Populist Narratives in Film and TV: A Conceptual Framework

This paper argues that certain film and television narratives can contribute to cultures of populism. In the first section, following an opening example, the paper presents two research projects that have this object of study. It subsequently presents a theoretical framework supporting this analysis, drawing from studies in populism, media studies and affect, and proposes the concept of the “populist narrative” in order to foreground the role of storytelling. In the analytical part, the paper expands on a handful of examples from contemporary Italian film and TV that deal with the theme of corruption, in particular through the recurrent motif of the “unlikely candidate”. The discussion section justifies the need to move beyond the text itself, highlighting the necessity for a mixed methodology to do so in future research.