| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Projecting Paranoia: Conspiratorial Visions in American Film. By Ray Pratt. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. x, 323 pp. Cloth, $50.00, ISBN 0-7006-1148-7. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-7006-1150-9.)

Although films that focus on conspiracy thinking may offer assurance that historical events never occur by accident—or by mistake, the films may also, according to Ray Pratt, "stimulate and perhaps even empower the political imaginations of those who view them" (p. 253). Just how they manage to do so is the subject of his book, which looks at what Pratt terms "visionary cultural paranoia" as a "subjective reflection of the perceived powerlessness of the American public" (p. 8). Accounting for the innumerable forms of social paranoia in this country that have shown up on film is a difficult enough undertaking, but trying to find a common thread among them beyond "perceived powerlessness" proves frustrating for the reader. Leaving aside the question of just who is perceiving that powerlessness (studios? investors? writers? directors? portions of the audience?), the notion of mainstream American movies subjectively reflecting this situation is itself fraught with political, economic, and cultural contradictions.

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