EA Audio Analysis: Why Hollywood is Blowing Up the White House --- Scott Lucas with the BBC

I joined BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, with Catherine Bray of Film4.com, to discuss Hollywood's spate of films portraying the White House under terrorist attack.

Listen to the discussion from the 2:19.54 mark.

What's going on? "There's this perpetual 'culture of fear' --- even when America thinks it has won, from the end of the Cold War to the killing of Osama bin Laden."

And, for what's it worth, Team America did this almost a decade ago and did it far better.

US Film Exclusive: How the Apocalypse Sells "America" (Langley)

Richard Langley's "American Un-Frontiers"

---

Think about the American frontier, and you will probably picture scenes from a Hollywood Western: wide-open spaces ready for roaming, sparsely=-populated by cowboys and "Indians", prospectors and pioneers. However, in this new short film, premiered on EA, Richard Langley argues that the cherished American idea of the frontier is more than the landscape and lifestyle of the West.

The "frontier" also has another home in Hollywood: the apocalypse blockbuster.

American Un-Frontiers: Universality and Apocalypse Blockbusters looks at the recent films of Roland Emmerich --- Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 --- to show they use the "frontier" with the hallowed American ideas of universality and renewal and how they ultimately endorse American dominance of the globe.

Hey, it may be the end of the world as we know it, but America feels fine....