Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

By using a series of studies of contemporary mainstream Hollywood movies - Blue Velvet, Wall Street, Crimes and Misdemeanors, When Harry Met Sally, Sex Lies and Videotape, Do the Right Thing - Norman Denzin explores the tension between ideas of the postmodern, and traditional ways of analyzing society. The discussion moves between two forms of text: social theory and cinematic representations of contemporary life.

Denzin analyzes the ideas of society embedded in poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, cultural studies and Marxism through the ideas of key theorists like Baudrillard, Barthes, Habermas, Jameson, Bourdieu and Derrida. He relates these to the problematic of the postmodern self as exposed in cinema centering on the decisive performance of race, gender and class.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Part 1 The Postmodern
• Defining the Postmodern Terrain
• Postmodern Social Theory
• Takes on the Postmodern
• Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Jameson
• Learning from Mills
• Part 2 Learning From Cinema
• Wild About Lynch
• Beyond
• Blue Velvet
• Nouveau Capitalists on Wall Street
• Crimes and Misdemeanors in Manhattan
• The Postmodern Sexual Order
• Sex, Lies, and Yuppie Love
• Do the Right Thing
• Race in the USA
• Paris, Texas
• Mills and Baudrillard in America
• In Conclusion
• The Eye of the Postmodern