Hollywood's new radicalism

War, globalisation and the movies from Reagan to George W Bush

Ben Dickenson, I B Taurus, 232 pages, paperback, £14.99

Dickenson starts his book with a look at the 1980s. He argues that the response of progressive film-makers to Reagan’s America, an era devoid of mass movements, was “inevitably individual rather than collective,” as exemplified by films like Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.

In the 1990s, the hopes that Hollywood liberals had invested in Bill Clinton were dashed, giving rise to films like Bulworth, about a suicidally disillusioned liberal politician.

Recent years have seen a renewed militancy among many Hollywood creatives, and Dickenson shows how they have often been influenced by, and actively involved in, the new mass anti-capitalist and anti-war movements.

This in turn has inspired an increasing number of films giving expression to dissenting voices of one sort or another — films such Tim Robbins’ Cradle Will Rock, George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck or the documentary films of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock.

Actor Ed Asner affirms: “Here’s a book that explains how the industry we’re in really works and how some of us try to get a human message through the system.”