The Film of the Islamic State—“Like Hollywood”?

The video propaganda of the so-called Islamic State (IS) has in the past been compared to Hollywood film, a rushed and erroneous comparison that uncarefully nobilitates this violent video propaganda and glosses over its actual ideological and aesthetic contours. In providing a more precise localization of the Islamic State's film in the concert of propaganda film history and world cinemas this chapter develops six key theses that permit a more nuanced perspective on the aesthetic character of Islamic State video propaganda. The chapter arrives at the core thesis that economic, technological and aesthetic processes of cinefication have permitted this film to temporarily expand its texture through different historic configurations of aesthetics, while still remaining militant Sunni Islamist propaganda underneath. Accordingly, it offers the idea that the Islamic State's film may have developed a pre-cinefied cinematic language—its own film style—that precedes any influence that ‘Hollywood’ may have had on it and that may have only been amplified by processes of cinefication. Addtionally, it offers that cinefication is a phenomenon that extends into exhibition practices online and offline as an accompanying phenomenon. Key to a better understanding of the Islamic State's propaganda film and its historic and aesthetic development are the four areas of film style (mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, editing) seen against their conditions of existence (history, technology, economy, ideology, personnel, motivation). This is captured in a methodic approach to analysis that intersects neoformalist film analysis with hermeneutic study, and that will guide the reader through subsequent chapters. In closing, this chapter provides insight into the book's vast research corpus that captures the entirety of the Islamic State's propaganda video history since the early 2000s, as well as the author's personal notes on working with psychologically demanding media.