Unlikely Couples: Movie Romance As Social CriticismIn 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. |
Contents
The Flower Girl and the Bachelor | 21 |
An Education in Humility | 47 |
A Fairy Tale of Oedipalized Capitalism | 67 |
Copyright | |
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accept acknowledge African American Angie Angie's attitude attraction audience beauty Bensonhurst Cavell Cay's character Cinderella claim Collected Screenplays Coming to Dinner context couple's critique Crying Game culture Demetrius Demetrius's depiction Desert Hearts desire despite destabilization Dil's Draytons Edward Eliza Ellie Ellie's Emmy Emmy's ethnic example Fassbinder's Fergus Fergus's film's Flipper gender genre German Guess Who's Coming Happened One Night heterosexual hierarchy Higgins Higgins's Hollywood homosexual human identity immigrants Indian interracial issue Jody Jody's Johanna Jungle Fever King Kong Kong's lesbian male marriage Matt Matt's Max's Mina's Mississippi Masala moral narrative strategy Nora Nora's norms partner perspective Peter Photo play political postcolonial Pretty Woman Pygmalion race racial privilege racism relationship representational strategies Rodeo Drive romantic romantic love scene sequence significance simply society Spike Lee stereotype story tells tion transformation treat understanding unlikely couple film viewers Vivian White Palace women working-class