Sandford Borins (Professor of Public Management Emeritus, University of Toronto) , Beth Herst (independent researcher)
This presentation introduces a new book by Beth Herst and Sandford Borins, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, to be published by University of Toronto Press in spring 2026. Public Representations explores the reciprocal relationship between recent screen representations of politics and contemporary political culture in the U.S. and U.K. between 2010 and 2020 and in Canada from 1960 to the present.
The presentation will discuss what we consider to be the ten most controversial films analyzed in Public Representations. They are (by country): Selma, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Standard Operating Procedure (U.S.); Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, The Falklands Play (U.K.); and Les Rose, Prairie Giant, Les Ordres (Canada). For each film in the set, we explore the sources of controversy, contending parties, outcome of the controversy, and political and policy implications of the controversy. We draw some broader conclusions from the entire set.
Conceptually, our research draws on a variety of approaches including political psychology, media studies, and feminist theory. For each film, we have analyzed a rich variety of paratexts including online and legacy media reviews, interviews with creators, news reports and feature coverage, and fan discussion, as well as metrics such as production budgets, box office data, and awards.
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