Paranoia, (Para)cinema, and the Right-Wing Mindset: Making Sense of My Son Hunter

Authors

  • Joel Frykholm Stockholm University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v56i1.7171

Keywords:

My Son Hunter, right-wing media, Breitbart, American politics on film, paracinema, post-truth, paranoid fiction, conspiracy theory films, melodrama, docudrama

Abstract

This article aims to make sense of My Son Hunter (The Unreported Story Society and Breitbart News, 2022; dir. Robert Davi). The first part of the analysis discusses My Son Hunter as an example of right-wing counter-cinema that tries to simultaneously tap into the cultural prestige associated with feature filmmaking and provide niche audiences with “paracinematic” pleasures. The second part of the analysis explores cinematic form and filmmaking techniques in My Son Hunter, demonstrating how the movie extends a promise of “truth” via an affective bombardment that draws on melodrama and paranoid fiction as well as the flexible modes of docudramatic approximation. The overall effect is to make logic and argumentation superfluous, which is indicative of how the film can be regarded as both symptomatic and productive of a “post-truth” condition.

Author Biography

Joel Frykholm, Stockholm University

Joel Frykholm is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University. He is author of George Kleine and American Cinema (BFI, 2015) and co-editor (with Marina Dahlquist) of The Institutionalization of Educational Cinema (Indiana University Press, 2019). Current research interests include Swedish cinema history, Swedish contemporary film and television culture, and Swedish responses to the global impact of American popular culture from cinema’s silent era onward.

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Published

2024-05-31

How to Cite

Frykholm, J. (2024). Paranoia, (Para)cinema, and the Right-Wing Mindset: Making Sense of My Son Hunter. American Studies in Scandinavia, 56(1). https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v56i1.7171

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