Author： Bather Neil
Publisher： Routledge Ltd
ISSN： 1740-0309
Source： New Review of Film and Television Studies, Vol.2, Iss.1, 2004-05, pp. : 37-59
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Abstract
On September 11, 2001, evil, as a word and as a concept, was back in fashion. In American popular cinema, however, evil has always maintained a palpable presence, with heroes and villains clearly delineated by black and white and light and dark. Across the 1990s, with the fall of Communist Russia and the rise of computer-generated imagery and splash weekend releases, popular cinema has become dependent upon images that highlight and isolate the spectacle from any hidden depth of meaning. Evil itself, thus, emerges, and takes concrete form from the image rather than from any underlying symbolic or metaphoric foundation. As an astute and extremely successful film producer (or 'devil incarnate'), Jerry Bruckheimer exemplifies the contemporary Hollywood system; big-budget, masculine-favoured, action-driven spectaculars, with simple, or 'high concept', narratives, that invariably attract large audiences. It is from within the clash of the cinematic space, as created by Bruckheimer, with the 'real' that concepts of evil emerge that allows audiences to equate filmic evil to actual events, giving rise to the oft-quoted statement after the World Trade Center attacks, 'It was just like a movie.'
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