At the heart of any history of controversial films is a strange
paradox: while films, especially popular and mainstream films, are
often portrayed as meaningless products of popular culture, those
popular films involved in public controversies become the focal
point of enormous cultural energy, political attention, and
profoundly conflicting sets of principles. The ongoing culture wars
continue to shape the American political landscape, and
controversial films continue to be a major point of conflict.
Controversial Cinema: The Films that Outraged America traces the
history of controversial films and offers insights into why it is
that certain films spark controversies, and how Americans typically
react to controversial moviemaking. Since the widespread banning of
DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, the American film industry has
found itself embroiled in one political controversy after another.
These controversies have centered on everything from the portrayal
of the past, as in Griffith's film, to depictions of sex and
sexuality, to the use of graphic violence, and issues of race,
religion, and politics. In turn, segments of the American public
have been driven to boycott, picket, and even censor those films
they felt challenged their sense of decency. At the heart of this
history of controversial films is a strange paradox: while films,
especially popular and mainstream films, are often portrayed as
meaningless products of popular culture, popular films involved in
public controversies become the focal point of enormous cultural
energy and political attention. The ongoing culture wars thus
continue to shape the American political landscape, and
controversial films continue to be a major point of conflict. In
the course of this wide-ranging work, Kendall Phillips offers
insights into the kinds of films that spark controversies, and the
ways that Americans typically react to them. Organized around broad
controversial themes and with particular attention to mainstream
films since the dissolution of the Motion Picture Production Code
in the mid-1960s, Controversial Cinema explores why films spark
broad cultural controversies, how these controversies play out, and
the long-term results. The four broad areas of controversy examined
in the work are: Sex and Sexuality, Violence, Race, and Religion.
Each chapter offers a broad overview of the history of these topics
in controversial American films as well as more in-depth
examinations of recent examples, including The Silence of the
Lambs, Natural Born Killers, Do the Right Thing, and The Passion of
the Christ. A final section of the book considers the broader
issues of cultural politics in light of the long history of
controversial cinema.
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