The Subject of Film and Race

Retheorizing Politics, Ideology, and Cinema

Gerald Sim

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781623561352
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

The Subject of Film and Race is the first comprehensive intervention into how film critics and scholars have sought to understand cinema's relationship to racial ideology. In attempting to do more than merely identify harmful stereotypes, research on 'films and race' appropriates ideas from post-structuralist theory. But on those platforms, the field takes intellectual and political positions that place its anti-racist efforts at an impasse. While presenting theoretical ideas in an accessible way, Gerald Sim's historical materialist approach uniquely triangulates well-known work by Edward Said with the Neo-Marxian writing about film by Theodor Adorno and Fredric Jameson. The Subject of Film and Race takes on topics such as identity politics, multiculturalism, multiracial discourse, and cyborg theory, to force film and media studies into rethinking their approach, specifically towards humanism and critical subjectivity. The book illustrates theoretical discussions with a diverse set of familiar films by John Ford, Michael Mann, Todd Solondz, Quentin Tarantino, Keanu Reeves, and others, to show that we must always be aware of capitalist history when thinking about race, ethnicity, and films.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Introduction: What is Critical Race Film Studies?
• 1 Key Developments in Critical Race Film Studies
• 2 Theorizing Race with a Wide-open Text: The Searchers
• 3 Poststructuralism and the Neo-Marxian Subject
• 4 Postcolonial Hazards: Edward Said and Film Studies
• 5 Postmodern Multiracial, Keanu Reeves
• Conclusion: A Materialist Method for Critical Race Film Studies
• Bibliography
• Index