America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in the Movies, 2nd Edition is a lively introduction to issues of diversity as represented within the American cinema. Provides a comprehensive overview of the industrial, socio-cultural, and aesthetic factors that contribute to cinematic representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality Includes over 100 illustrations, glossary of key terms, questions for discussion, and lists for further reading/viewing Includes new case studies of a number of films, including Crash, Brokeback Mountain, and Quinceañera

America on Film, first published in 2002, examines how the notion of 'American' has changed from American cinema up to the 1950s.

The early history of American settlement, pioneering, and independence is marked by fascinating characters and events who are often shrouded in legend. Through the eye of the movie camera, filmmakers have sought to capture these characters and to penetrate the mists of time. This comprehensive filmography provides production information and commentary on all films and television episodes set during the years between the first settlements in the future United States and the fledgling country’s War of 1812 with Britain.

Looks at the movies of Native American filmmakers and explores how they have used their works to leave behind the stereotypical Native American characters of old.

The challenge of making the great American historical film has attracted some of our finest talents: D. W. Griffith, John Ford, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee. From the earliest flickering images of The Spirit of 76 (1905) through Nixon, America on Film subtly and entertainingly examines Hollywood's filming of American history, including biographies. Among the many films considered, some omissions seem surprising: The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, for example, since they are based on fiction. But The Iron Horse, The Beginning or the End?, the Jackie Robinson Story, Patton, Quiz Show, Lenny, Malcolm, X, Apollo 13, and literally hundreds of others are all here. Through these many movies, we see the interrelationships between image and substance, illusion and reality, racism and democracy, and cynicism and idealism, which form America's unique national identity.

Productive media analysis is like an iceberg, argues Robert Ferguson. The vast bulk beneath water is the intellectual, historical and analytical base without which media analysis may become superficial, mechanical or glib. Representing 'Race' argues that the study of 'race' and the media cannot be seriously undertaken without engaging with theories of ideology and without awareness of contemporary theoretical work, such as approaches to Orientalism and critical discourse analysis. Drawing on examples from newspapers, film, radio and television, Ferguson demonstrates the close relationship between representations of 'normality' and racism. Providing an overview and assessment of existing research in the area, Representing 'Race' is a challenge to intellectual complacency and a warning against the temptation to normalise the very term 'race'.

Hollywood has a growing fascination with America's past. This book offers an analysis of how and why contemporary Hollywood films have sought to mediate American history. It considers whether or how far contemporary films have begun to unravel the unifying myths of earlier films and periods.

Ten films released between 9/11 and Gulf War II reflect raging debates about US foreign policy and what it means to be an American. Tracing the portrayal of America in the films Pearl Harbor (World War II); We Were Soldiers and The Quiet American (the Vietnam War); Behind Enemy Lines, Black Hawk Down and Kandahar (episodes of humanitarian intervention); Collateral Damage and In the Bedroom (vengeance in response to loss); Minority Report (futurist pre-emptive justice); and Fahrenheit 9/11 (an explicit critique of Bush’s entire war on terror), Cynthia Weber presents a stimulating new study of how Americans construct their identity and the moral values that inform their foreign policy. This is not just another book about post-9/11 America. It introduces the concept of 'moral grammars of war', and explains how they are articulated: Many Americans asked in the wake of 9/11 – not only 'why do they hate us?' but 'what does it mean to be a moral America(n) and how might such an America(n) act morally in contemporary international politics? This text explores how these questions were answered at the intersections of official US foreign policy and post-9/11 popular films. It also details US foreign policy formation in relation to traditional US narratives about US identity ‘who we think we were/are’, 'who we wish we’d never been', 'who we really are', and 'who we might become' as well as in relation to their foundations in nationalist discourses of gender and sexuality. This book will be of great interest to students of American Studies, US Foreign Policy, Contemporary US History, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Film Studies.

The author examines modern American culture through the lens of the Hollywood western.