Movies Change Lives

Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the author(s)/editor(s)
• About the book
• This eBook can be cited
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. The Need for Humanistic Change
• The New Global Condition and Role of Cinema
• The Challenges
• Chapter 1. Pertinent Theories
• Is Cinema Art?
• Reality and Cinema
• In Search of a Transformative Cinema
• The Transformative Potential of The 400 Blows
• Film Noir
• The Search Continues
• Documentary Cinema
• Dissident Cinema
• Romantic Comedy
• When We Encounter Movies
• The Question of Culture
• Cinema and Reason
• Chapter 2. Cinema as Pedagogy for Constructive Humanistic Transformation
• Pragmatism, Reality, and Education
• Multiple Intelligences
• Cinema of Good Faith versus Cinema of Bad Faith
• Non-interpretative versus Interpretative Readings
• Content-Only Cinema of 1970s America
• Transformation for Social Justice
• Chapter 3. Ten Movies
• Mississippi Masala
• Syriana
• The Runner (Davandeh)
• The Truman Show
• The Matrix
• Match Point
• Paradise Now
• Doubt
• Her
• A Separation
• Appendix 300: Proto-fascism and Manufacturing of Complicity
• References
• Series index

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kashani, Tony.
Movies change lives: pedagogy of constructive humanistic transformation
through cinema / Tony Kashani.
pages cm. — (Minding the media: critical issues for learning and teaching; vol. 14)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Motion pictures—Social aspects. 2. Motion pictures—Political aspects.
3. Motion pictures in education. I. Title.
PN1995.9.S6K38 302.23’43—dc23 2015034744
ISBN 978-1-4331-2774-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4331-2773-1 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4539-1769-5 (e-book)
ISSN 2151-2949

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

Cover photo by Aida Dargahi
Background image: ©iStock.com/Fourleaflover

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)/EDITOR(S)

TONY KASHANI (Ph.D., California Institute of Integral Studies) teaches interdisciplinary studies courses at Southern New Hampshire University. His previous books include Deconstructing the Mystique: An Interdisciplinary Introduction to Cinema (2009) and Lost in Media: The Ethics of Everyday Life (Peter Lang, 2013).

ABOUT THE BOOK

Movies Change Lives is a rigorous interdisciplinary examination of cinema as a vehicle for personal and social transformation. Interdisciplinary scholar Tony Kashani builds a theory of humanistic transformation by discussing many movies while engaging the works of philosopher/psychologist Erich Fromm, cultural studies theorist Stuart Hall, critical pedagogy theorist Henry Giroux, political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the great French thinker Edgar Morin, the pioneering psychologist Carl Jung, the co-founder of string theory, physicist Michio Kaku, and Frankfurt School philosopher Jürgen Habermas, among others. The book argues that in the globalized world of the twenty-first century, humanity is in dire need of personal and social transformation. Movies have universal appeal and can deeply affect their audiences in a short time. Coupled with critical pedagogy, they can become tools of personal and social transformation. Movies Change Lives is an ideal text for graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses on film (cinema) and society, visual culture, consciousness studies, transformative studies, media and social change, advanced personal and social psychology, and political philosophy.