Cinema pessimism: a political theory of representation and reciprocity

In: Oxford scholarship online

Abstract

'Cinema Pessimism' explores the challenges of representative democracy through film. Film allows us to see the problems of democracy from a unique perspective, illuminating dangers that are not always visible to us either from day-to-day experience or the classics of democratic theory. Joshua Foa Dienstag argues that there are threats lurking in our political systems that we fail to perceive due to the many pleasures that representation (both political and filmic) provides. Ultimately, Dienstag seeks to defend a kind of pessimistic politics that might produce a better sort of democratic representation than what we have today.