The End Of Cinema As We Know It: American Film in the Nineties

by Jon Lewis

Overview

Thirty-four essays that take a serious look at the state of modern cinema

Almost half a century ago, Jean-Luc Godard famously remarked, "I await the end of cinema with optimism." Lots of us have been waiting forand wondering aboutthis prophecy ever since. The way films are made and exhibited has changed significantly. Films, some of which are not exactly "films" anymore, can now be projected in a wide variety of wayson screens in revamped high tech theaters, on big, high-resolution TVs, on little screens in minivans and laptops. But with all this new gear, all these new ways of viewing films, are we necessarily getting different, better movies?

The thirty-four brief essays in The End of Cinema as We Know It attend a variety of topics, from film censorship and preservation to the changing structure and status of independent cinemafrom the continued importance of celebrity and stardom to the sudden importance of alternative video. While many of the contributors explore in detail the pictures that captured the attention of the nineties film audience, such as Jurassic Park, Eyes Wide Shut, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, The Wedding Banquet, The Matrix, Independence Day, Gods and Monsters, The Nutty Professor, and Kids, several essays consider works that fall outside the category of film as it is conventionally definedthe home "movie" of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's honeymoon and the amateur video of the LAPD beating of Rodney King.

Examining key films and filmmakers, the corporate players and industry trends, film styles and audio-visual technologies, the contributors to this volume spell out the end of cinema in terms of irony, cynicism and exhaustion, religious fundamentalism and fanaticism, and the decline of what we once used to call film culture.

Contributors include: Paul Arthur, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Thomas Doherty, Thomas Elsaesser, Krin Gabbard, Henry Giroux, Heather Hendershot, Jan-Christopher Hook, Alexandra Juhasz, Charles Keil, Chuck Klienhans, Jon Lewis, Eric S. Mallin, Laura U. Marks, Kathleen McHugh, Pat Mellencamp, Jerry Mosher, Hamid Naficy, Chon Noriega, Dana Polan, Murray Pomerance, Hillary Radner, Ralph E. Rodriguez, R.L. Rutsky, James Schamus, Christopher Sharrett, David Shumway, Robert Sklar, Murray Smith, Marita Sturken, Imre Szeman, Frank P. Tomasulo, Maureen Turim, Justin Wyatt, and Elizabeth Young.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814751619
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2001
Pages:	385
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Jon Lewis is Professor of English at Oregon State Universitywhere he has taught film and cultural studies since 1983. His books include Whom God Wishes to Destroy . . . Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood, The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films and Youth Culture, and (as editor) The New American Cinema.

Table of Contents

	The End of Cinema As We Know It and I Feel ...: An Introduction to a Book on Nineties American Film	1
I	Movies, Money, and History
1	The Blockbuster: Everything Connects, but Not Everything Goes	11
2	Those Who Disagree Can Kiss Jack Valenti's Ass	23
3	The Hollywood History Business	33
4	The Man Who Wanted to Go Back	43
II	Things American (Sort Of)
5	"American" Cinema in the 1990s and Beyond: Whose Country's Filmmaking Is It Anyway?	53
6	Marketing Marginalized Cultures: The Wedding Banquet, Cultural Identities, and Independent Cinema of the 1990s	61
7	Hollywood Redux: All about My Mother and Gladiator	72
III	Four Key Films
8	The Zen of Masculinity--Rituals of Heroism in The Matrix	83
9	Ikea Boy Fights Back: Fight Club, Consumerism, and the Political Limits of Nineties Cinema	95
10	The Blair Witch Project, Macbeth, and the Indeterminate End	105
11	Empire of the Gun: Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and American Chauvinism	115
12	Saving Private Ryan Too Late	131
IV	Pictures and Politics
13	The Confusions of Warren Beatty	141
14	Movie Star Presidents	150
15	The Fantasy Image: Fixed and Moving	158
16	Men with Guns: The Story John Sayles Can't Tell	168
17	The End of Chicano Cinema	175
V	The End of Masculinity As We Know It
18	Being Keanu	185
19	Woody Allen, "the Artist," and "the Little Girl"	195
20	Affliction: When Paranoid Male Narratives Fail	203
21	The Phallus UnFetished: The End of Masculinity As We Know It in Late-1990s "Feminist" Cinema	210
VI	Bodies at Rest and in Motion
22	Bods and Monsters: The Return of the Bride of Frankenstein	225
23	Having Their Cake and Eating It Too: Fat Acceptance Films and the Production of Meaning	237
VII	Independents
24	A Rant	253
25	The Case of Harmony Korine	261
26	Where Hollywood Fears to Tread: Autobiography and the Limits of Commercial Cinema	269
27	Smoke 'til You're Blue in the Face	277
VIII	Not Films Exactly
28	Pamela Anderson on the Slippery Slope	287
29	King Rodney: The Rodney King Video and Textual Analysis	300
30	Live Video	305
IX	Endgames
31	End of Story: The Collapse of Myth in Postmodern Narrative Film	319
32	Waiting for the End of the World: Christian Apocalyptic Media at the Turn of the Millennium	332
33	The Four Last Things: History, Technology, Hollywood, Apocalypse	342
34	Twenty-five Reasons Why It's All Over	356
	Contributors	367
	Index	373

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Brief on brilliant cocktail conversation? This reader-friendly collection will help you apply Foucault to Keanu, Derrida to Spielberg, Macbeth to Blair Witch, and pull it off with panache. Stimulating in small doses, its 34 essays deconstruct 1990s cinema, and the decade too, with intellectual vigor and a wry sense of humor."

-Variety,

"The End of Cinema As We Know It is at once academic and popular in the best sense of both terms-intelligent and erudite critical analysis conveyed through accessible and gracefully written prose. Just like the cinema of the '90s itself, this collection of thirty-four smart and sprightly essays refuses to be bound by traditional categories. Free from the homogenized consensus that too often results from the supposed advantage of historical distance, these broadly ranging essays on a period still fresh in our memory necessarily pose more questions than they answer. But they are good provocative questions and it is precisely this spirit of free-wheeling inquiry and fearless speculation that makes the book so enjoyable to read."

-Robert Rosen,Dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television

"The End of Cinema provides an enjoyable reading with a good balance of academic and popular qualities."

-American Studies International,June 2002

"The End of Cinema as We Know It: American Cinema in the Nineties, is an encouraging step in a new direction. In it, we find an impressive assembly of established as well as younger scholars grappling both with pop-film and industry concerns."

-Cineaste

Editorial Reviews

"The End of Cinema provides an enjoyable reading with a good balance of academic and popular qualities."

June 2002 American Studies International

"The End of Cinema as We Know It: American Cinema in the Nineties, is an encouraging step in a new direction. In it, we find an impressive assembly of established as well as younger scholars grappling both with pop-film and industry concerns."

Cineaste

"The End of Cinema As We Know It is at once academic and popular in the best sense of both terms-intelligent and erudite critical analysis conveyed through accessible and gracefully written prose. Just like the cinema of the '90s itself, this collection of thirty-four smart and sprightly essays refuses to be bound by traditional categories. Free from the homogenized consensus that too often results from the supposed advantage of historical distance, these broadly ranging essays on a period still fresh in our memory necessarily pose more questions than they answer. But they are good provocative questions and it is precisely this spirit of free-wheeling inquiry and fearless speculation that makes the book so enjoyable to read."

Robert Rosen

"Brief on brilliant cocktail conversation? This reader-friendly collection will help you apply Foucault to Keanu, Derrida to Spielberg, Macbeth to Blair Witch, and pull it off with panache. Stimulating in small doses, its 34 essays deconstruct 1990s cinema, and the decade too, with intellectual vigor and a wry sense of humor."

Variety

The End of Cinema provides an enjoyable reading with a good balance of academic and popular qualities.

American International Studies

"The End of Cinema As We Know It is at once academic and popular in the best sense of both terms-intelligent and erudite critical analysis conveyed through accessible and gracefully written prose. Just like the cinema of the '90s itself, this collection of thirty-four smart and sprightly essays refuses to be bound by traditional categories. Free from the homogenized consensus that too often results from the supposed advantage of historical distance, these broadly ranging essays on a period still fresh in our memory necessarily pose more questions than they answer. But they are good provocative questions and it is precisely this spirit of free-wheeling inquiry and fearless speculation that makes the book so enjoyable to read."

-Robert Rosen,Dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television

"The End of Cinema as We Know It: American Cinema in the Nineties, is an encouraging step in a new direction. In it, we find an impressive assembly of established as well as younger scholars grappling both with pop-film and industry concerns."

-Cineaste

"Brief on brilliant cocktail conversation? This reader-friendly collection will help you apply Foucault to Keanu, Derrida to Spielberg, Macbeth to Blair Witch, and pull it off with panache. Stimulating in small doses, its 34 essays deconstruct 1990s cinema, and the decade too, with intellectual vigor and a wry sense of humor."

-Variety

"The End of Cinema provides an enjoyable reading with a good balance of academic and popular qualities."

-American Studies International,June 2002

From the Publisher