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Get Smart: How the CIA shapes Hollywood images

When

6.30pm–7.45pm

25 June 2015

Where

US Studies Centre

Over the last twenty years, the Central Intelligence Agency has actively worked with film and television creators to interest recruits, curtail criticisms, enhance public support and intimidate terrorists. In fact, the covert organisation has actively shaped some of Hollywood’s most popular texts, including movies such as The Recruit, Zero Dark Thirty, and Argo, as well as TV programs such as 24, Alias, The Agency, Covert Affairs and Homeland. In this talk by Associate Professor Tricia Jenkins from the Texas Christian University, participants learned what motivated the CIA to begin collaborating with Hollywood in the mid-1990s, how its efforts have helped re-define its public image, and the legal and ethical ramifications involved in the Hollywood-CIA relationship.

Featuring

  • Associate Professor Tricia Jenkins
    Associate Professor of Film, TV and Digital Media, Bob Schieffer College of Communication, Texas Christian University

    Tricia Jenkins was a visitor at the US Studies Centre in June 2015. Jenkins is Associate Professor of Film, TV and Digital Media at Bob Schieffer College of Communication, Texas Christian University. Her latest research focuses on the ways that the CIA works with Hollywood in order to boost its public image. She is the author of The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television (University of Texas Press, 2012).