Political Thriller Research Articles

Understanding the Future Posthumanities: An Analytical Study of William Gibson’s Spook Country

William Gibson, who introduced the term ‘cyberpunk’ is a distinguished American Canadian science fiction writer. Gibson’s Spook Country, published in 2007, is a popular science fiction political thriller. With three interesting and intersecting plots, the novel is set against the background of the post-September 11, 2001 incident. Gibson portrays a future society that is beyond human capabilities using philosophical and imaginative posthumanist concepts such as Post-Humanism, Post-Anthropocentrism, and Post-Dualism intertwined with science fiction themes like interactive media, cyberspace, locative art, espionage and the art of virtual reality. This article analyzes the novel Spook Country based on Synthetic Theoretical Posthumanism, a typology framed by Matthew E. Gladden. The Posthuman theorists use philosophy and science fiction as a resource to re-examine the notion of “human” in a future techno cultural context. In addition, this study uses the theoretical framework of Francesca Ferrando, Rosi Braidotti, and other posthumanist theorists to substantiate how the novel represents future posthumanities.

Stolen Transformation, Conspiracy Theories and Female Detectives in Contemporary East-Central European Films and Series

The essay discusses the surging popularity of crime fiction as a reflection of the evolving social climate and the erosion of illusions regarding the post-socialist transformation in the 2010s Central Europe. It focuses on Entanglement (2011), a Polish paranoia thriller, X – The eXploited (2018), a Hungarian political thriller and Sleepers (2019), a Czech HBO production spy thriller series to examine how they portray symptoms of social and political crisis, perceived manipulation of the transition, and the struggle for female individual agency. These films offer a unique portrayal of the notion of a ‘stolen’ regime change, framed within conspiracy narratives suggesting the involvement of former state security personnel who managed to maintain their influence during the transition. Additionally, each narrative features a female protagonist who embarks on an investigation, uncovering a political conspiracy intertwined with her personal history. The fusion of conspiracy thriller elements with the emotional detective archetype represents a pivotal characteristic of these films, underscored by their transnational ambiguity. With the coupling of conspiracy narrative and female emotional detectives, paranoia and individual suffering, these films highlight the prevailing ­disillusionment and the sense of inaction that characterizes the contemporary social climate in the region.

Ambivalence, division, and critique: The collaborator in British Palestinian political thrillers

ABSTRACT This article examines the use of the collaborator as a literary figure and a critical tool in Mischa Hiller’s Shake Off and Ahmed Masoud’s Vanished: The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda. I argue that Hiller’s and Masoud’s political thrillers reclaim the collaborator as a figure of division and ambivalence, which facilitates engagement with local subtleties. These include the issue of collaboration and its implications for individuals as well as the Palestinian national struggle; the straightforward path from resistance to liberation and statehood; and the idea of a unified Palestinian ideology to which Palestinians, including Palestinian authors in the diaspora, need to be loyal. In this sense, Hiller’s and Masoud’s works offer important insights into wider trends in Palestinian writing, including an emphasis on non-heroic and ordinary characters, while using the political thriller, as a popular anglophone genre, to bring awareness of the Palestinian cause, in all its ambivalence and complexity.

Baghdad in My Shadow (2019): a Political Thriller in a Multireligious Europe

Abstract This article presents the Swiss-Iraqi director Samir Jamal Aldin and his thriller Baghdad in My Shadow (2019) and puts it into a context of the re-negotiation of identities in a culturally diverse Europe. The director’s intention is presented as a wish to deal with taboo issues related to gay rights, women’s emancipation, and religious fundamentalism within an Iraqi community in contemporary London. The film is analysed with the help of (1) theories analysing tensions between liberal-secular and religious-fundamentalist standpoints, and (2) theories about film viewers’ engagement, amplifying audiences’ emotions and thoughts about complex societal issues. The film could be said to advocate a standpoint of dynamic secularism promoting individual rights. The article argues, furthermore, that Samir as a Swiss-Iraqi filmmaker encourages thick viewing through his thriller format and invites the audience to a deeper emotional and intellectual understanding of liberal principles, honour culture, and hybrid identity positions in contemporary Europe.

Specters in the Paraguayan Woods: The Grammar of Secrecy in Hugo Giménez’s Matar a un muerto (2019)

ABSTRACT This article examines Hugo Giménez’s Matar a un muerto (2019), set in 1978 during the Paraguayan and Argentine dictatorships. I contextualize the film in post-dictatorial cinema. My close reading strays from memory studies, often privileged in studies of Southern Cone post-dictatorial cultural productions. Instead, I delve into how the film engages with the political thriller, a genre originated in North America becoming more and more practiced in Latin America. I introduce what I call the genre’s grammar of secrecy, a way of picturing secrets through prepositions of space. I focus on how this thriller spatializes languages and politics, specters, and secrets in the Paraguayan woods, to portray state-sponsored forced disappearance. Following Taussig’s “public secrets,” I theorize what I call precarious secrets, distinctive to Latin American political thrillers, showcasing other works in the genre with shared elements. Finally, I consider political implications of the representation of secrecy and specters.

Thirteen Days: A Political Reading

Thirteen Days is a historical political thriller, reflecting John F. Kennedy's leadership characteristics and the decision-making process during the Cuban Missile Crisis, close to reality. The study explains the connection between fictional and real and the decision-making process through the similarities and differences between film scenes and real images. In this sense, it examines John F. Kennedy's decision-making process and leadership structure using both international relations theories and film review methods. The film has been created with a historical perspective, the character traits, crisis and resolution processes of the American president and his small group members, as well as the actors in the Soviet bloc. In addition, evaluating the attitudes and approaches of the Kennedy government and Kennedy's leadership structure are clearly reflected to the audience in the film. This study contributes to the understanding of international relations by explaining Small Thinking Decision and Rational Actor Model theories with the cooperation of the field of international relations and cinema. The sum up, to compare of film scenes and real elements is also important in terms of editing the parts that appear as black-boxes during the crisis and interpreting them close to reality.

The Passenger and Stella Maris

The Passenger <i>and</i> Stella Maris

The politics of the political thrillers: de-othering Iran in Tehran (Kan, 2021-)

ABSTRACT The 21st century resurgence of the political thriller genre was informed by two factors: the post 9/11 geo-politics and the new global landscape of film and television. Tehran (Kan, 2021-), the recent political thriller series from Israel on Apple TV+, offers an illuminating example of the transnationalisation of the genre. By analysing the series along with discussions on its production context and reception in Israel, Iran and internationally, we demonstrate the complex and shifting relationship between the entertainment and the political elements, which typify the genre and its global travel. Revolving around the topical geo-political issues, the series’ action-based plot delineates an Israeli military operation to neutralise the Iranian nuclear reactor, while deeper layers of the narrative point to its political aim: countering negative representations of Iran and provoking a critique of Israel’s own forms of oppression and its internal identity crisis. Placing at its centre a young Israeli female agent, whose complexity is rooted in her hybrid identity as a migrant Iranian-Jew, the series renders visible suppressed histories of Iranian-Jewry’s fractured relationship with Zionism. This, we claim, is the core of the series’ political critique, which despite its potential subversion was largely lost in the reception space.

Impeachment: American Crime Story

During the quarter century separating Watergate from Whitewater, the powers of the American presidency mushroomed while the subjects of our political energies telescoped. A latter-day Nora Desmond might pinpoint the precise moment when the pictures got small—the first time, as melodrama, the next as soap opera. Compare, for example, the big-screen political thriller All the President's Men (1976), which enraptured audiences in the year of the nation's bicentennial and garnered eight Academy Award nominations, to the limited-run cable television series Impeachment, the third and least-watched installment of the Ryan Murphy anthology series American Crime Story, whose ten uneven episodes dribbled through the bilious fall of 2021. If the ground zero of All the President's Men is the smoke-filled newsroom, landlines ringing and typewriter keys clacking, the locus classicus of Impeachment is the microwave oven, in which Linda Tripp (brilliantly played by Ryan Murphy repertory company regular Sarah Paulson) heats a desultory Lean Cuisine night after night. “Weight Watchers makes these great meals you can microwave!” Monica Lewinsky (an effortful Beanie Feldstein) tells Tripp after they meet cute, in episode one, amid a warren of cubicles at the Pentagon, whence both have been exiled from the West Wing. It's 1996, and Bill Clinton's campaign to retake the White House is in full swing. “The highlight of my day is when I warm a potato in the microwave and eat it alone in front of the Nbc news,” Tripp sighs to Lewinsky in episode two. There are few episodes in which we see neither a microwave nor a blender—shout out SlimFast!—and few conversations between Linda and Monica that don't recur to weight. That she was bullied, in grade school, as “Big Mac,” is the first drop in the mighty stream of increasingly consequential confidences with which Monica entrusts her treacherous new gal pal. Call it All the President's Women: a tale of calories, dress sizes, and the fate of a nation. The pictures got small, but the female protagonists apparently didn't shrink quite enough.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Fidelio”: Participation of the Public in Graham Vick and Tobias Kratzer’s Productions

Relevance of the study. Versions of the only opus magnum of the German genius in modern filmmaking practice are associated with various sources: from myth, historical documentary to modern political thriller. The performances of Fidelio by the German Tobias Kratzer on the stage of the London Royal Opera and the British Graham Vick with the Birmingham Opera Company directed the vector of directorial innovations into the mainstream of the actual problem in the field of art — communication. Both directors brought the image of an opera audience onto the stage.Main objective of the study is to analyze the aforementioned opera productions from the point of view of the public participation, which presupposes the use of the stage experience of performance, documentary and Immersion Theater.Research methodology. Expending the experience of scientists who have developed the classification of the concepts of the public and the audience, the structural vector of these concepts in the form of a link in the recipient-performer-creator chain is revealed. In the versions from Vick and Kratzer, the public and the audience not only actively influence the artistic processes, but also become their participants. A watershed between the concepts of the public and the audience, important for comparing these artifacts, is revealed which required, provided the reason to use a comparative research methodology.The results of directorial artifacts. Vick interprets “Fidelio” as a performer-director. His fourth interactive version of the opera features Birmingham residents. Kratzer accentuates the historical traditionally theatrical barriers between performers and spectators and first gives the opportunity to relive the events of the costumed “Fidelio”, designed for a suggestive public reaction, which gives impetus to an unexpected evolution. At first, the audience, passively reflecting the events, acquires a certain breakthrough in consciousness in the finale and begins to act on a par with the protagonists of the opera. For Kratzer and Vick, the argument for including the image of the audience in the production was the historical fact (the creation of an opera during the French Revolution) and the coverage of the connections between Beethoven’s opera narrative and the social realities of modern society. Vick associated “Fidelio” with modern outbursts of totalitarianism. For Kratzer, the key idea is ideal love, inherent in Beethoven’s ideas of humanism, loyalty and moral duty. Vick’s Theater connects the type of audience as a spontaneous community. Kratzer focuses on the centuries-old culture of opera lovers united by common interests. The approbation of various forms of integration of performance and opera shows how important the artistic, social, didactic and psychological results of participation are. The public develops, evolves and becomes a professional audience.

Affect, Spatial Practices, and the City in Agatha Christie's "They Came to Baghdad"

They Came to Baghdad (1951), one of Agatha Christie’s mid-career books, could be categorized as a political thriller that unravels the ideological conflicts during the early Cold War period and the fight over Iraqi oil reserves. The scenes of the novel, like an adventure movie alters from a spy hunt to an archaeological theme, then to a romance, and finally a murder story and a thriller, in which fear comes up unexpectedly. Particularly, the setting provides the grounds for the female protagonist of the novel, Victoria Jones, to cross cultural and social boundaries and explore the space as a naïve pseudo-spy working for the international forces in Baghdad. By the lens of Nigel Thrift’s concept of “affective cities” and “spatialities of feeling,” this paper aims to explore how the setting of the novel—Baghdad—creates an intensive field of conflicting cultural and social forces that inscribe the female body, which runs in parallel with the narrative tactics Christie uses in revealing the affective emplacements of fear, suspicion, increasing levels of anxiety and insecurity in the cityscape. This paper, in other words, offers a spatial analysis of the novel in order to explore how the cityscape is mobilized and altered by the shifting perceptions of it by Victoria Jones while she defies the patriarchal demarcations of space. Through her adventures, it becomes possible to comprehend how power is distributed and circulated within this Middle Eastern society.

The post-9/11 American political thriller film: Hollywood’s dissident screenplays

The American political thriller, from its cinematic beginnings in the 1960s until its most recent period of popularity in the late 2000s and the early 2010s, has consistently displayed two salient characteristics: on an extra-textual level, it tends to keep a close relationship with the (geo)political environment at the time of production, with themes that resonate with the cultural moment, sometimes even referencing current events, and frequently challenging traditionally upheld American values with mistrustful attitudes towards the State, its institutions, the military and a suspect corporate establishment. On the other hand, the textual configuration of these films reveals a certain nonconformity with the traditionally dominant narrative-aesthetic norms of Hollywood cinema, featuring reactive agency in its protagonists, an unusual degree of subjectivity in its narration and a remarkable degree of ambiguity in the dramatic resolutions of some storylines. These formal features enhance the thematic concerns and cinematic worldview of the political thriller genre, both creating and exploiting perplexity and paranoia in the audience, through highly demanding narratives that remove the feeling of control from the viewer, and with a specific political intent that becomes exceptionally effective thanks to its entertainment value. The works analysed to illustrate this trend covers theatrically released Hollywood films of the genre from 2001 until the present day, with special attention on the impact of 9/11 and the War on Terror in their narrative premises and themes.

Mexican Melodrama in the Age of Netflix: Algorithms for Cultural Proximity

By using algorithms to track the data of their users in Mexico, Netflix has managed to solve the equation of cultural proximity. Since 2015 it has produced original series that include melodramatic traits, even if they align with genres like comedy, biopic and political thriller. Applying industrial and textual analysis, this article argues that Netflix has established a love-hate relationship with Mexican melodrama, making fun of its conventions but using them nevertheless. It concludes that algorithms have the potential to transform Internet tv providers into competitors for local producers.

‘The gates of hell’: the cruel optimism of national security in Secret City

ABSTRACT Despite the rapid expansion of counter-terrorism legislation in Australia since 9/11, recent polls show that Australians feel no safer. In this article, I examine the affective dimensions of national security in Foxtel’s political thriller Secret City (2016). I draw on Lauren Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism to illustrate the ways in which Secret City frames the desire for security itself as problematic. Secret City uses the logic of security and the visual language of surveillance to alert viewers to the threat that national security legislation poses; when politicians and intelligence agencies erode civil rights, journalistic freedoms, and democratic processes, citizens lose their ability to secure against their own security forces. However, in creating such a pervasive atmosphere of fear and threat for its viewers, Secret City actually validates the foundational desire for security which it shows to be so easily exploited. I argue that Secret City illustrates an impasse in which the desire for security is affectively binding, even when security practices jeopardize the very safety and wellbeing they promise.

Reading the Jamaican 1970s as Political Thriller

Reading the Jamaican 1970s as Political Thriller

Political Thriller Exposes the Underbelly of Global Goals

AbstractThis commentary characterizes the SDG indicator framework as a ‘political thriller’ in which the power struggles are hidden behind the veil of technocratic expertise. Like a Trojan horse, each indicator conceals the theories of change and development that lie within, exerting their interpretive influence. Where the politics will ultimately lead to by 2030 – in shaping policy priorities, power structures, and knowledge about development – is for now unknown and unpredictable.

Dark of the West by Joanna Hathaway

Reviewed by: Dark of the West by Joanna Hathaway Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Hathaway, Joanna Dark of the West. Tor Teen, 2019 [480p] (Glass Alliance) Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-7653-9641-9 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-7653-9643-3 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10 After uniting the eastern territories with pure military force, Athan’s father, General Dakar, is ready to turn his bombs and airplanes (one of which Athan will man) north to prove the might of his newly formed nation of Savient. Princess Aurelia is aware that politics in her northern kingdom of Etania are tricky but trusts her mother when she pursues an alliance with Savient’s general, despite the protests from their people. The queen’s invitation brings Athan to Etania, and the princess and pilot fall in love; when Savient’s covert military operations and true goals are exposed, Athan and Aurelia must pick sides in the conflict. Hathaway builds her world with an impressively deft hand, laying out much of the background and history through dialogue and action while keeping exposition to a minimum in Athan and Aurelia’s alternating narration. This is more a political thriller than a romance, with Aurelia and Athan’s relationship pushed aside to make room for the constantly shifting alliances, but their letters to each other present a innocent contrast to the growing unrest around them as they profess their love and eternal affection—promises that they must ultimately break. The clash between Savient’s developing military and the North’s reliance on honor and order offers a compelling picture of what happens when the rules of war change, but it’s the heartbreaking prologue that will grab readers’ immediate attention, and its hints will keep them hooked for the next installment. Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Climate Trauma by E. Ann Kaplan (review)

Reviewed by: Climate Trauma by E. Ann Kaplan Dafna Kaufman E. Ann Kaplan, Climate Trauma (Rutgers University Press, 2016), 196 pages. Paperback. $ 26.55. In Climate Trauma, E. Ann Kaplan examines the effects of global warming on the contemporary Western psyche and film landscape. Kaplan presents her account of these new developments in an analysis grounded in trauma theory. She notes that while theorists have investigated post-traumatic syndrome, there is significantly less written about pretraumatic stress syndrome. Kaplan suggests that premonitions of future catastrophes have the potential to induce traumatic reactions. She argues that the ever-increasing presentation of dystopic futuristic worlds in contemporary film and literature expresses intense global anxiety regarding our planet’s future. She focuses, in particular, on concerns regarding the collapse of current natural and social environments as represented in recent films in the speculative or science fiction genre. She also, more broadly, examines how the circulation of dystopic disaster narratives produces pretraumatic stress within the viewers of the film and Western culture. Kaplan divides futuristic disaster films into two categories: the pretraumatic climate dystopia and the pretraumatic political dystopia., Her first chapter focuses on Jeff Nichols’ 2011 film, Take Shelter, while also relying on examples from The Happening (2009, M. Night Shyamalan) and The Road (2012, John Hillcoat). These narratives portray the world interrupted by “catastrophic climate change” (18). These films invite viewers “to engage with pretrauma narratives by identifying with a probable traumatic future” (35). In the following chapter, Kaplan discusses the pretraumatic political dystopia. Here, she concentrates on the film, Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuarón) and employs examples from less recent films such as Soylent Green (1973, Richard Fleischer) and The Handmaid’s Tale (1995, Volker Schlondorff) for support. The pretraumatic political thriller engages overtly with politics and “the dangers that are inherent in the corporate capitalism of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries” (59). These films, particularly after the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, examine terrorism, political revenge, and other bleak political possibilities for the world’s future (19). The subsequent chapters of Climate Trauma examine additional examples from these two types of dystopic film. In Chapter Four, Kaplan examines the role of memory and temporality in pretrauma fantasies. She specifically examines The Book of Eli (2010, Allen and Albert Hughes) and The Road. Kaplan uses these films to illustrate how these filmic constructions of the future can in turn shape the present and the past (20). In Chapter Five, Kaplan focuses on Blindness (2008, Fernando Meirelles). She places Blindness between the pretrauma political dystopia and pretraumatic environmental disaster film. She also explicitly examines the presentation of body and affect in the gradually deteriorating setting of Blindness. The world in Blindness, Kaplan notes, presents an image of what the world could become “if Western civilization does not change” (101). In her final chapter, Kaplan shifts her focus to the dystopic documentary. Here, she discusses two traumatic climate documentaries: Into Eternity (2010, [End Page 43] Michael Madsen) and Manufactured Landscapes (2006, Jennifer Baichwal). While many of Kaplan’s fictional film examples do not explicitly fault humans for global warming and other contemporary environmental disasters, her documentary choices unambiguously hold humanity responsible for these catastrophes. These documentaries ask the viewer to bear witness to specific future environmental catastrophes and take responsibility for our degradation of the planet. In Climate Trauma, Kaplan discusses a powerful trend within Western popular culture and film. She argues that this trend reflects a serious cultural anxiety regarding the future of the planet. Developing her case through the examination of persuasive filmic and cultural examples, Kaplan builds a strong argument using interdisciplinary tools, drawing from psychology, sociology, economics, environmental studies, film studies, and many other disciplines. The clarity and logic of Kaplan’s work in Climate Trauma makes her case readily accessible to academics and non-academics, teachers and students. The book lacks an exhaustive and thorough discussion of the gender issues at stake in this sub-genre, and this omission is particularly surprising in light of Kaplan’s extensive background in feminist film theory and history. Climate Trauma still powerfully manages to introduce readers to the pretraumatic speculative sub-genre, while also verifying this genre...

Red is the New Black. Storytelling and Style in Candidate (2013) and The Red Captain (2016)

The non-existence or deficiency in the production of popular genres in the history of Slovak cinema after the split from Czech Republic in 1993 has been a much discussed subject in the Slovak filmmaking community. It is a common belief among both filmmakers and film critics, that due to the lack of popular genre traditions and financial difficulties of film production, Slovak cinema is not able to attract domestic audiences and is primarily focused on the arthouse and festival circuit. This overt simplification, however, has in recent years been challenged by the emergence of several films that introduced generic novelties into Slovak cinema.&#x0D; The paper deals with two major representatives of this popular genre upheaval that were successful at the box office: the political thriller Candidate (2013) by Jonaš Karasek and the detective story The Red Captain (2016) by Michal Kollar. Both films are literary adaptations touching upon the subject of continuity of the communist regime after the democratic turn in 1989. Although not unanimously critically praised, they both gained considerable attention thanks to presenting an alternative to the realistic arthouse social drama trend of Slovak fiction film. The text examines innovations that these films introduced into popular genre discourse of Slovak cinema by concentrating on prominent storytelling and stylistic techniques derived mainly from mainstream popular cinema and offer some preliminary thoughts on reasons underlying their successful reception among domestic audiences.

Homeland and Resilience: Immunitas, Katechon, the Uncanny, and Trauma’s Displacement

The paper focuses on the category of resilience as it refers to the capacity of socio-political systems to withstand stress or to adapt to it. Invoking resilience enables a multifaceted reading of the TV series Homeland that looks beyond the show’s readily apparent propagandistic function. Resilience is posited as being partly at odds with the category trauma, which the show also invokes. Unlike trauma, resilience is conceptualized as taking place in the present moment, and an analogy thus obtains between resilience and the uncanny. Resilience is further linked to biopolitics with a discussion of Roberto Esposito’s immunitas and with a discussion of katechon, a category called upon by Esposito and by Paolo Virno. The latter identifies the katechon in the multitude which arises with the state of exception. Thus, the shift from trauma to the uncanny reflects not only the series’ generic conventions as a political thriller but corresponds also to a conceptual shift from the biopolitical immunitas to the more directly anarchic katechon of the multitude.