Based on the premise that a society's sense of commonality depends upon media practices this
study examines how Hollywood responded to the crisis of democracy during the Second World War
by creating a new genre - the war film. Developing an affective theory of genre cinema the
study's focus on the sense of commonality offers a new characterization of the relationship
between politics and poetics. It shows how the diverse ramifications of genre poetics can be
explored as a network of experiental modalities that make history graspable as a continuous
process of delineating the limits of community.
