The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur's Gaze (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society) Book

What influence does the cinema have on visual culture and social understanding? In what ways are we products of the cinematic gaze? This timely book, written by one of the leading commentators in the sociology of culture, highlights the extent to which the cinema has contributed to the rise of voyeurism throughout society.The cinema not only turns its audience into voyeurs, eagerly following the lives of its screen characters, but repeatedly casts its key players as onlookers, spying on other people's lives. The nature of the cinematic voyeur - the obsessive outsider, the ethnic or sexual Other - is examined in depth, as are its implications for contemporary society. Denzin analyzes Hollywood's manipulations of gender, race and class, and, drawing on the work of Foucault, argues that the cinematic gaze must be understood as part of the machinery of surveillance and power which regulates social behaviour in the late twentieth century. The effect of the cinema in the social construction of everyday life has rarely been explored with such penetration and clarity. Ranging over a rich and varied array of material from film and film literature, and encompassing a critical interrogation of traditional realist ethnographic and cinematic texts, The Cinematic Society will be essential reading for students of social theory, sociology of culture and film studies.Read More