology of the People

In 1776, John Adams posed the question that would preoccupy his generation of American citizens and their children. "It is certain, in theory," he said, "that the only moral foundation of government is, the consent of the people. But to what extent shall we carry this principle?" The Revolution brought an accent of reality to a new self-evident truth, the sovereignty of the people, which Edmund Morgan has recently described as a "political fiction. " For the founding fathers the fiction of popular sovereignty held some resemblance to the facts, but they fully expected the governed and the governors to "join in a benign conspiracy to suspend disbelief" in the new fiction, in other words, to believe it rhetorically rather than literally. The people were not so kind, however, and the shrill and unending debate that characterized American history from Adams to Andrew Jackson concerned how seriously this fiction should be taken. 1 A number of scholars have recently explored the dimensions of this cultural ferment over the meaning of freedom. In the wake of their own and the French Revolution, Americans witnessed the rapid growth of voluntary organizations and popular newspapers, the formation of organized political parties amid heated and increasingly popular political debate, the armed protest of unprotected economic groups, sharp attacks upon elite professions and upon slavery, and new ideas of citizenship and representation, of old age and women's identity.2 Eugene Genovese has even argued that a revolutionary

Political fictions*

Higher Education QuarterlyVolume 33, Issue 1 p. 56-64 Political fictions* Stewart Justman, Stewart Justman Department of English, University of MontanaSearch for more papers by this author Stewart Justman, Stewart Justman Department of English, University of MontanaSearch for more papers by this author First published: December 1978 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2273.1978.tb01207.x * This article is a sequel to ‘Mass communications and tautology’, which appeared in nuq in the Autumn issue, 1977. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume33, Issue1December 1978Pages 56-64 RelatedInformation

Political Fictions

Political Fictions

Political Fictions

Political Fictions

Political Fiction in the Cinema: A Review article of Il pleut sur Santiago, directed by Helvio Soto

The IDS BulletinVolume 8, Issue 2 p. 31-33 Political Fiction in the Cinema: A Review article of Il pleut sur Santiago, directed by Helvio Soto Dudley Seers, Search for more papers by this author Dudley Seers, Search for more papers by this author First published: September 1976 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1759-5436.1976.mp8002008.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume8, Issue2September 1976Pages 31-33 RelatedInformation

Pasolini in Persia: The Shooting of 1001 Nights

My ambition in making films is to make them political in the sense of being profoundly 'real' in intent: in choosing the characters, in that which they say and in that which they do. That is why I refuse the political fiction film. One of the least appetizing things of the past few years are precisely those fashionable political films, these fictional political films, which are the films of half truths, of reality-unreality, of consolation and of falseness. They are made to pacify the consciousness. Instead of arousing polemics they suffocate it. . . . I avoid fiction in my films. I do nothing to console, nothing to embellish reality, nothing to sell the goods.

As You Like It: Pastoralism Gone Awry

The shifting perspective between actual and ideal that is so integral a part of the pastoral world in Renaissance literature is infused with urbanity, wit, and mild but revealing cynicism in As You Like It.' By the time Shakespeare wrote this delightful comedy the Elizabethan world was already yielding to the melancholy humor which was to predominate in a later age.2 This slight touch of malaise allows Shakespeare to maintain a healthy distance from the overtly sentimental possibilities of the pastoral material. In infusing the play with the romantic and idealistic glow virtually inherent in a pastoral romantic comedy, Shakespeare does not shrink from a simultaneously down-to-earth attitude toward the facts of real life which continuously undercuts the polite fictions of pastoral convention. In effect, he has combined the spirit of Marlowe's Come live with me and be my love with that of Raleigh's sardonic reply, If all the world and love were young, to make the pastoral a necessarily ephemeral but educative experience for the characters of the comedy. By making the Forest of Arden a temporary retreat from the world of the Machiavellian court, Shakespeare suggests the ideal which should be the foundation of the real; but by consistently undercutting the pastoral convention as a convention, he also suggests that the ideal of the pastoral is not an end in itself-which would be unattainable in any case-but the underlying substance of the real, the world of the possible which should inform the actual.

Two Adams and Eve in the Crystal Palace: Dostoevsky, The Bible, and We

“Prophetic” is a quality which few thoughtful readers would deny Zamiatin's We. For if its moral argument (the irreconcilability of “pure” communism and individual freedom) has, to a disturbing degree, been confirmed by the course of twentieth-century history, so have some of its boldest technological predictions (for example, stateenforced restrictions on human fertility, Communist-inaugurated space travel). Even its genre (an original blend of political satire and science fiction) has proven to be a prophecy of sorts, anticipating, as it does, the more celebrated satirical fantasies of Huxley and Orwell.

Strong Inference

Scientists these days tend to keep up a polite fiction that all science is equal. Except for the work of the misguided opponent whose arguments we happen to be refuting at the time, we speak as though every scientist's field and methods of study are as good as every other scientist's, and perhaps a little better. This keeps us all cordial when it comes to recommending each other for government grants. But I think anyone who looks at the matter closely will agree that some fields of science are moving forward very much faster than others, perhaps by an order of mag­ nitude, if numbers could be put on such estimates. The discoveries leap from the head­ lines - and they are real advances in complex and difficult subjects, like molecular biology and high-energy physics. As Alvin Weinberg (1964), says Hardly a month goes by without a stunning success in molecular biology being reported in the Proceed­ ing of the National Academy of Science. Why should there be such rapid advances in some fields and not in others? I think the usual explanations that we tend to think of-such as the tractability of the subject, or the quality or education of the men drawn into it, or the size of research contracts are important but inadequate. I have begun to believe that the primary factor in scienSource: Science (1965), 146:347-353. Copyright 1965 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and reprinted by permission.

The Withdrawal of the United States from Haiti, 1928-1934

The United States occupation of Haiti — despite benevolent intentions — was a thinly-disguised military dictatorship. The official view of the Department of State that the numerous U. S. officials there were merely advisers to the legitimate Haitian government, acting in accordance with limitations prescribed by treaty, was a polite fiction. It deceived no one, particularly the large number of Haitians who resented foreign experiments in benevolent despotism in their land.The real ruler of Haiti, as the system had evolved by the pivotal year of 1928 — the last “normal” year before the political crisis which precipitated withdrawal — was General John H. Russell, United States Marine Corps, the U. S. High Commissioner. The nominal ruler, President Louis Borno, generally relied upon his U. S. advisers. In Russell's own words “[Borno] has never taken a step without first consulting me.” When differences arose, usually as a result of pressures exerted on Borno by local politicians, General Russell was free to make appropriate concessions. But his will prevailed in any showdown conflict. The General was noted for his fairness, however, and his relations with Haitian officials were usually harmonious. Yet his military background, combined with his devotion to efficiency and economy, was not well-suited to preparing a dependent people for enlightened self-rule.

Political Science and Political Fiction

C. P. Snow, in his Rede Lecture on the scientific and literary worlds as separate cultures, lists four groups needed by a country if it is to “come out top” in the scientific revolution. First, as many top scientists as it can produce; second, a larger group trained for supporting research and high class design; third, educated supporting technicians; and “fourthly and last, politicians, administrators, an entire community, who know enough science to have a sense of what the scientists are talking about.”It seems increasingly clear that the growing army of “political” scientists—meaning natural scientists in politics—is more likely to be aided by students of politics prepared to understand the effects of science in political terms than by most of the recent efforts to understand politics in scientific terms. When one looks over the journals in political science, and in related areas of public opinion and social psychology, searching for significant conclusions in articles where much time has been spent on the elaboration of method, it is difficult to avoid V. O. Key's conclusion “that a considerable proportion of the literature commonly classified under the heading of ‘political behavior’ has no real bearing on politics, or at least that its relevance has not been made clear.”

Political Science and Political Fiction

C. P. Snow, in his Rede Lecture on the scientific and literary worlds as separate cultures, lists four groups needed by a country if it is to “come out top” in the scientific revolution. First, as many top scientists as it can produce; second, a larger group trained for supporting research and high class design; third, educated supporting technicians; and “fourthly and last, politicians, administrators, an entire community, who know enough science to have a sense of what the scientists are talking about.”It seems increasingly clear that the growing army of “political” scientists—meaning natural scientists in politics—is more likely to be aided by students of politics prepared to understand the effects of science in political terms than by most of the recent efforts to understand politics in scientific terms. When one looks over the journals in political science, and in related areas of public opinion and social psychology, searching for significant conclusions in articles where much time has been spent on the elaboration of method, it is difficult to avoid V. O. Key's conclusion “that a considerable proportion of the literature commonly classified under the heading of ‘political behavior’ has no real bearing on politics, or at least that its relevance has not been made clear.”

Fictions in American Politics

Political fictions are interpreted as a special category of social fictions, and the author lists some garden-variety examples. Political fictions are functional both for the system and for the direct participants, but they may also be dysfunctional to the extent that they encourage disbelief and scorn for the leaders who must employ them. The topic has received a relatively small amount of attention in recent political research.

Friends, Enemies, and the Polite Fiction

opposite. It is clear that the situational facts did not determine in any simple sense the contrasting community structures which emerged. Rather, the situations set certain limits, but within these limits contrasting value-orientations influenced the development of two quite different community types. It would appear that solutions to problems of community settlement pattern and the type of concrete social action which ensues are set within a value framework which importantly influences the selections made with the range of possibilities existing within an objective situation.

Australian Public Opinion: The Bretton Woods controversy

Australia lagged well behind the other United Nations in its decision to ratify the Bretton Woods Agreement, and' may have caused considerable surprise by so doing; for it had been among the first to accept the other United Nations Agencies. Dr. Evatt had played a leading part in the discussions on peace settlements, labor organisation, colonies, veto power and, particularly, in his insistence on the necessity for the United Nations Social and Economic Council to become a workable instrument and not just a polite fiction. Why, then, should Australia hang back from the formation of an International Monetary Fund and an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development? An examination of the growth of Australian opinion about Bretton Woods may help to illustrate the way in which elaborate plans for international organisation' (or any form of political organisation) may flounder on the rocks of deep-seated prejudice and lack of accurate information.