Getting Reel: A Social Science Perspective on Film By Michael D. ...

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Introduction

Preface

Movies, questions, conversation. Related pleasures. I love going to the movies, thinking about movies, talking about movies. I can scarcely imagine anyone who wouldn’t. As a teacher I have consistently promoted the seeing, thinking, discussion model. I hope to promote the same in this book.

This book evolved over the past twenty years as I sought to involve as many students as possible in watching, thinking, discussing, loving film. Out of a student body of 2700 I have had as many as 250 students take my course at one time. While this is by far our largest elective course, I have always wanted the entire student body in the class. Because of my determination to include all comers, I have developed my course and my book with an eye towards the issues that are most common and universal to all filmgoers, that all students regardless of major, will find engrossing. Regardless of their other academic interests, I have found that most people are interested in significant personal and social issues. To identify such concerns that have the possibility of capturing the interests of the widest possible audience I took advantage of my own background in the social sciences and I read widely in film literature looking for significant questions that most anyone could well consider in thinking about virtually any film.

Most questions contained herein are issues identified by other scholars that I have assembled into an overall mosaic for “getting reel.” I offer this approach as an engaging way of thinking about film. More on this later, but I do want to emphasize here that I have found these questions and issues quite challenging myself.