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

by bell hooks

Overview

Movies matter – that is the message of Reel to Real, bell hooks’ classic collection of essays on film. They matter on a personal level, providing us with unforgettable moments, even life-changing experiences and they can confront us, too, with the most profound social issues of race, sex and class. Here bell hooks – one of America’s most celebrated and thrilling cultural critics – talks back to films that have moved and provoked her, from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction to the work of Spike Lee. Including also her conversations with master filmmakers such as Charles Burnett and Julie Dash, Reel to Real is a must read for anyone who believes that movies are worth arguing about.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135070656
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/06/2012
Series:	Routledge Classics
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	400 KB

About the Author

bell hooks (b. 1951) is mainly known as a feminist thinker, although her writings cover a broad range of topics on gender, race, education and the media. She is Distinguished Professor of English at City College in New York.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Making Movie Magic. 2. Good Girls Look the Other Way. 3. Transgression and Transformation: Leaving Las Vegas. 4. Exotica: Breaking Down to Break Through. 5. Crooklyn: the Denial of Death. 6. Cool Cynicism: Pulp Fiction. 7. Mock Feminism: Waiting to Exhale. 8. Kids: Transgressive Subject - Reactionary Film. 9. Artistic Integrity: Race and Accountability. 10. Neo-colonial Fantasies of Conquest: Hoop Dreams. 11. Doing it for Daddy: Black Masculinity in the Mainstream. 12. Thinking Through Class: Paying Attention to The Attendant. 13. Back to the Avant-Garde: the Progressive Vision. 14. What's Passion Got to Do With It? - an interview with Marie France Alderman. 15. The Cultural Mix: an interview with Wayne Wang. 16. Confession - Filming Family: an interview with Camille Billops. 17. A Guiding Light: an interview with Charles Burnett. 18. Critical Contestations: a conversation with A.J. (Arthur Jaffa). 19. The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators. 20. Is Paris Burning? 21. "Whose Pussy is This?" - A Feminist Comment. Index.

Editorial Reviews

Hooks's essays on film are not film criticism: they are criticism of culture as viewed through the prism of film. This mix of theory, reality, popular art and popular criticism (reviews and public reaction play a large part in her discussions) is effective in forcing a rethinking of the films in question. A reading of reviews of Exotica shows that only the strip-joint portions of the movie were considered worthy of commentary. Quentin Tarantinoa filmmaker "not afraid to publicly pimp his wares"is taken to task for ingesting superficial aspects of black culture and spitting out the rest. The "mock feminism" of Waiting to Exhale ("an utterly boring show") is exposed as hooks examines differences between the book and the movie. The essays that do not focus on a single film are equally successful: a discussion of the black female gaze recalls that slaves could be punished for looking, and another on representations of black masculinity notes that in movies with two male leads, one black and one white, such as Rising Sun, the white man plays the "father" role. The essays could have benefited from more thoughtful organization. Hooks refers to her first-ever film-related essay, on Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, in her introduction and elsewhere, but the essay does not appear until the final pages of the book. A piece on the accountability of filmmakers that involves Wayne Wang would have matched up nicely with a dialogue with Wang, which instead is sandwiched in a group of interviews with Arthur Jaffa, Camille Billops and the like. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

'hooks... makes a compelling case to filmmakers for creating progressive images that 'transform the culture we live in'.' - Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher