Political Christopher Nolan
Many of Christopher Nolan’s films ironically both embrace the tradition of surrealist and Avant-Garde filmmaking while simultaneously providing (at least tacit) support for the Anglo-American liberal world order. For Nolan, this world order, which relies on global capitalism, technocratic supremacy, and ultimate control of world cultural production, is a much greater alternative to either left- or right-wing challenges to this liberalism. In Nolan’s films, this liberalism must occasionally use violence and violate some of its core principals of privacy and freedom to maintain its dominance. Nonetheless, Anglo-American liberalism, in Nolan’s vision provides a world that is freer, more humane, and more prosperous than other anarchic, Marxist, or fascist alternatives. Finally, (and perhaps most importantly for Nolan) the security, wealth, and freedom of this liberal world order enables the world of art and film to blossom, and the opportunity for Christopher Nolan to create (post-) ironic dream worlds or, in the words of Jean Baudrillard, a “hyperreality”.
Jesse Russell is assistant professor of English at Georgia Southwestern State University