Description
Popular culture powerfully shapes security narratives in global politics, yet remains underexplored in Ontological Security Studies (OSS). This paper bridges this gap by synthesising OSS with Cultural Studies to analyse how cultural products influence collective identity and security perceptions. Placing postcolonial OSS's engagement with Lacan in conversation with Stuart Hall's work on representation and the political economy of cultural production, the paper develops a multi-level framework mapping the psychological, semiotic, and socio-economic mechanisms by which popular culture interacts with global politics. To test this framework, the paper analyses the production and reception of D.W. Griffith's landmark film "Birth of a Nation" (1915). This analysis reveals the unique emotional role popular culture played in nativist white supremacist discourses of early 20th century America, while illuminating the complex network of writers, producers, financiers, audiences, and critics that shaped the film's (in)securitizing power. This historical moment thus offers contemporary scholars a fuller, more nuanced picture of how ontological (in)security narratives are produced and contested within popular culture.
