Reading Race: Hollywood and the Cinema of Racial Violence / Edition 1

by Norman K. Denzin

Overview

In this insightful book, one of America's leading commentators on culture and society turns his gaze upon cinematic race relations, examining the relationship between film, race and culture.

Acute, richly illustrated and timely, the book deepens our understanding of the politics of race and the symbolic complexity of segregation and discrimination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803975453
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	03/29/2002
Series:	Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Norman K. Denzin is Distinguished Professor of Communications, College of Communications Scholar, and Research Professor of Communications, Sociology, and Humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Denzin is the author or editor of more than two dozen books, including Indians on Display; Custer on Canvas; The Qualitative Manifesto; Qualitative Inquiry Under Fire; Searching for Yellowstone; Reading Race; Interpretive Ethnography; The Cinematic Society; The Voyeur’s Gaze; and The Alcoholic Self. He is past editor of The Sociological Quarterly, co-editor (with Yvonna S. Lincoln) of four editions of the Handbook of Qualitative Research, coeditor (with Michael D. Giardina) of eight plenary volumes from the annual Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, co-editor (with Lincoln) of the methods journal Qualitative Inquiry, founding editor of Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies and International Review of Qualitative Research, and editor of three book series.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	viii
	Introduction	1
Part 1	Reading Race	17
1	The Cinematic Racial Order	17
Part 2	Racial Allegories: The White Hood	47
2	A Grand Canyon	47
3	Race, Women, and Violence in the Hood	64
4	Lethal Weapons in the Hood	86
Part 3	Racial Allegories: The Black and Brown Hood	111
5	Boyz N Girlz in the Hood	111
6	Zoot Suits and Homeboys (and Girls)	133
7	Spike's Place	154
Part 4	A New Racial Aesthetic	171
8	Screening Race	171
Appendix	Filmography	192
	Bibliography	216
	Index	233
	About the Author	241

Editorial Reviews

Denzin (communications, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), arguing that the contemporary history of race relations in America is reflected by the representation of violent, youthful minority group members in Hollywood cinema, analyzes Hollywood's" cinema of racial violence" for what it reveals about the inability of American society to fully understand the conflict between its creed of fundamental equality and the segregationist and discriminatory realities of society. Focusing on such films as , , , and , he contends that mainstream film in the 1990s contributed to the production of a new racial discourse that connects race to a culture of violence. The gaze of the camera thereby became aligned with the conservative laws of patriarchy and the state, making colored people the objects of a white panoptic system of social control and surveillance. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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