Film Theory as Ideology Critique (after Trump)

Abstract In American academia, for roughly the last half-century, until quite recently, film theory and ideology critique were so closely associated as to be nearly synonymous. In the last decade, however, as vernacular forms of critique have become more mainstream on social media, academic film and media studies has, by and large, retreated from the project of ideology critique. This chapter argues for the need for a revitalized ideological criticism in the post-Trump age. With that in mind, it maps out a number of the ways that older traditions of ideology critique in film studies need to be rethought in the current moment when moving images must be understood within a new media ecology. When we consider how images circulate within the new information economy dominated by the internet and social media platforms, the conceptual limitations of both political modernist and cultural studies analyses (central to earlier periods of ideology critique in film studies) become clear. This chapter describes these limitations along with the inadequacy of the newer forms of postcritique. It then attempts to lay the groundwork for a rethinking of ideology critique today. In the process, it also makes the case for the value of a robust conception of ideology critique to think through the politics of film and media today.