Reel Politics: American Political Movies from Birth of a Nation to Platoon.

• Author: Noah, Timothy

Reel Politics: American Political Movies from Birth of a Nation to Platoon. Terry Christensen. Basil Blackwell, $24.95. Hollywood has always been a hotbed of political activism, from Charlie Chaplin hawking World War I bonds right on through to Oscar-winner Olympia Dukakis stumping for her cousin Michael. But while Hollywood celebrities embrace the rough and tumble of partisan (usually left-ofcenter) politics, Hollywood movies usually shun ideology and porttray the world of politics as grubby and futile. The result, writes Christensen, a professor of political science at San Jose State, is that political "keep us passive '"

Christensen usefully traces the various ways Hollywood has denigrated politics during the past 80 years. The glorification of the Ku Klux Klan in Birth of a Nation is often (and correctly) described as racist, but it also bequeathed the theme that democratic government can't solve real human problems. Better to round up a posse of your own. In the 1930s, film portrayals of leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt seemed to be celebrating democracy, but in fact these figures were placed on a pedestal above politics, where they commanded blind loyalty from the masses. Meanwhile, Frank Capra...