Example international political economy dissertation topic 7:

World politics portrayals in popular film: Separating myth from reality.

World politics tends to be presented, academically, with reference to the image of a ‘higher’ realm of politics: namely, one peopled by elites such as diplomats, heads of state, military officers or, more abstractly, by states-as-actors. Such representations of world politics are reproduced in popular culture, especially within spy fiction films such as that seen within the modern Bond films. In discussing the nature of this representation, this dissertation concurrently notes that it needs to be remembered that popular film culture also presents the possibility of a politics that is removed from the concerns and experiences of ‘ordinary’ people. Thus, it suggests that, paradoxically, world politics in popular film culture is both a reproduction of alienated or elite versions of global politics and a critique of such politics.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Hozic, A.A. (2001). Hollywood: Space, power and fantasy in the American economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Schiller, H.I. (1992). Mass communications and the American empire. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• Shapiro, M.J. (2009). Cinematic politics. New York: Routledge.