Movies And The Reagan Presidency

The 1980s were unique in both American history and the history of American cinema. It was a time when a United States president—a former B-movie actor and Cold War industry activist—served as a catalyst for the coalescence of trends in Hollywood's political structure, mode of production, and film content. Ronald Reagan championed a success ethos that recognized economic and moral self-governance as the basis of a democratic society. His agenda of tax reform and industry deregulation simultaneously promoted the absorption of Hollywood's major studios into tightly diversified media conglomerates, and concentrations of ownership promoted the production and release of movies with maximum revenue potential. Indeed, the most commercially successful movies of the decade put forth the ideologies of WASP America, nuclear family self-sufficiency, and conspicuous consumption. Three genres in particular—the biracial buddy movie, the MTV music-video movie, and the yuppie movie—provide case studies of how Reagan-era cinema addressed issues of race, gender, and class in ways very much in tune with Reaganomics and the President's cultural policies. Author Chris Jordan provides a complete overview of both the influence of Reagan's presidency on the film industry and on the films themselves. Exploring 80s genres and movies with both a sociocultural and aesthetic eye, this book will be invaluable to historians, cinema scholars, and film buffs.

Named a Best Book of the Year by Financial Times "Singular, stylish and slightly intoxicating in its scope." —Rolling Stone Acclaimed media critic J. Hoberman's masterful and majestic exploration of the Reagan years as seen through the unforgettable movies of the era The third book in a brilliant and ambitious trilogy, celebrated cultural and film critic J. Hoberman's Make My Day is a major new work of film and pop culture history. In it he chronicles the Reagan years, from the waning days of the Watergate scandal when disaster films like Earthquake ruled the box office to the nostalgia of feel-good movies like Rocky and Star Wars, and the delirium of the 1984 presidential campaign and beyond. Bookended by the Bicentennial celebrations and the Iran-Contra affair, the period of Reagan's ascendance brought such movie events as Jaws, Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, Ghostbusters, Blue Velvet, and Back to the Future, as well as the birth of MTV, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the Second Cold War. An exploration of the synergy between American politics and popular culture, Make My Day is the concluding volume of Hoberman's Found Illusions trilogy; the first volume, The Dream Life, was described by Slate's David Edelstein as "one of the most vital cultural histories I've ever read"; Film Comment called the second, An Army of Phantoms, "utterly compulsive reading." Reagan, a supporting player in Hoberman's previous volumes, here takes center stage as the peer of Indiana Jones and John Rambo, the embodiment of a Hollywood that, even then, no longer existed.

The former special advisor and press secretary to President Ronald Reagan shares a “sentimental but often revealing…enjoyable walk down Memory Lane” (Kirkus Reviews)—told through the movies he watched with the Reagans every week at Camp David. Over the course of eight years, Mark Weinberg travelled to Camp David with Ronald and Nancy Reagan as they screened movies on Friday and Saturday nights. They watched movies in times of triumph, such as the aftermath of Reagan’s 1984 landslide, and after moments of tragedy, such as the explosion of the Challenger and the shooting of the President and Press Secretary Jim Brady. Weinberg’s unparalleled access offers a rare glimpse of the Reagans—unscripted, relaxed, unburdened by the world, with no cameras in sight. Each chapter discusses a legendary film, what the Reagans thought of it, and provides warm anecdotes and untold stories about his family and the administration. From Reagan’s pranks on the Secret Service to his thoughts on the parallels between Hollywood and Washington, Weinberg paints a full picture of the president The New Yorker once famously dubbed “The Unknowable.” A “meander through a simpler time capturing a different time and a different president” (USA TODAY), Movie Nights with the Reagans is a nostalgic journey through the 1980s and its most iconic films, seen through the eyes of one of Hollywood’s former stars: one who was simultaneously transforming the Republican Party, the American economy, and the course of the Cold War. “For those equally enthused about movies and the fortieth president, this book will serve as a welcome change from today’s political climate” (Publishers Weekly).

Explores the relationship between the motion picture industry and American politics.

Hard Bodies looks at some of the most popular films of the Reagan era and examines how the characters, themes, and stories presented in them often helped to reinforce and disseminate the policies, programs, and beliefs of the 'Reagan Revolution.'

Hailed by the New Yorker as "a superlative study of a president and his presidency," Lou Cannon's President Reagan remains the definitive account of our most significant presidency in the last fifty years. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the first actor to be elected president, turned in the performance of a lifetime. But that performance concealed the complexities of the man, baffling most who came in contact with him. Who was the man behind the makeup? Only Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan through his political career, can tell us. The keenest Reagan-watcher of them all, he has been the only author to reveal the nature of a man both shrewd and oblivious. Based on hundreds of interviews with the president, the First Lady, and hundreds of the administration's major figures, President Reagan takes us behind the scenes of the Oval Office. Cannon leads us through all of Reagan's roles, from the affable cowboy to the self-styled family man; from the politician who denounced big government to the president who created the largest peace-time deficit; from the statesman who reviled the Soviet government to the Great Communicator who helped end the cold war.

From the bestselling team of Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard comes Killing Reagan, a page-turning epic account of the career of President Ronald Reagan that tells the vivid story of his rise to power--and the forces of evil that conspired to bring him down. The basis for the 2016 television movie available on streaming. Just two months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan lay near death after a gunman's bullet came within inches of his heart. His recovery was nothing short of remarkable -- or so it seemed. But Reagan was grievously injured, forcing him to encounter a challenge that few men ever face. Could he silently overcome his traumatic experience while at the same time carrying out the duties of the most powerful man in the world? Told in the same riveting fashion as Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, and Killing Patton, Killing Reagan reaches back to the golden days of Hollywood, where Reagan found both fame and heartbreak, up through the years in the California governor's mansion, and finally to the White House, where he presided over boom years and the fall of the Iron Curtain. But it was John Hinckley Jr.'s attack on him that precipitated President Reagan's most heroic actions. In Killing Reagan, O'Reilly and Dugard take readers behind the scenes, creating an unforgettable portrait of a great man operating in violent times.

The fear of the subversive has governed American politics, from the racial conflicts of the early republic to the Hollywood anti-Communism of Ronald Reagan. Political monsters--the Indian cannibal, the black rapist, the demon rum, the bomb-throwing anarchist, the many-tentacled Communist conspiracy, the agents of international terrorism--are familiar figures in the dream life that so often dominates American political consciousness. What are the meanings and sources of these demons? Why does the American political imagination conjure them up? Michael Rogin answers these questions by examining the American countersubversive tradition.