Vice, On the Basis of Sex, and the Liberal Imagination: Villainification and Heroification in Popular Political Film

Abstract

Using tenets of political psychology, this article analyzes educational implications of contemporary Hollywood partisan political film through two critically acclaimed films released in 2018, Vice and On the Basis of Sex. I argue that these films appeal to confirmation bias and motivated reasoning through the use of villainification and heroification, respectively. Such tactics play on viewers’ emotions and become pedagogically problematic when they mask systemic processes, thereby potentially limiting viewers’ civic agency. Given that students’ civic and political understandings are likely to be shaped by popular culture as much, if not more, than what they encounter within the confines of formal education, a greater understanding of the civic messages found in Hollywood film is needed.

Notes

Notes

1 For the purposes of this article, I am not considering documentaries as popular film. Although many documentaries are released in theatres and are usually partisan in nature, they typically do not fare well at the box office and, thus, are not as prevalent in popular discourse. For a good discussion on the educative implications of documentary film, see Stoddard (2013).

2 Reviews of Vice in conservative outlets suggests that my hypothesis is correct (e.g., Shapiro, 2018; Smith, 2018)