Government on the Silver Screen: Contemporary American Cinema's Depiction of Bureaucrats, Police Officers, and Soldiers

Abstract

Movies continue to be the most accessible art form to Americans and that reach allows films to have a tremendous effect on moviegoers. With more than a billion movie tickets sold annually in the United States, the ability of movies to influence the perceptions of moviegoers is pronounced. Frequently, the government is part of those depictions. Although film is routinely studied in a host of disciplines, a focus on the portrayal of government generally and government officials more specifically, remains elusive. Instead of using a case-study approach, we examine recent, popular films to investigate how government is portrayed generally and how individual governmental characters are depicted. For our sample, we use the top-10 box office grossing films from 2000 to 2009 to assess how government is depicted in the films most likely seen by the majority of movie-watching Americans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that films generally have a mixed view of government with more negative depictions than positive. However, in examining bureaucrats, police officers, soldiers, and politicians, we found a much more positive depiction of these individual government characters. Americans may view government negatively, but in film they see positive depictions of individual civil servants.

Popular Culture Informing Public Administration: Messages and Prospects for Social Equity

“…These examples showcase how popular culture communicates messages about the moral environment of public service (Roberts, 2009) and can represent tough questions about how Americans prefer to have their government run (Bryer & Cooper, 2012). Many portrayals of public servants in popular culture are negative, with bureaucrats frequently portrayed as faceless and uncaring (Croley, 2008), yet while government as a whole is often portrayed negatively, representations of individual bureaucrats can be quite positive (Pautz & Warnement, 2013; see also Goodsell, 2004). In other instances, such as Black Panther, representations embody desires for change in communities' circumstances (Tillet, 2018;Waskul, 2015).…”

Argo and Zero Dark Thirty: Film, Government, and Audiences

“…Most Americans have what could be described as a love–hate relationship with the government, and that complexity extends to film. Pautz and Warnement (2013), building on the work of Pautz and Roselle (2010), concluded that although general depictions of the government are negative, individual government characters generally fare well in movies. The present study substantiates that conclusion.…”

“…They support the conclusions that films generally show the government in a negative light whereas individual government characters fare better (cf. Pautz and Roselle 2010; Pautz and Warnement 2013). These portraits in film further substantiate the claims of Goodsell (2004), among others, that we are bombarded with negative images to the point that we have a poor opinion of the government, despite any personal experiences.…”

“…Recent scholarship examined the portrayal of the government in aggregate in the movies and found that it is a common subject in fi lms (cf. Pautz and Roselle 2010 ;Pautz and Warnement 2013 ). However, this research does not explore the infl uence of a particular fi lm on an individual viewer.…”

Shades of blue : an interpretative phenomological analysis of non-white police instructors regarding highly publicized uses of force by law enforcement

“…Miller and Davis' (2008) discovery that the public forms its opinions of police based on criteria that include television. Pautz and Warnement (2013) revealed that contemporary American cinema influenced moviegoers' opinions of government and civil servants, such as police officers. Pautz (2016) examined Hollywood's depiction of law enforcement in popular films and found police were portrayed as good or bad, possibly influencing citizen perceptions.…”