In this article we offer a potential research agenda for the study of popular culture in IR and outline how this research agenda could be advanced. If the incorporation of popular culture into IR is going to be fruitful, there must be a willingness to go beyond an engagement with illustrations of world politics. Doing so will get us closer to what is at stake in the mutual implication of popular culture and world politics.

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War-on-terror-themed fictional films, particularly those focused on the war in Iraq, have largely failed at the box office and have been subjected to stinging criticism by right-wing political commentators and film reviewers. Critics on the political right have been upset by a perceived lack of patriotism in the films, often arguing that they are dangerous incitements to new acts of violence. However, unlike many earlier war films, including those made about the conflict in Vietnam, directors of films about the war on terror are quite self-consciously making political films that question United States (US) policy and practice, that focus on the effects of war on US service personnel and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and that, significantly, attempt to rehabilitate Arabs, Muslims and Islam from decades of Hollywood demonization. Moreover, the films are being made and released into a media environment in which quality news reporting has declined even as the intensity of feeling about 'otherness' has sharpened. This article argues that war on terror film directors are themselves bearing witness to the tragedy of war and thereby inviting film audiences to see the effects of war.

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