Hollywood’s Exploited

RICHARD VAN HEERTUM is Assistant Professor of Education at CUNY/College of Staten Island, USA, teaching classes in the education and history departments. TONY KASHANI is Associate Professor of Film & Media Studies at College of San Mateo, USA, and Adjunct faculty member at Kaplan University, where he teaches Ethics. ANTHONY J. NOCELLA, II is completing his doctoral work at Syracuse University, USA. He is a Visiting Scholar of SUNY Cortland's Center for Ethics, Peace and Social Justice (CEPS) and is teaching classes in Sociology and Criminology at Le Moyne College. BENJAMIN FRYMER is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University, USA.

"This is an important text that sheds a powerful new light on the exploitation industry we have come to know as Hollywood. It is a book that demands a close reading." - Peter McLaren, Professor of Urban Schooling, University of California, Los Angeles "A rich and varied collection of commentaries, offering insightful critiques and sociological sensibilities. Of interest to ordinary film buffs and cinematic specialists alike." - Michael Parenti, author of Make-Believe Media and Contrary Notions "For readers of Hollywood's Exploited, the wisdom will be gained, not received. Against conventional grains, this is an anthology of thoughtful inquiries and tough-minded assessments - challenging us to think anew, and more deeply, about what we see in movies." - Norman Solomon, author of The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media; War Made Easy; and The Trouble with Dilbert "This smart collection reminds us that whatever reality we might observe and investigate is merely the starting point of thought, struggle, and action; standing directly next to whatever the case may be is always what the case could be or should be. Frymer, Kashani, Nocella, and Van Heertum have assembled a mighty chorus urging us to go beneath surface meanings and instant impressions, official policies and commercial messages, political propaganda, controlling myths, received wisdom and the dogma of common sense. We begin to understand, then, the root causes and social context of the taken-for-granted all around us. This is a call-to-arms." - William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago and author of To Teach "This book offers the clearest evidence yet of how a supposedly 'liberal' Hollywood trades in racial, sexual, and other stereotypes as a matter of course, and why such portrayals of marginalized and otherwise disempowered groups have a profound impact on the public's appreciation of the various forms of social and political discrimination they still face." - Mark LeVine, Professor of Middle Eastern History, University of California, Irvine and author of Why They Don't Hate Us and Heavy Metal Islam

• Foreword; L.Grossberg Preface; T.Miller Introduction; B.Frymer, T.Kashani, A.J. Nocella, II  & R.Van Heertum PART I: HOLLYWOOD & IDEOLOGY The Imperial System in Media Culture; C.Boggs Hollywood and the Working Class Hero: Diamonds in the Mean Streets of Boston;  R.Van Heertum Hollywood's Missionary Agenda: Christonormativity and Audience Baptism;  S.R.Steinberg Hollywood Incarcerated and on Death Row: Bjork, Schwarzenegger and the Pedagogy of Retribution; R.Van Heertum PART II: HOLLYWOOD RE-PRESENTS THE OTHER From Ms. J. to Ms. G.: Analyzing Racial Microaggressions in Hollywood's Urban School Genre;  T.J. Yosso  & D.Gumaro García Hollywood's Cinema of Ableism: A Disability Studies Perspective on the Hollywood Industrial Complex; T.Kashani  & A.J.Nocella, II International Citizenry in the Age of the Spectacle;  S.Sharad Rajgopal LGBT-Themed Hollywood Cinema after Brokeback Mountain: Renegotiating Hegemonic Representations of Gay Men; M.A.Raffanti PART III: HOLLYWOOD AGES Modes of Youth Exploitation in the Cinema of Larry Clark; D.Kellner 16 and Pregnant: Media Mommy Tracking and Hollywood's Exploitation of Teen Pregnancy; C.K.Kaltefleiter About Schmidt and About the Hollywood Image of an Aging Actor; K.E.Riggs  PART IV: HOLLYWOOD BEYOND THE HUMAN  Ecological Connections and Contradictions: Penguins, Robots and Humans in Hollywood's 'Nature' Films; S.Monani  & A.Hageman Hollywood and Nonhuman Animals: Problematic Ethics of Corporate Cinema; T.Kashani