Wag the dog; a study on film and reality in the digital age. by Thanouli, Eleftheria - 2013

Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Hardbound. New Book. Hardbound. Thanouli theoretically explores a range of ideas and concepts regarding the relation between cinema and reality by focusing on one film in particular, Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog (1997), which presented the story of an American president who faked a war against Albania in order to distract the public from a sexual scandal and get re-elected. The investigation is carried out along four lines of inquiry: the formal level involving the role of narrative in mediating reality; the modal level concerning the material properties of cinema and their implications for the ontological correspondence between film and reality; the level of reception or the ways in which film shapes people's perceptions of reality; and the level of politics, where the image of the world and its potential for change is filtered through a society's approach to human agency. (2013 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR)