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 Movies" fills this gap by providing provocative analyses of such current popular films as "The Silence of the Lambs, Dances With Wolves, Terminator II, Pretty Woman, Truth or Dare, Mystery Train," and "Jungle 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 Movies" employs 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.

Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, Ava Preacher Collins

Introduction, Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, Ava Preacher Collins; Chapter 1 The New Hollywood, Thomas Schatz; Chapter 2 Reclaiming the Social, Henry A. Giroux; Chapter 3 Pretty is as Pretty does, Hilary Radner; Chapter 4 The Unauthorized Auteur Today, Dudley Andrew; Chapter 5 Loose Canons, Ava Preacher Collins; Chapter 6 Spectacles of Death, Jeffrey Sconce; Chapter 7 Hardware and Hardbodies, What do Women Want?, Sharon Willis; Chapter 8 Thelma and Louise and the Cultural Generation of the New Butch-Femme, Cathy Griggers; Chapter 9 Taboos and Totems, Janet Staiger; Chapter 10 The Powers of Seeing and being Seen, Ann Cvetkovich; Chapter 11 Spike Lee and the Fever in the Racial Jungle, Ed Guerrero; Chapter 12 Split Skins, Susan White; Chapter 13 The Big Switch, Susan Jeffords; Chapter 14 Between Apocalypse and Redemption, Michael Eric Dyson; Chapter 15 Making Cyborgs, Making Humans, Forest Pyle; Chapter 16 Genericity in the Nineties, Jim Collins;