Violence and American Cinema

J. David Slocum is Assistant Dean in the Graduate School for the Arts and Science at New York University, where he teaches cinema studies.

• Acknowledgments; Introduction: Violence and American Cinema: Notes for an Investigation, J. David Slocum; I. Historicizing Hollywood Violence; 1. Violence and Film, William Rothman; 2. The Violence of a Perfect Moment, Leo Charney; 3. Violence American Style: The Narrative Orchestration of Violent Attractions, Marsha Kinder; II. Revisiting Violent Genres; 4. Clean Dependable Slapstick: Comic Violence and the Emergence of Classical Hollywood Cinema, Peter Kramer; 5. The Spectacle of Criminality, Richard Maltby; 6. Murder's Tongue: Identity, Death, and the City in Film Noir, Paul Arthur; 7. Violence in the Film Western, Lee Clark Mitchell; 8. Passion and Acceleration: Generic Change in the Action Film, Rikke Schubart; III. Hollywood Violence and Cultural Politics; 9. Black Violence as Cinema: From Cheap Thrills to Historical Agonies, Ed Guerrero; 10. Documenting Domestic Violence in American Films, Phyllis Frus; 11. Splitting Difference: Global Identity Politics and the Representation of Torture in the Counterhistorical Dramatic Film, Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg; 12. Holocaust Film Criticism and the Politics of Judeo-Christian Phenomenology, Terri Ginsberg; Contributors; Index

"...insightful collection of essays... thought-provoking." -- Tom Ryan, The Age