Post truth, justice, and the feminine way: an examination of justice and female agency in mainstream American conspiracy films from the 1970s to present with the aim of developing politically forceful narratives

The American conspiracy film is at a crossroads where, if it continues to apply 20th century paradigms and moral expectations onto 21st century narratives, the genre stands to lose its political force and relevance -- subsumed by a proliferating conspiracy culture.

This thesis draws on the relationship between conspiracy film and conspiracy history to identify a steady loss of political force from the 1970s into the 21st century as justice evolves from public-facing to private-facing, culminating in the genre’s present ‘lame duck’ period. This paradigm of depleting political force does not apply to female-led conspiracy narratives, for whom strides in women's liberation off-screen translate to augmented female agency on-screen, leading to greater senses of justice and political force as they progress into the 21st century. My catalogue of over 100 data points indexing the patterns, motifs, characters, and characteristics of American conspiracy films over the last 50 years led directly to my original contributions of knowledge: my three-phased classification of justice in the genre and creation of discourse dedicated specifically to female conspiracy protagonists, along with the multitude of new terms introduced to analyse, qualify, and augment the political force of conspiracy films (i.e.: ‘tradition 1 and 2 narratives’, ‘privatisation of the antagonist’, ‘corruption of the protagonist’, ‘utility of the team’, etc.) By utilising a dual methodology of critical film analysis (contextualised amidst contemporaneous socio/historical/political events) this thesis examines what happened in the conspiracy genre, whilst employing practice as research through a hauntological lens in order to question, investigate, and propose: what next?

In doing so, three core elements of the conspiracy narrative (the Protagonist, Behemoth, and Mechanisms for Justice) are updated and fortified against solipsism and cynicism with practical techniques to employ; for when truth cannot be trusted, it is justice that will ignite conspiracy narratives’ political force.