Alien Nation: White Male Paranoia and Imperial Culture in the United States

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Abstract
As “the American century” comes to a close provocative jeremiads have become a growth industry in the United States, with just about every leading newspaper and numerous popular magazines, books, radio and television programmes depicting a nation in serious social and economic decline. A generalised sense of crisis emerges from the myriad causes of this perceived decline at home and abroad. Domestically, commentators feed ideological debates and moral panics about problems of crime, drugs, family values, ethno-racial balkanisation and multiculturalism. Externally, the uncertain endings of the Cold War and emergent economic leadership of Asiatic nations have encouraged requiems for the American Empire. These discourses of decline evidence a public paranoia about significant economic, political and social changes which have disrupted the coherence and cohesiveness of national myths and ideologies of Americanness. One notable feature of this paranoia is that it has led to a growing recognition of whiteness as a social category and more particularly of white male selfhood as a fragile and besieged identity. I want to comment on some general features of this paranoia as a signifier of whiteness and examine how it has been treated as an issue of representation in Hollywood film.

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