ABOUT THIS BOOK

The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film examines the importance of rhetoric in the study of film and film theory. Rhetorical approaches to film studies have been widely practiced, but rarely discussed until now. Taking on such issues as Hollywood blacklisting, fascistic aesthetics, and postmodern dialogics, editor David Blakesley presents fifteen critical essays that examine rhetoric’s role in such popular films as The Fifth Element, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Usual Suspects, Deliverance, The English Patient, Pulp Fiction, The Music Man, Copycat, Hoop Dreams,and A Time to Kill.

Aided by sixteen illustrations, these insightful essays consider films rhetorically, as ways of seeing and not seeing, as acts that dramatize how people use language and images to tell stories and foster identification.

Contributors include David Blakesley, Alan Nadel, Ann Chisholm, Martin J. Medhurst, Byron Hawk, Ekaterina V. Haskins, James Roberts, Thomas W. Benson, Philip L. Simpson, Davis W. Houck, Caroline J.S. Picart, Friedemann Weidauer, Bruce Krajewski, Harriet Malinowitz, Granetta L. Richardson, and Kelly Ritter.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

David Blakesley is a professor of English and director of professional writing at Purdue University. He is the author of The Elements of Dramatism and The Thomson Handbook (with Jeffrey L. Hoogeveen), and the editor (with Julie Whitaker) of Kenneth Burke's Late Poems, 1968-1993. He has also written about film and visual rhetoric for Enculturation, Kairos, and Defining Visual Rhetorics (Hill and Helmers, eds.). For Southern Illinois University Press, he edited the Rhetorical Philosophy and Theory series.

REVIEWS

“The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film offers readers who have interests or specialities in rhetorical analysis a point of entry into contemporary cinema as it frames issues of style, representation, history, and culture. Although the literature on cinema is vast, relatively few books have adopted an explicitly rhetorical emphasis. Thus, this volume fills a long-neglected gap in the scholarly literature on film.”—Stephen Prince, author of Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film

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TABLE OF CONTENTS






Introduction: The Rhetoric of Film and Film Studies
                David Blakesley

Part One : Perspectives on Film and Film Theory as Rhetoric          17

 1. Mapping the Other: The English Patient, Colonial Rhetoric,
     and Cinematic Representation                                   21
                Alan Nadel

 2. Rhetoric and the Early Work of Christian Metz: Augmenting
     Ideological Inquiry in Rhetorical Film Theory and Criticism  37
                Ann Chisholm

 3. Temptation as Taboo: A Psychorhetorical Reading of The
     Last Temptation of Christ                                      55
                Martin J. Medhurst

 4. Hyperrhetoric and the Inventive Spectator: Remotivating
     The Fifth Element                                             70
                Byron Hawk

 5. Time, Space, and Political Identity: Envisioning Community
     in Triumph of the Will                                         92
                Ekaterina V Haskins

 6. On Rhetorical Bodies: Hoop Dreams and Constitutional
     Discourse                                                     I07
                James Roberts





Part Two : Rhetorical Perspectives on Film and Culture                    I25

 7. Looking for the Public in the Popular: The Hollywood
     Blacklist and the Rhetoric of Collective Memory                I29
                 Thomas W Benson

 8. Copycat, Serial Murder, and the (De)Terministic
     Screen Narrative                                               146
                Philip L. Simpson

 9. Opening the Text: Reading Gender, Christianity, and
     American Intervention in Deliverance                           I63
                Davis W. Houck and Caroline . S. Picart

 10. From "World Conspiracy" to "Cultural Imperialism":
     The History of Anti-Plutocratic Rhetoric in German Film    I90
                Friedemann Weidauer

Part Three : Perspectives on Films about Rhetoric                           211

 11. Rhetorical Conditioning: The Manchurian Candidate          213
                 Bruce Krajewski

 12. Sophistry, Magic, and the Vilifying Rhetoric of
      The Usual Suspects                                            234
                 David Blakesley

 13. Textual Trouble in River City: Literacy, Rhetoric, and
     Consumerism in The Music Man                                  246
                 Harriet Malinowitz

 14. Screen Play: Ethos and Dialectics in A Time to Kill        272
                 Granetta L. Richardson

 15. Postmodern Dialogics in Pulp Fiction: Jules, Ezekiel,
     and Double-Voiced Discourse                                   286
                 Kelly Ritter