Window on Real World

lordanova | Window on Real World Dina lordanova Leicester University DI4@leicester.ac.uk Window on Real World Robert W. Gregg. International Relations on Film. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998. (310 pages) Robert Gregg teaches at the American University in D.C. and uses motion pictures in his world politics undergraduate courses. An acknowledged film buff, he believes that cinema will enhance his student's understanding of international relations and approaches film as a window on the real world discussing about 150 features structured around ten leading topics. The first topic shows situations where sovereignty has been denied—because double standards are applied and where the challenge of supranationalism is seen—in A Man forAll Seasons, Gunga Din and The Mission, plus nationalism and its satellite concepts of colonialism and the resurgence of ethnic and religious issues. These films range from the 1930's propaganda classics like Triumph ofthe Will and Alexander Nevsky—through the anticolonial 1960 Battle of Algiers—to recent features exploring the break up ofYugoslavia like Vuicovar and Before the Rain. The civil strife and intervention chapter looks at the US involvement in Latin America that Gregg calls a magnet for filmmakers who made Under Fire, Salvador, and Missing. He then discusses espionage and subversion as diplomacy continued by other means. The spy genre is explored through photoplays about Nazi agents (Confessions ofa Nazi Spy, Foreign Correspondent) and Cold War selections (Pickup on South Street, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold). In decision making and crisis management Gregg again considers a wide variety, from the Austrian The Wannsee Conference to a Harrison Ford vehicle like Clear and Present Danger. The tragedy ofwar, another extensive topic, focuses on Western cinematic interpretations from The Grand Illusion to Star Trek. The sphere ofeconomic interdependence and development is reflected in business interactions between Americans and Japanese (Rising Sun, Gung Ho) and in films that tackle poverty and migration (Swedish The Emigrants, Italian Bread and Chocolate). Another dimension is the issues of the environment and sustainable development, reflected inThe Burning Season and The Milagro Beanfield War. In the ethics and international law chapter, Gregg discusses the response to the Hiroshima bombing (American Fat Man and Little Boy, Japanese Black Rain). He also raises issues ofThird world poverty and distributive justice, as seen in Latin-America-set Los Olvidados and Pixote, and India-set Salaam Bombay and City ofJoy. Robert Gregg's publisher specializes in international affairs and markets mostly to the political science community, who use film in their teaching. It would be great if the study helps to enhance this discipline. I fully share Gregg's belief that motion pictures can be a window to better understanding ofinternational relations. He has obviously seen a large number of films and has classified them according to the main topics within international relations courses. All that matters to Gregg is the area that the films explore , and it does not make a big difference if they are artistically superior movies, or just mediocre ones. It does not matter much when a film was made, either, and he utterly ignores the socio-cultural and historical context of production and reception. Issues like financing, distribution, and director's visions are not considered at all, as if filmmaking, particularly on socially-engaged topics, in itselfis not a political activity. The study has thus an ahistorical character, as if movies are made in some socio-historical vacuum. Gregg shows he is conscious ofthe efforts to deconstruct the Eurocentrism in film studies, but has not adopted the stance himself, rarely looking at non-Western titles. For example, he does not even mention major films on colonialism made from the perspective of former nations (like Senegalian XaIa or Argentinian The Hour ofthe Furnaces ), and it seems he does not attach any importance to where a movie was made, in the West or in the Third World potentially representing different takes on international relations . Gregg's own views are fairly conservative. He believes that CIA agents are usually vilified but Sandinistas idealized unnecessarily, then he criticizes Costa-Gavras Chilean movie Missing because it is impossible that the US government would ever let any American perish (73). He calls the Vietnam period...