Darkness in the bliss-out: a reconsideration of the films of Steven Spielberg

Introduction: Steven Spielberg and the politics of bliss

"I didn't want to see this" : weekend America and its discontents in Close encounters of the third kind, E.T., and Poltergeist

"Americans fighting Americans" : incoherence and animal comedy in 1941

"What exactly are we applauding?" Indiana Jones and the ideologies of heroism and American exceptionalism

"Lost and done for" : the rejection of war fantasies in Empire of the sun and War horse

"For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand" : humanity and inhumanity in A.I Artificial Intelligence.