This Is a Picture and Not the World

Joseph Natoli teaches at the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities and in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. He is the author or editor of many books, including Memory's Orbit: Film and Culture 1999–2000 and (with Linda Hutcheon) A Postmodern Reader, both also published by SUNY Press.

"This is an extremely original and engaging book on the connections between cinema and media culture post-9/11. Employing a postmodern technique of fragmentation, Natoli cuts from a serious authorial voice to different political-cinema blogging and commentary voices, laced with satires of media-babbling by media producers, celebrities, pundits, and other species of current discourse." — Douglas Kellner, coeditor of Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks, Revised Edition"This Is a Picture and Not the World takes the pulse of contemporary American society as filtered, represented, and expressed through Hollywood movies. Part of what makes the book a delight to read is the way it covers a great deal of ground so (seemingly) effortlessly, juggling multiple themes, points of view, and areas of interest with aplomb. One of the book's main virtues is that it manages to be accessible to the general reader, in a way that most academic books in the fields of cultural studies and film studies are not, but without sacrificing complexity or depth." — Steven Shaviro, author of Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society

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