Studies of Popular Culture are becoming increasingly integrated within mainstream IR scholarship. Popular cultural artefacts are increasingly used in teaching as well as becoming a legitimate object of political research in their own right. However, instead of popular culture being merely a mirror in which political events are reflected it is my contention that popular culture itself influences those events.
Using Hollywood films and political statements from the Bush administration between the events of September 11th 2001 and the invasion of Iraq I intend to demonstrate that political leaders use the tropes, narratives, imagery, and language of American exceptionalism and technological supremacy in order to convey political messages about the progress and eventual conclusion of the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, and the broader Global War on Terror.
