Full Description
Events of the past decade have dramatically rewritten the American national narrative, bringing to light an alternate history of nation, marked since the country's origins by competing geopolitical interests, by mobility and migration, and by contending ethnic and racial groups. In this revised and expanded edition of Film Nation, Robert Burgoyne analyzes films that give shape to the counternarrative that has emerged since 9/11-one that challenges the traditional myths of the American nation-state. The films examined here, Burgoyne argues, reveal the hidden underlayers of nation, from the first interaction between Europeans and Native Americans (The New World), to the clash of ethnic groups in nineteenth-century New York (Gangs of New York), to the haunting persistence of war in the national imagination (Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima) and the impact of the events of 9/11 on American identity (United 93 and World Trade Center). Film Nation provides innovative readings of attempts by such directors as Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Oliver Stone to visualize historical events that have acquired a mythical aura in order to open up the past to the contemporary moment.
Contents
Preface to the Revised Edition, Acknowledgments, Introduction, 1. Race and Nation in Glory, 2. Native America, Thunderheart, and the National Imaginary, 3. National Identity, Gender Identity, and the Rescue Fantasy in Born on the Fourth of July, 4. Modernism and the Narrative of Nation in JFK, 5. Prosthetic Memory/National Memory: Forrest Gump, 6. The Columbian Exchange: Pocahontas and The New World, 7. Homeland or Promised Land? The Ethnic Construction of Nation in Gangs of New York, 8. Haunting in the War Film: Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, 9. Trauma and History in United 93 and World Trade Center, Notes, Index
