Over the past ten years Hollywood has devoted big budgets and established stars to films about controversial issues, while identities previously considered marginal have come into prominence on the big screen. The authors examine the issues raised by these developments, bringing together debates in identity politics with film studies and launching an innovative theorisation of cinematic representation of identity. Movies from Forrest Gump to Philadelphia, from Malcolm X to Falling Down, have engaged explicitly with notions of multiculturalism and identity politics. This book is concerned pre-eminently with the meanings put into circulation by these mainstream films and audiences' readings of them. It provides a brief and accessible introduction to such issues as arguments over positive and negative images and the relationship between cultural representation and political power.

Hollywood has devoted big budgets and established stars to films about controversial issues in the last ten years. Identities considered marginal have come into prominence on the big screen. The authors of this title look at the issues raised by these developments, bring together debates in identity politics with film studies, and launch an innovative theorization of the cinematic representation of identity. Movies from ForrestGump to Philadelphia, from Malcolm X to Falling Down have been specifically concerned with multiculturalism and identity politics. This book is concerned with the meanings put into circulation by these mainstream films and audiences' reactions to them. It provides an accessible introduction to issues such as arguments over positive and negative images and the relationship between cultural representation and political power in American life.

America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in the Movies, 2nd Edition is a lively introduction to issues of diversity as represented within the American cinema. Provides a comprehensive overview of the industrial, socio-cultural, and aesthetic factors that contribute to cinematic representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality Includes over 100 illustrations, glossary of key terms, questions for discussion, and lists for further reading/viewing Includes new case studies of a number of films, including Crash, Brokeback Mountain, and Quinceañera

Reversing the Lens is relevant to anyone who is curious about how video and film can be utilized to expose ethnicity, race, gender, and sexuality as social constructions subject to political contestation and in dialogue with other potential forms of difference."--BOOK JACKET.

Animating Difference studies the way race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender are portrayed in recent animated films from 1990 through the present. Ranging from Aladdin to Toy Story to Up, these popular films are key media through which children (and adults) learn about the world and how to behave. While racial and gender stereotypes may not be as obvious as they may have been in films of decades past, they often continue to convey troubling messages and stereotypes in subtle and surprising ways.

Narrating American Gender and Ethnic Identities investigates two major issues within contemporary American Studies: cultural representations of various minorities (ethnic, religious, sexual) and of women in intersectional contexts of race, class, and sexuality. The first part of the volume, “Gender and Sexuality in Film and Literature”, analyzes different film genres and literary accounts in reference to those aspects of gender and sexuality that are related to identity. Various cultural texts are discussed from perspectives deriving from feminist, gender, and LGBT studies, intersectionality theories, as well as film studies. The second part, “American Experiences of Ethnic Diversity”, dwells upon ethnic and racial problems of American multicultural society and complex interrelationships between the dominant and the marginalized (the center and the periphery). It also focuses on the issue of one’s “(un)fitting” into the dominant culture, mainstream politics, and canon. The book is mostly addressed to scholars and students of American Studies but will also be noteworthy to anybody interested in the United States, literature, and the media. Selected chapters of this volume can be used as a point of departure for discussions – both scholarly and student – on contemporary challenges to the idea of multiculturalism, the complex role of various intersections (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality, religion, class, dis/ability, etc.) in shaping minority subjectivities, as well as feminist responses to and reading of dominant women’s literary and filmic representations.

Contemporary Black American Cinema offers a fresh collection of essays on African American film, media, and visual culture in the era of global multiculturalism. Integrating theory, history, and criticism, the contributing authors deftly connect interdisciplinary perspectives from American studies, cinema studies, cultural studies, political science, media studies, and Queer theory. This multidisciplinary methodology expands the discursive and interpretive registers of film analysis. From Paul Robeson’s and Sidney Poitier’s star vehicles to Lee Daniels’s directorial forays, these essays address the career legacies of film stars, examine various iterations of Blaxploitation and animation, question the comedic politics of "fat suit" films, and celebrate the innovation of avant-garde and experimental cinema.

In High Contrast, Sharon Willis examines the dynamic relationships between racial and sexual difference in Hollywood film from the 1980s and 1990s. Seizing on the way these differences are accentuated, sensationalized, and eroticized on screen--most often with little apparent regard for the political context in which they operate--Willis restores that context through close readings of a range of movies from cinematic blockbusters to the work of the new auteurs, Spike Lee, David Lynch, and Quentin Tarantino. Capturing the political complexity of these films, Willis argues that race, gender, and sexuality, as they are figured in the fantasy of popular film, do not function separately, but rather inform and determine each other's meaning. She demonstrates how collective anxieties regarding social difference are mapped onto big budget movies like the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon series, Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, Thelma and Louise, Terminator 2, and others. Analyzing the artistic styles of directors Lynch, Tarantino, and Lee, in such films as Wild at Heart, Pulp Fiction, and Do the Right Thing, she investigates how these interactions of difference are linked to the production of specific authorial styles, and how race functions for each of these directors, particularly in relation to gender identity, erotics, and fantasy.

This anthology addresses the salient aesthetic, ideological and economic determinants of independent American cinema over the past three decades.

Studies of the portrayal of black people in film have tended to be studies for the ideological correctness of the depictions of black people and the extent to which they rely on stereotypes. By closely examining films such as Sapphire (1959), Leo the Last (1969), Black Joy (1977), Playing Away (1986) and Mona Lisa (1987) and situating them in their historical and social context, Fear of the Dark develops a particualar critical perspective on the film portrayal of black female sexuality and questions the extent to which black film makers have challenged stereotypes.