ABSTRACT

Film Theory Goes to the Movies fills the gap in film theory literature which has failed to analyze high-grossing blockbusters. The contributors in this volume, however, discuss such popular films as The Silence of the Lambs, Dances With Wolves, Terminator II, Pretty Woman, Truth or Dare, Mystery Train, and Jungle Fever.

They employ 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. An important introduction to contemporary Hollywood, this anthology will be of interest to those involved in the fields of film theory, literary theory, popular culture, and women's studies.

chapter |29 pages

The New Hollywood

chapter |19 pages

Reclaiming the Social

Pedagogy, Resistance, and Politics in Celluloid Culture

chapter |21 pages

Pretty is as Pretty does

Free Enterprise and the Marriage Plot

chapter |17 pages

Loose Canons

Constructing Cultural Traditions Inside and Outside the Academy

chapter |17 pages

Spectacles of Death

Identification, Reflexivity, and Contemporary Horror

chapter |9 pages

Hardware and Hardbodies, What do Women Want?

A Reading of Thelma and Louise

chapter |13 pages

Taboos and Totems

Cultural Meanings of The Silence of the Lambs

chapter |15 pages

The Powers of Seeing and being Seen

Truth or Dare and Paris is Burning

chapter |14 pages

Split Skins

Female Agency and Bodily Mutilation in The Little Mermaid

chapter |13 pages

The Big Switch

Hollywood Masculinity in the Nineties

chapter |18 pages

Between Apocalypse and Redemption

John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood

chapter |15 pages

Making Cyborgs, Making Humans

Of Terminators and Blade Runners

chapter |22 pages

Genericity in the Nineties

Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity