Unacknowledged Realignment

Abstract

The chapter claims that it is uncertain whether Hollywood will address the Trump era’s ideological unorthodoxies. The Shape of Water’s magical realist narrative avoids critique of the Realpolitik central to Trump’s statecraft. It instead adopts a stance of anti-McCarthy liberalism by embracing the Russian other, averting the liberal antipathy towards modern Russia lampooned by the pro-Trump “Alt Right.” Red Sparrow also declines to interrogate the recent changes wrought to East-West relations. The film avoids invoking the current state of U.S.-Russia relations and even refuses to reference Vladimir Putin. Evaluating these two disparately received films, the chapter argues that the ideal cinematic representation of Cold War II has yet to arrive, and is precluded from doing so because of bewildering new ideological reconfigurations. Concluding with a reflection on the impact of Black Panther (2018), the chapter posits that allegory might be the most probable method of addressing new International Relations dynamics.