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