been figured on American movie screens. Part VI analyzes various ideas about physical ability, and how what is termed disability has been represented across American film history. The final chapter of the second edition, comprised exclusively of individual “case studies” (in‐depth film analyses), emphasized the multiple and complex links between all of these various forms of identity markers. Those case studies have been moved online and can be found at www.wiley.com/go/Benshoff/Americaonfilm3e.
The book is comprised of a total of 16 chapters. While this number slightly exceeds the typical number of weeks in a semester‐long course of study, the text has been designed to adapt to those parameters. Generally, each week of any given semester can be devoted to a single chapter of America on Film and a representative film screening, either shown in class or assigned as homework. (Many of the films suggested within the text for further screening are easily available from media libraries, streaming services, or other commercial media outlets.) Depending on the preferences of the instructor, additional readings and/or screenings can be used in conjunction with America on Film. Chapters may also be assigned on a more concentrated basis or even used “out of order,” although we have provided a logical and easy‐to‐follow structure for the issues discussed.
Each chapter of America on Film is organized within a broad historical framework, with specific theoretical concepts – including film genre, auteur theory, cultural studies, Orientalism, the “male gaze,” feminism, queer theory, etc. – integrated throughout. Each chapter features a concise and accessible overview of the topic at hand, a discussion of representative films, figures, and movements, a case study of a single film, and key terms highlighted in bold. Each chapter concludes with questions for discussion and a short bibliography and filmography. America on Film also contains a glossary of key terms, a comprehensive index, and over 120 photos and diagrams illustrating key points and figures.
ABOUT THE COMPANION WEBSITE
This book is accompanied by a companion website:
www.wiley.com/go/Benshoff/Americaonfilm3e
The website includes:
Case studies
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF FILM FORM AND REPRESENTATION
The purpose of this book is to analyze how American films have represented race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability throughout the twentieth century and into the early twenty‐first. It is a basic principle of this work that by studying American film history, we can gain keen insights into the ways that different groups of American people have been treated (and continue to be treated). Images of people on film actively contribute to the ways in which people are understood and experienced in the “real world.” As seminal cultural theorist Richard Dyer has asserted, “Images Matter.” Furthermore, there are multiple and varied connections between film and “real life,” and we need to have agreed‐upon ways of discussing those connections and their ramifications. Therefore, before examining in detail how specific groups of people have been represented within American cinema, we need to understand some preliminary concepts: how film works to represent people and things, how and why social groupings are and have been formed, and how individuals interact with the larger socio‐cultural structures of the United States of America. This chapter introduces some basic ideas about film form, American history, and cultural studies.
Film Form
Film form refers to the constitutive elements that make a film uniquely a “film” and not a painting or a short story. All works of art might be said to have both form and content. Content is what a work is about, while form is how that content is expressed. Form and content are inextricably combined, and it is an old adage of art theory that “form follows content,” which means that the content of a work of art should dictate the form in which it should be expressed. For example, many different poems might have the same content – say, for example, a rose – but the content of a rose can be expressed in various forms in an infinite number of ways: in a sonnet, a ballad, an epic, a haiku, a limerick, and so forth. Each of these formal structures will create a different “take” on the content. For example, a limerick tends to be humorous or flippant, while a sonnet tends to be more serious and romantic. Likewise, different films with similar content can be serious, frivolous, artistic, intellectual, comedic, or frightening. Therefore, understanding how cinema communicates or creates meaning requires more than paying attention to what is specifically going on in the story (the film’s content); it also requires paying attention to how various artistic choices (the film’s form) affect the way the story is understood by the viewer.
Many entire books have been written analyzing the various formal elements of film but, for the purposes of this basic introduction, they can be broken into five main aspects: literary design, visual design, cinematography, editing, and sound design. The first aspect of film form, literary design, refers to the elements of a film that come from the script and story ideas. The literary design includes the story, the setting, the action, the characters, the characters’ names, the dialog, the film’s title, and any deeper subtexts or thematic meanings. Film is capable of many literary devices: metaphor, irony, satire, allegory, and so forth. Some films are black comedies and must be understood according to that form. Other films are dramas to be taken seriously while still others try to make us laugh by being deliberately juvenile. Yet other films try to shock or provoke us with new and unexpected ideas. Analyzing a movie’s literary design is a good place to start when analyzing a film, but one should not ignore the four other axes of film form and how they contribute to a film’s meaning.
Another broad aspect of film form has been labeled mise‐en‐scène, a French term for what goes into each individual shot (or uninterrupted run of film). Aspects of mise‐en‐scène include our second and third formal axes: the visual design of what’s being filmed (the choice of sets, costumes, makeup, lighting, color, and actors’ performance and arrangement before the camera) and the cinematographic design – that is, how the camera records the visual elements that have been dictated by the literary design. The cinematographic design includes things like the choice of framing, lenses, camera angle, camera movement, what is in focus and what is not. Each of these choices of mise‐en‐scène can affect the viewer’s feelings toward the story and its characters. A room that is brightly lit may seem comfortable or even festive; that same room with heavy shadows may seem threatening or scary. If everyone in a crowd scene is wearing various shades of gray and black, the viewer will tend to see them as just a crowd; if one person is wearing red, the viewer will tend to focus on that one person. Similarly, a camera shooting up from the floor at a character will create a different feeling than a camera aimed at eye‐level. In yet another example, if only one couple on a dance floor are kept in focus, the viewer will pay attention to them; if the whole ballroom is kept in focus, the viewer may choose to look in a number of directions.
The fourth axis of film form is called montage or editing, and refers to how all the individual shots the camera records are put together in order to create meaning or tell a story. Most movies are made up of hundreds and hundreds of shots which are edited together to make a full‐length feature film. Many choices get made at the editing stage. Not
