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Preamble
Movies, questions, and 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. The book has been written over a twenty-year period of time as I have compiled material I wanted my own students to think about with regard to film.
The first introductory section establishes my interest in looking at the issue of “artistic license” and the relation of truth to what film artists may consider to be “truer than true.”
The second section emphasizes questions gathered from the social sciences that are something of a “reality check” on film content. I do not presume that film scripts should be factual per se, but I am interested in identifying and thinking about the artistic license with “reality” that films do take.
The third section emphasizes traditional social science perspectives on “values.” Every film has both explicit and implicit values. This material offers “a” language to discuss the values particular to any film.
The fourth section of the book offers a number of essays that are influenced by my own “social science perspective” and that I, for one reason or another, wrote for my own students’ consideration.
The final section offers a number of resources for further study.
Thus the book emphasizes questions for thinking about film that I have found most interesting for the widest range of students. Be forewarned, then, by the following three vignettes: