Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood's Construction Of Afro-american Culture / Edition 1

by Vincent F. Rocchio

Overview

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 to analyzing how the process of racism is articulated in specific films, Reel Racism examines how specific meanings can resist their function of ideological containment, and instead, offer a perspective of a more collective, egalitarian social system— one that transcends the discourse of race.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813367101
Publisher:	Westview Press
Publication date:	12/22/2000
Series:	Thinking through Cinema Series
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1430L (what's this?)

About the Author

Vincent F. Rocchio is visiting assistant professor of film studies at Dartmouth College. He has also published articles in The Spectator, Film Quarterly, and The National Catholic Reporter . He is a founding member of the Ekklesia Project and currently lives in Lawrence, MA.

Table of Contents

Of Racism and Representation — Introduction: Revisiting Racism and Cinema — The Birth of a (Racist) Nation(al) Cinema — Cinema and the Maintenance of Privilege — The Gods Must Be Crazy (Privileged, but Crazy) — Driving Miss Daisy (Because She’s White and I’m Not!) — Mississippi (and History) Burning — Confronting Racism and Representation — A World Apart (from the World of Privilege) — School Daze and the Politics of Appropriation — Do the Right Thing: Style as Confrontation — Daughters of the Dust and the Figurative as Mode of Resistance — The Great White Man of Lambarene and the Limits of Representation — Epilogue: Racism, Representation, and the Role of Theory

Editorial Reviews

For undergraduates and graduate students of film and media studies and philosophy, an analysis of mainstream cinema's participation in societal racism. Rocchio (film studies, Dartmouth) analyzes how films produce meaning and how those meanings in turn lead to a broad process of justifying, naturalizing, or legitimizing difference, privilege, and violence based on race. The text grew out of a series of lectures Rocchio developed for a course on racism and representation at St. John's U., Queens. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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