Cinematic Geographies and Multicultural Spectatorship in America

by Corbin, Amy Lynn

• ISBN13: 9781137482662
• ISBN10: 1137482664
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-10-22
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Exploration, intertwined with home-seeking, has always defined America. Geographic variation and a mobile populace have meant that America is always searching for a home, yet in love with travel. Here, Corbin argues that a wide swath of films about significant cultural landscapes in America evoke a sense of travel for their viewers, just by going to the movie theatre. She considers the dialectic between the thrill of seeing an "other" place and the security of being in a "familiar" place. The sum total of these virtual travel experiences from the mid-1970s through the 1990s built a societal map of "popular multiculturalism" - of various landscapes in relation to each other - through a movie going experience that combined middlebrow entertainment with moderate-to-liberal politics.

Author Biography

Amy Corbin is Assistant Professor of Media and Communication and Acting Director of Film Studies at Muhlenberg College, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Story of a Land: The Spatial Politics of Early Multiculturalism in Indian Country
2. Primitive Cousins: Roots and Authenticity in the White South
3. The Urban Frontier: From Inner City Tourist to Resident
4. "Home" Turns Otherworldly in the Suburbs
5. Ghosts of Indian Country: Filling in the Map