In Unlikely Couples, Thomas E. Wartenberg directly challenges the view that narrative cinema inherently supports the dominant social interests by examining the way popular films about unlikely couples (a mismatched romantic union viewed as inappropriate due to its class, racial, or gender composition) explore, expose, and criticize societal attitudes, boundaries, and prejudices. The films under considerationincluding King Kong, Pygmalion, It Happened One Night, Pretty Woman, White Palace, Some Like it Hot, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Mississippi Masala, Jungle Fever, Ali:...

Horror is often dismissed as mass art or lowbrow entertainment that produces only short-term thrills. Horror films can be bloody, gory, and disturbing, so some people argue that they have bad moral effects, inciting viewers to imitate cinematic violence or desensitizing them to atrocities. In The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror, Cynthia A. Freeland seeks to counter both aesthetic disdain and moral condemnation by focusing on a select body of important and revealing films, demonstrating how the genre is capable of deep philosophical reflection about the existence and...

Reel Arguments collects an integrated series of essays addressing the role of film as social criticism. By looking at films and the creators of such films as Alice in the Cities, Enemy of the State, The Conversation, Falling Down, City of Hope, and Matewan, Light persuasively argues that film can be both highly philosophical and influential on public debates over issues of moral, political and social importance. Light brings new insights into the readings of these films covering a range of issues: identity politics, urban landscapes, the...

Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood's Construction of Afro-American Culture goes beyond reflection theories of the media to examine cinema's active participation in the operations of racism --a complex process rooted in the dynamics of representation. Written for undergraduates and graduate students of film studies and philosophy, Reel Racism focuses on methods and frameworks that analyze films for their production of meaning and how those meanings participate in a broader process of justifying, naturalizing, or legitimizing difference, privilege, and violence based on race. In addition...