Unlikely Couples: Movie Romance As Social Criticism

By Thomas E. Wartenberg

Book Overview

In Unlikely Couples, Thomas E. Wartenberg directly challenges the view that narrative cinema inherently supports the dominant social interests by examining the way popular films about ?unlikely couples? (a mismatched romantic union viewed as inappropriate due to its class, racial, or gender composition) explore, expose, and criticize societal attitudes, boundaries, and prejudices. The films under consideration?including King Kong, Pygmalion, It Happened One Night, Pretty Woman, White Palace, Some Like it Hot, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Mississippi Masala, Jungle Fever, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Desert Hearts, and The Crying Game?are examined both individually and as a whole to illustrate how the genre uses the figure of a transgressive couple to explore tensions in genre's use of the figure of a transgressive couple to condemn social hierarchy as well as to raise a range of significant philosophical topics.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081333439X
• ISBN13: 9780813334394
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Very interesting analysis of the subject (Movie Romance)

This book presents very insightful and interesting analysis of movie romance [in Hoollywood cinema] as means of social criticism. The author based his argument on such examples as "Pretty Woman", "Guess who is coming for dinner", "My Fair Lady" and some other... This book is essential for everyone, who is interested in film studies and cinema criticism.