The Center Will Not Hold

Abstract

Social instability and inequality in America is seemingly reflected in the paranoid dreams of other, even more repressive regimes, as evidenced by such “guns and ammo” governmental takeover fantasies as Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen (2013). Olympus Has Fallen is actually an updated riff on John Frankenheimer’s Manchurian Candidate (1962) for a new, more merciless generation. This film is just one of the hyper-paranoid visions discussed in this chapter, which examines the figure of American, and by extension world society in collapse, as delineated in a series of films that seem to be in love with destruction. At the same time, alternative visions are being created that challenge the dominant culture, and these works are also examined in this chapter.