The Subject of Film and Race: Retheorizing Politics, Ideology, and Cinema

Description

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. Cover HalfTitle Title Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: What is Critical Race Film Studies? 1 Key Developments in Critical Race Film Studies First-generation criticism Second-generation criticism Separate and equal: The impact of identity politics 2 Theorizing Race with a Wide-open Text: The Searchers Searching for closure, Ford, and Ethan 3 Poststructuralism and the Neo-Marxian Subject Critical subjects, cinema, and the culture industry The subject of Adorno’s contradictions Racial subjects and the problem of biological essentialism 4 Postcolonial Hazards: Edward Said and Film Studies Film studies’ poststructuralist readings of Orientalism What is a Saidian methodology for race in film studies? 5 Postmodern Multiracial, Keanu Reeves Hybridity, postmodern subjectivity, and Keanu Reeves Multiracials and postmodern ahistoricism Hybrid politics in film studies Cyborg metaphors Conclusion: A Materialist Method for Critical Race Film Studies A materialist method for critical race film studies Bibliography Index