Editors: Jonnie Eriksson, Kalle Jonasson and Angus McDonald

The book series “Decrypting Power and Coloniality: Philosophical Perspectives from and through the Global South” invites submissions for a new collective volume with the preliminary title Decrypting Cinema as Ideology.

This volume will apply the theory of encryption of power (TEP) as its foundational framework to explore the complex role of cinema in consolidating or challenging power structures. We seek to analyze how film, as a powerful art form, functions simultaneously as a mechanism of ideological regulation, as the origination and dissemination of aesthetical canons, and as a site of resistance.

The Encrypted Power of Cinema

Cinema, through its ability to create compelling narratives and immersive worlds, often serves as a “transcendent model” that dictates reality. We are looking for chapters that investigate how the art form of film:

• Creates narratives of origin: How do films establish a sense of history, identity, or national myth that privileges certain national and racial perspectives while marginalizing others? Here we are thinking of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation and John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but also 300 or Pocahontas, even The Seventh Seal.
• Sacralizes heroes: How are characters elevated to a transcendent status, representing an ideal to be followed, thereby normalizing specific forms of power and authority? For example, how the Western state of exception is normalized and consecrated through characters such as James Bond, Indiana Jones, almost any John Wayne and Clint Eastwood character, etc.
• Presents an illusion of agency and necessity (key for TEP is the contrast of contingency and necessity): Marvel films and even directors praised as auteurs such as Christopher Nolan are creating narratives where the world we live in, a world of mass destruction, is necessary and preferable to the unknown. These films frequently show everyday citizens being saved by superheroes. This simulates democratic agency, in that the people are “represented” and “protected”, but in reality, they are completely dependent on a select few: the people’s power is collapsed into a final, fixed structure (the Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D., etc.). Such films rarely explore what would happen if the people themselves organized and created their own solutions, independent of “mighty” heroes making things “right”.
• Establishes aesthetic canons: How do cinematic techniques, visual styles, and narrative structures become a standard that limits alternative forms of expression, reinforcing a specific cultural or aesthetic hierarchy? (For example, “The male gaze in cinema”, “The white savior complex” or “The blonde bombshell”.)
• Turns into a Big Mac: As put by Terry Gilliam, mainstream Hollywood cinema, much like a fast-food meal, is a predictable, standardized product. It offers a simulacrum of satisfaction and a false sense of freedom (jouissance), all while encrypting its ideological content through rigid, formulaic structures. This type of cinema establishes “transcendent models”—fixed, unchangeable narratives of heroism and progress. It presents reality as a given, with clear heroes and villains, leaving no room for ambiguity or alternative interpretations. This process collapses artistic agency and intellectual engagement into a passive, consumer-driven experience.
• Resists transcendent and fixed structures: Genuine cinematic art is, in contrast, immanent and ephemeral. It does not create solid “monuments of truth” but rather exists as a potentiality—an open-ended work that invites multiple, transformative interpretations. This is the essence of decryption. This type of art transforms the gaze from captive to active and reveals the world as a place of endless potential, not predefined truths. We are here referring to filmmakers such as Bergman, Kurosawa, Resnais, Jancsó, Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Jodorowski, Apichatpong etc.

We aim to understand how cinematic language and narrative can encrypt power, as it presents a world of inequality and injustice as the only possible reality. For instance, films can perpetuate racial and gender stereotypes, making them seem natural or unchangeable. According to a 2021 study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, an analysis of the top 100 grossing films from 2007 to 2019 revealed that Black characters were portrayed in 16% of speaking roles, while Asian characters had 7.2% and Hispanic/Latino characters had just 4.2%. This data illustrates how certain groups are underrepresented and, when present, are often confined to stereotypical roles, contributing to an encrypted view of who counts and who does not.

Cinema as a Decrypting Force

Conversely, cinema can also act as a tool for resistance, revealing the arbitrary nature of these encrypted structures. We are interested in how filmmakers and films can decrypt power in various ways.

• Emancipating the spectator: Following Jacques Rancière, films that count on an emancipated spectator challenge the traditional hierarchical relationship between filmmaker and audience; they treat the viewer not as a passive recipient but as an active participant in creating meaning. These films reject a single, predefined “truth,” presenting an ambiguous reality that leaves viewers to interpret characters and events on their own. Instead of delivering an overt political message, they emphasize sensation and affect, prioritizing images and sounds that provoke thought and feeling, thus trusting spectators to make their own intellectual and emotional connections. Furthermore, they often feature a decentralized narrative, lacking a clear protagonist or linear plot, which challenges the audience to actively piece together the story. This refusal of didacticism means that these films’ success is not measured by whether the audience “gets” the intended message, but by how they prompt the audience to think and ask questions for themselves. Films by Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami, Terrence Malick, Ari Aster, David Lynch, and Wong Kar-wai are examples of this.

• Alternative aesthetics: How do films from and through the Global South (“Third Cinema”) offer new perspectives and aesthetics that challenge the dominant Western canon? For example, the subaltern hero, the common people (in their resistance as an antidote to the Superhero ideal), or the potential of a “people to come” (to speak with Gilles Deleuze). Examples include Ousmane Sembène’s La noire de…, Youssef Chahine’s The Land, the films of Satyajit Ray, particularly his Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and The World of Apu), Manila in the Claws of Light (Lino Brocka), La Estrategia del Caracol (Sergio Cabrera), La Odisea de los Giles (Sebastián Borensztein), and many films by Glauber Rocha.
• Beautiful losers in cinema: Bicycle Thieves, Amores Perros, several films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, etc.
• Radical democracy: How do films create spaces for new meanings and narratives to emerge, moving beyond predefined lexicons and allowing for a more inclusive and democratic sense of “beingness”? Here we are thinking of the working-class people in Aki Kaurismäki’s films or Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I.
• Satire and parody: How do satirical and parodic films subvert established norms, deconstructing “transcendent models” and exposing the absurdities of power? This can be seen in films such as Dr. Strangelove, Network, Wag the Dog, The Death of Stalin, or Parasite.
• Cinema as a self-referential art form: Beyond serving as a vehicle for ideology or a tool for resistance, cinema can be an independent art form that reflects on its own nature. Following the logic of TEP, this self-reflexivity can serve as a primary means of decryption. By exposing the arbitrary, constructed nature of its own language, a film can challenge the viewer to question not just the narrative but the medium itself. This process turns cinema into a tool for understanding how all forms of power are constructed and maintained. François Truffaut’s La Nuit Américaine and Jean-Luc Godard’s work, such as Le Mépris, often foregrounds the process of filmmaking and the power dynamics of production, while films like 8½ by Federico Fellini use the filmmaker’s block as a metaphor for the struggle to create meaning.

We encourage submissions that explore these tensions from a variety of perspectives, including decolonial theory, subaltern studies, and critical film theory. We seek contributions that apply the theory of encryption of power to understand how cinema can be both a tool of oppression and a beacon of emancipation. This implies analyzing how formulaic cinema encrypts power and how alternative filmmaking decrypts it by embracing multiplicity, fragmentation, and the creative agency of the viewer.

The topics listed and described above are simply a loose frame; the list is tentative, and the proposals will surely and happily reshape it (for example, multiple futures, women in cinema, queer cinema, the question of time, the question of nature and nurture, etc.)

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Abstracts will be evaluated by the book editors, who will decide whether to request a full article. Nevertheless, when the editors settle on a list of abstracts, they will present a proposal to Bloomsbury, who will submit it to blind peer-review (this process lasts from 4 to 8 weeks) Accepted articles will be subject to blind peer review. The book as a whole will also be submitted for approval and blind peer review by Bloomsbury Publishing.

Timeline

If you have a strong proposal that addresses these themes and aligns with the core principles of the series, we look forward to receiving your abstract.

Please send your proposals to:

jonnie.eriksson@hh.se

kalle.jonasson@hh.se

angusmcdonald1@outlook.com