Overview

While Israel has seemingly been a minor presence in Hollywood cinema, Reimagining the Promised Land argues that there is a long history of Hollywood deploying images of Israel as a means of articulating an idealized notion of American national identity. This argument is developed through readings of The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (William Wyler, 1959), Exodus (Otto Preminger, 1960), Cast a Giant Shadow (Melville Shavelson, 1966), Black Sunday (John Frankenheimer, 1977), The Delta Force (Menahem Golan, 1986), and Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005). The mobilization of Israel that pervades this eclectic group of films effectively demonstrates one of the more surreptitious ways in which Hollywood has historically constructed and circulated dominant notions of American national identity. Moreover, in examining the most notable Hollywood representations of the Jewish state, the book offers an informed historical overview of the cultural forces that have contributed to popular understandings within the United States of the state of Israel, Israel’s Arab neighbours, and also the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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9781501373855

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Reviews

In this original and insightful analysis, Rodney Wallis suggests that a series of Hollywood films on Israel—some of them epics and others less—may tell us more about American identity than about Israel itself. By inverting our understanding of the “special relationship,” Reimagining the Promised Land makes an important contribution to film studies, cultural history, and the symbiotic relationship between self-proclaimed “chosen peoples.” * Walter L. Hixson, author of Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (2019) *

In this original and insightful analysis, Rodney Wallis suggests that a series of Hollywood films on Israel-some of them epics and others less-may tell us more about American identity than about Israel itself. By inverting our understanding of the special relationship, Reimagining the Promised Land makes an important contribution to film studies, cultural history, and the symbiotic relationship between self-proclaimed chosen peoples. * Walter L. Hixson, author of Israel's Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (2019) *

Author Information

Rodney Wallis is a sessional academic in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research interests include cinematic representations of American history and American mythology.

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