Film Theory Goes to the Movies: Cultural Analysis of Contemporary Film

by Collins,Jim; Collins,Jim

• ISBN13: 9780415905763
• ISBN10: 0415905761
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1992-12-21
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Film theory--it isn't just about Eisenstein anymore. While "film theory" has produced a significant body of influential scholarship, defining the cutting edge of critical analysis for the past two decades, the majority of this work has focused on "classical" Hollywood, European cinema, and avant-garde films. More recent films, especially high-grossing blockbusters, are conspicuously absent from this field of study, relegated to the narrow realm of popular reviewing. Film Theory Goes to the Moviesfills this gap by providing provocative analyses of such current popular films asThe Silence of the Lambs, Dances With Wolves, Terminator II, Pretty Woman, Truth or Dare, Mystery Train, andJungle Fever. Within the field of film study, these essays argue for the continuing need to engage in critical, ideological dialogues, and within the broader context of the academy, this collection addresses the debates concerning cultural authority, canonicity,multiculturalism, and radical pedagogy. Film Theory Goes to the Moviesemploys a variety of critical approaches, from industry analysis to reception study, to close readings informed by feminist, deconstructive, and postmodernist theory, as well as recent developments in African American and gay and lesbian criticism. It is an important introduction to contemporary Hollywood which will be of interest to those involved in the fields of film theory, literary theory, popular culture, and women's studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(7)
Jim Collins
Hilary Radner
Ava Preacher Collins
The New Hollywood	8	(29)
Thomas Schatz
Reclaiming the Social: Pedagogy, Resistance, and Politics in Celluloid Culture	37	(19)
Henry A. Giroux
Pretty Is as Pretty Does: Free Enterprise and the Marriage Plot	56	(21)
Hilary Radner
The Unauthorized Auteur Today	77	(9)
Dudley Andrew
Loose Canons: Constructing Cultural Traditions Inside and Outside the Academy	86	(17)
Ava Preacher Collins
Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity, and Contemporary Horror	103	(17)
Jeffrey Sconce
Hardware and Hardbodies, What Do Women Want?: A Reading of Thelma and Louise	120	(9)
Sharon Willis
Thelma and Louise and the Cultural Generation of the New Butch-Femme	129	(13)
Cathy Griggers
Taboos and Totems: Cultural Meanings of The Silence of the Lambs	142	(13)
Janet Staiger
The Powers of Seeing and Being Seen: Truth or Dare and Paris is Burning	155	(15)
Ann Cvetkovich
Spike Lee and the Fever in the Racial Jungle	170	(12)
Ed Guerrero
Split Skins: Female Agency and Bodily Mutilation in The Little Mermaid	182	(14)
Susan White
The Big Switch: Hollywood Masculinity in the Nineties	196	(13)
Susan Jeffords
Between Apocalypse and Redemption: John Singleton's Boyz N The Hood	209	(18)
Michael Eric Dyson
Making Cyborgs, Making Humans: Of Terminators and Blade Runners	227	(15)
Forest Pyle
Genericity in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity	242	(23)
Jim Collins
Notes	265	(30)
List of Contributors	295