Publisher's Synopsis
This book draws conclusions about the American mind through analysis of what might be called 'cinema of excess'. ""Cinema about Americans"" includes culturally transgressive material, including violence, graphic sexuality, apocalyptic themes, and paranoia. The work begins with an introduction to far left and far right schools of film criticism, including Marxism, cultural conservatism, and religious conservatism, discussing the shortcomings of each.Eschewing such dogmatic paradigms, the book takes a more balanced look at various films' interpretations of several traits of the American conscious, including paranoia (e.g., ""Dr. Strangelove""), aggression (e.g., ""Rambo"", ""Natural Born Killers""), oedipal/Freudian themes (e.g., ""The Hulk"", ""Star Wars""), sexual obsession (e.g., ""American Beauty""), the apocalypse (e.g., ""The Passion of the Christ"", the ""Left Behind"" trilogy), Native Americans and cultural genocide (e.g., ""Little Big Man""), new age narcissism (e.g., ""I Heart Huckabees""), nihilism and self-destruction (e.g., ""Fight Club"", ""Taxi Driver""), intellect and cultural autism (e.g., ""A Beautiful Mind""), and virtual reality/fantasy (e.g., ""The Matrix""). Finally, the book takes a look at American sanity through films like ""One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"", ""The Fisher King"", ""Vanilla Sky"" and ""21 Grams"".
