Real to Reel: A New Approach to Understanding Realism in Film and TV Fiction
Martin Sohn-Rethel
Abstract
What happens when we watch feature films or television dramas? Many of our responses to moving-image fiction texts embody “realism” or “truth,” but what are we responding to, exactly, and how is our notion of reality or truth to be understood? For film and media students and makers of moving-image fiction in new digital forms, the question of how to get a more objective, rigorous handle on realism has never been more important. The author of this book brings a lifetime of teaching film and media to bear on developing a new approach to analyzing the “realism” of the moving image: a set of seven ... More
What happens when we watch feature films or television dramas? Many of our responses to moving-image fiction texts embody “realism” or “truth,” but what are we responding to, exactly, and how is our notion of reality or truth to be understood? For film and media students and makers of moving-image fiction in new digital forms, the question of how to get a more objective, rigorous handle on realism has never been more important. The author of this book brings a lifetime of teaching film and media to bear on developing a new approach to analyzing the “realism” of the moving image: a set of seven “codes” that plot this tricky field of enquiry more systematically. In doing so, the book considers a wide range of film and media texts chosen for their accessibility, including Do the Right Thing (1989), In the Name of the Father (1993), Erin Brockovich (2000), and District 9 (2009).
Keywords:
feature films,
television dramas,
moving-image fiction,
realism,
moving image
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780993071768 |
Published to Liverpool Scholarship Online: February 2021 |
DOI:10.3828/liverpool/9780993071768.001.0001 |