^aThe Media Studies Research Institute, University of Ulster, Coleraine BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland. E-mail: r.porter@ulster.ac.uk

Received 6 June 2006; Accepted 9 August 2006.

Abstract

Does cinema express or engender political thought? Can we think of cinema, or certain specific cinematic texts, as bodies of political theory? In this paper I provide a positive response to such questions by arguing for a notion of, what I want to call, cinema as political critique. In order to make sense of this idea and render it more concrete, I will draw on fragments of the political theory of Jürgen Habermas and will discuss and give an analysis of a popular and relatively recent Hollywood film: Gary Ross's Pleasantville (1998). Reading Habermasian themes in and through Pleasantville, I will argue that this text can be seen as a concrete instance of political critique and, more particularly, as a form of political critique that ethically implies a certain conception of freedom.