Feminist film critic Laura Mulvey once famously argued that the central component of film is the pleasure of looking, or “scopophilia.” In a conventional Hollywood movie, men usually drive the action of the plot, while women are passive erotic objects to be looked at by the male hero and the audience. In his talk, Professor Justin Gifford will outline the fundamental principles of film theory and then use these ideas to explore both classic and contemporary movies. More than just an opiate for the masses, films express our deepest collective fantasies and anxieties about racial and gender identity. Dr Gifford will examine everything from film noir to contemporary prestige television to show the ways that film enforce our cherished social norms.
ABOUT JUSTIN GIFFORD, PH.D.
Justin Gifford is an associate professor of English literature at the University of Nevada, Reno. His teaching and research focus on American and African American literature. He specializes in popular literature, archival research, and critical theory. His first book, a literary and cultural history of black street fiction, "Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing," was a finalist for both the Edgar Allan Poe award for literary criticism and Phi Beta Kappa's Christian Gauss Award for scholarship. He also is the author of the critically acclaimed "Street Poison," the first and definitive biography of Iceberg Slim, one of America's bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the 20th century. Author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp, Iceberg Slim is the greatest of "street lit" masters, the cultural icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg, and a presiding spirit of "blaxploitation" culture. Learn more.
Join us at 6:30 for complimentary refreshments care of Starbucks and for the 7 to 8:15 p.m. program.