ABSTRACT
In this chapter I investigate contemporary Hollywood cinema as an instrument of ideology. As discussed earlier in this book, studies of the cinema disclose the interpretation of existing ideological concepts, which reproduce and recreate ‘reality’ and are determined by ideologies that surround them. Contemporary Hollywood fi lm is a unique cinematic space in which mythological narratives have been expressed and promoted on a global scale. The myths embedded in the ideological constructs of these fi lms have been widely exploited and refabricated by fi lmmakers-new myth makers. Mythical narratives, as we will see, promote a set of beliefs on which ideology relies. By reproducing and retelling these beliefs, Hollywood represents a sort of ideological factory. While Joel W. Martin argued that mythological criticism in fi lm and religion studies, by focussing on the “psychological quest for meaning”, often overlooks “the way meaning is always politicized”, 1 I argue that by studying cinematic mythological narratives we deconstruct both of these ideological assumptions.
