Interrogating the Image: Movies and the World of Film and Television

Del Jacobs

doi:10.5771/9780761846338

Summary

Interrogating the Image argues that movies examining the role film and television plays in the lives of their audience have created changes both in the movies themselves and in their viewers, and considers fourteen films where the moving picture is central to the narratives. Three films discussed_The Purple Rose of Cairo, Pleasantville, and The Truman Show_offer frame-breaking experiences for their characters that allow spectators to appreciate the ruptures between lived reality and media-play, delivering therapeutic payoffs that can be restorative, reconstructive, or rejective. Other examples come from the worlds of cinema (The Majestic, Matinee, Cinema Paradiso), television (Bamboozled, Network, Natural Born Killers, Medium Cool), and the sociopolitical realm where media dominates (Being There, Wag the Dog, Bob Roberts, Bulworth). Meanwhile, significant interpretive stances_reflective/reflexive, critical, and ironic_are engendered and embraced by filmmakers and audiences who create and consume these works. The result is a media-saturated culture, in transformation and best understood using cinema's interrogative resources.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2009
Copyright Year: 2009
ISBN-Print: 978-0-7618-4632-1
ISBN-Online: 978-0-7618-4633-8
Publisher: Hamilton Books, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 268
Product Type: Monograph

1. Contents No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 10
Ch01. Audience No access Pages 11 - 28
Ch02. Movies About Movies:The Reflexive/Reflective Stance No access Pages 29 - 72
Ch03. Movies About Television:The Critical Stance No access Pages 73 - 170
Ch04. Movies About the Surrealin Media: The Ironic Stance No access Pages 171 - 234
Ch05. Life as Movie No access Pages 235 - 242
Epilogue. The Sixth Generation Audience No access Pages 243 - 254
Bibliography No access Pages 255 - 260
Index No access Pages 261 - 268