Dedication
Acknowledgments
A Brief Note on Terminology
Introduction • Camouflaging Empire: Imperial Benevolence in American Popular Culture
Scott Laderman
1 • Imperial Cry Faces: Women Lamenting the War on Terror
Rebecca A. Adelman
2 • "Prowarrior, But Not Necessarily Prowar": American Sniper, Sheep, and Sheepdogs
Edwin A. Martini
3 • "The First Step toward Curing the Postwar Blues Is a Return to Nature": Veterans' Outdoor Rehabilitation Programs and the Normalization of Empire
David Kieran
4 • Exceptional Soldiers: Imagining the Privatized Military on U.S. Television
Stacy Takacs
5 • Obama's "Just War": Th e American Hero and Just Violence in Popular Television Series
Min Kyung (Mia) Yoo
6 • Superhero Films after 9/11: Mitigating "Collateral Damage" in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Tim Gruenewald
7 • Humanity's Greatest Hope: The American Ideal in Marvel's The Avengers
Ross Griffin
8 • The Perfect Cold War Movie for Today? Smoke and Mirrors in Steven Spielberg's Vision of the Cold War
Tony Shaw
9 • Disfiguring the Americas: Representing Drugs, Violence, and Immigration in the Age of Trump
Patrick William Kelly
10 • Black Ops Diplomacy and the Foreign Policy of Popular Culture
Penny M. Von Eschen
About the Contributors
Index

This is a necessary and urgent read for anyone concerned about the United States' endless wars. Investigating multiple genres of popular culture alongside contemporary U.S. foreign policy and political economy, Imperial Benevolence shows that American popular culture continuously suppresses awareness of U.S. imperialism while assuming American exceptionalism and innocence. This is despite the fact that it is rarely a product of the state. Expertly coordinated essays by prominent historians and media scholars address the ways that movies and television series such as Zero Dark Thirty, The Avengers, and even The Walking Dead, as well as video games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, have largely presented the United States as a global force for good. Popular culture, with few exceptions, has depicted the U.S. as a reluctant hegemon fiercely defending human rights and protecting or expanding democracy from the barbarians determined to destroy it.