The intersection of cultural studies (e.g., cinema studies) and social sciences offers the possibilities for scholar/practitioners to confront history as more than simulacrum and ethics as something other than the casualty of incommensurable language games. If we want to be agents of social change we need to assert a philosophy of life that makes the relationship among authority, ethics, and power central to a paradigm that expands rather than closes down the possibilities of a democratic human society. Within this discourse, images do not dissolve reality into simply another text; on the contrary, representations become central to revealing the structures of power relations at work in the complex global order. Planetary thinking, aided by cinema, does not succumb to the whims of the market place. Although the logic of the market place is seen as logic of common sense by many, a pedagogy of cinema can help dismantle this logic. Cinema can effectively help usher in an ongoing movement towards a shared conception of justice and a polycentric-multicultural social order.
Cinema is a medium that belongs to the public realm and it can assist humanity to achieve freedom and fight for social justice. Hannah Arendt articulated it best when she wrote, “Without a politically guaranteed public realm, freedom lacks the worldly space to make its appearance.” Cinema, a complex art form and, as astutely coined by Henry Giroux, “a teaching machine,” is also an agent of complexity. Complexity is an intellectual practice, a worldview, a politics, and an ethic. Accordingly, I think, as scholar/practitioners we must strive for making the private agenda public.
With the digital revolution, starting in the 1980s an exciting diverse cinematic movement has been evolving around the globe. This collective movement that uses cinema for social justice is in a similar vein to that of the French New Wave, however, there is one striking difference. This global movement is not a cinematic culture replacing another, but rather the integration of various cinematic styles and philosophical approaches being produced at the same time. This postmodern market place is transcending Hollywood and seriously challenging its hegemony.