The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur′s Gaze (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society) - Softcover

Denzin, Norman K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803986580 ISBN 13: 9780803986589

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

Ranging over a rich variety of material from film and film literature, and encompassing a critical interrogation of traditional realist ethnographic and cinematic texts, this book highlights the extent to which the cinema has contributed to the rise of voyeurism throughout society.

The cinema not only turns its audience into voyeurs, eagerly following the lives of its screen characters, but casts its key players as onlookers, spying on other′s lives. The nature of the cinematic voyeur is examined in depth, as are its implications for contemporary society. Norman K Denzin analyzes Hollywood′s manipulations of gender, race and class, and, drawing on the work of Foucault, argues that the cinematic gaze must be understood as pa

About this title

From the Back Cover

What influence does the cinema have on visual culture and social understanding? In what ways are we products of the cinematic gaze? This timely book, written by one of the leading commentators in the sociology of culture, highlights the extent to which the cinema has contributed to the rise of voyeurism throughout society. The cinema not only turns its audience into voyeurs, eagerly following the lives of its screen characters, but repeatedly casts its key players as onlookers, spying on other people's lives. The nature of the cinematic voyeur - the obsessive outsider, the ethnic or sexual Other - is examined in depth, as are its implications for contemporary society. Denzin analyses Hollywood's manipulations of gender, race and class, and, drawing on the work of Foucault, argues that the cinematic gaze must be understood as part of the machinery of surveillance and power which regulates social behaviour in the late twentieth century.

About the Author

Norman K. Denzin, Distinguished Emeritus Research Professor of Communications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of over 50 books and 200 professional articles and chapters. He is the past president of The Midwest Sociological Society and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. He is the founding president of the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry (2005–) and director of the International Center of Qualitative Inquiry (2005–). He is a past editor of The Sociological Quarterly, founding coeditor of Qualitative Inquiry, and founding editor of Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, International Review of Qualitative Research, and Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Research Annual.

About this edition

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0803986580
• ISBN 13: 9780803986589
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256