Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies

Name: Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies
Author: bell hooks

by bell hooks

Learning to read a film like an argument.

For you if

you've loved a movie and then wondered who it was really for.

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$34 MSRP · Paperback
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hooks goes to the movies the way she goes everywhere else, asking who is on screen, who is missing and who is making money off the difference. Essays on Spike Lee, Pulp Fiction, Basquiat, Madonna and the fantasy of the white savior teach you to read a film as a political argument. She keeps the pleasure in it: she loves cinema, which is why she will not let it off the hook. A book for anyone who watches a film and wants to know who it is for.

Where This Book Lives

Themes: class and privilege film theory media critique race and identity the reel rebellion

Pass with note. Essays from the 1990s, so the films and some of the cultural references are dated, and the writing is uneven in places. hooks is already well represented in the catalog, with no documented concerns. A direct fit for the Reel Workshop and for a film-studies shelf. Close relatives: Ways of Seeing, Reel Bad Arabs (suggested 11-05), Teaching to Transgress and Film Form / Film Sense.

Same pattern, different era

Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.

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