ABSTRACT
There can be little doubt that film nowadays forms one, if not the, major transmitter and reinforcer of social values and positions of all kinds and on all sorts of issues. It is therefore more than legitimate to attempt to unravel the workings of film in this regard. Approaches targeting the broader social effects of film generally divide into two methodological areas: first, approaches with a focus on quantitative exploration of media reception and contexts of consumption and production; second, approaches involving discursive interpretation-‘discursive’, as we set out in Chapter 1, not in the sense of relying on a theoretical understanding of discourse but in the sense of being argued discursively, as an informal style of discussion drawing on a range of interpretation schemes inherited from literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy and so on (cf. our map of the territory in Figure 1.5). Somewhat between the two we can also situate cultural studies, which can be pursued both qualitatively and quantitatively (e.g., Berger, 2000; Hammer and Kellner, 2009).
