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Contemporary Hollywood Terrorism and ‘London has Fallen’ Cinema
The London Journal ( IF 0.2 ) Pub Date : 2019-10-20 , DOI: 10.1080/03058034.2019.1649515
Christopher Holliday

A number of popular Hollywood films have coalesced around images of terrorist devastation wrought upon London as an eminent, if highly fallible, global city. Films such as V for Vendetta (The Wachowskis, 2005), Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006), Closed Circuit (John Crowley, 2008), G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Jon M. Chu, 2013), Survivor (James McTeigue 2015), London Has Fallen (Babak Najafi, 2016) and Unlocked (Michael Apted, 2017) all mine the visual spectacle of London's identity as a ‘fallen' city, refiguring the capital as collateral damage within terrorist narratives rooted in urban disintegration and chaos. This article examines how such films function within a contemporary Hollywood that has worked to re-stage London's skyline as a backdrop for brutal bombardment. The subjecting of London's monumental spaces to architectural trauma via terrorist activity is, as this article argues, part of a wider trend in U.S. cinema showing London's destruction that is predicated on the ability of digital imagery to persuasively simulate the ruination of the city in a post-7/7 climate. Updating what Ian Conrich (1999) has termed the 1950s “trashing London” monster movies that tapped into wartime imaginaries of London, this article discusses how the reactionary and politically-charged “London has fallen” cycle leans heavily on – and is informed by – the iconography of the July 2005 terror atrocities. By examining how footage from these mainstream ‘terrorsploitation’ films have since been repurposed in propagandist videos by pro-terrorist broadcasters, this article unpacks the complex contribution and ambivalent sensitivity of Hollywood in framing terrorism in London as a blockbuster spectacle.

中文翻译:

当代好莱坞恐怖主义和“伦敦陷落”电影

许多受欢迎的好莱坞电影都围绕着恐怖分子毁灭性的画面对伦敦造成了影响,因为伦敦是一个杰出的,但极易出错的全球城市。诸如 V 字仇杀队(沃卓斯基家族,2005 年)、人类之子(阿方索·卡隆,2006 年)、封闭电路(约翰·克劳利,2008 年)、GI 乔:报复(乔恩·M·楚,2013 年)、幸存者(詹姆斯·麦克泰格,2015 年)等电影)、伦敦陷落 (Babak Najafi, 2016) 和 Unlocked (Michael Apted, 2017) 都挖掘了伦敦作为“堕落”城市身份的视觉奇观,将首都重新定义为根植于城市解体和混乱的恐怖主义叙事中的附带损害。本文探讨了此类电影在当代好莱坞如何运作,好莱坞致力于将伦敦的天际线重新塑造为残酷轰炸的背景。伦敦的主体' 正如本文所言,通过恐怖主义活动造成建筑创伤的巨大空间是美国电影中更广泛趋势的一部分,该趋势显示伦敦的破坏是基于数字图像的能力有说服力地模拟后 7/ 7 气候。更新 Ian Conrich (1999) 所说的 1950 年代“破坏伦敦”的怪物电影,这些电影利用了伦敦的战时想象,这篇文章讨论了反动和充满政治色彩的“伦敦陷落”周期如何严重依赖——并受到以下影响—— 2005 年 7 月恐怖暴行的图像。通过研究这些主流“恐怖剥削”电影的镜头是如何被支持恐怖主义的广播公司重新用于宣传视频的,
更新日期:2019-10-20
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