Interpreting and Reinterpreting the Political Significance of Popular Media: The Importance of Seeing from a Range of Perspectives

Studies of popular culture have elucidated important insights about the extent to which politics is constructed by entertainment media. Nevertheless, I contend that when it comes to studies of security discourses in entertainment, researchers are too preoccupied with categorising texts as either ‘critical’ or ‘affirmative’, depending on whether they seem to support or challenge militarism. I argue that work on popular culture should be more attentive to the polysemic character of texts – that is, their openness to multiple readings. From this perspective, studies which are directed at finding critical or affirmative meaning are valuable, but they only uncover a narrow range of the possible interpretations texts may receive. I substantiate this with examples of ostensibly critical films which have been appropriated into military culture and ostensibly affirmative videogames which include critical themes. Giving greater attention to polysemy broadens research possibilities, especially when it comes to identifying how popular media are politically meaningful.