Reality Effect

<p>It used to be only movies were on film; now the whole world is. The most intimate and most banal moments of our lives are constantly recorded for public consumption. In <em>The Reality Effect,</em> Joel Black argues that the desire to make visible every aspect of our lives is an impulse derived from cinema- one that has made life both more graphic and less "real." He approaches film as a documentary medium that has obscured-if not obliterated- the line between reality and fiction. To illustrate this effect, Black traces the uncanny interplay between movies and real-life events through a series of comparative analyses-from <em>Lolita</em> and the murder of JonBenét Ramsey to <em>Wag the Dog</em> and the Clinton scandal to <em>Crash</em> and Princess Diana's violent death.</p> <p>Introduction: The Filmed Century Before (and Beyond) Art and Entertainment The Reality Effect Reality Bites Back: Kernel Truths From Cinema Verité to Reality TV Mediating Reality: Wag the Dog to War Games The Graphic Imperative Part I: Film Culture One: Pornographic Science Missing Scenes: Coover's CasablancaIntrusive Scenes: Scorsese's Marriage ManualFreezing the Scene: Pynchon's Prehistory of FilmYour Car's Mind Two: Primal ScenesQuestioning the Woman Films Without FilmInfantilizing the Viewer Hard-core Freud The Reality of Fantasy De Palma's Wolf Man Three: Body Parts Multiple Images and Displaced Desire Split Persons and Body Doubles Shower Show: Dressed to Kill to Body Double The Erotics of Substitution: Vertigo to Body DoubleVamps and VampiresConjugal Adultery and Movie Children Part II: Filmic Events Four: Documenting Violence Serial Violence/Surveillance The Year of Filming DangerouslyHidden Figures: The Assassination Scene from Antonioni to Zapruder Surprise Executions Films that Kill Five: Telling Stories I Want You to See with My EyesScreening the Holocaust Screening Hollywood The Death of the Mind Six: Showing the ObsceneTime and the Unthinkable Releasing the UnreleasableStealing Childhood: Lolita to JonBenétDeath Imitates Art: Crash and Princess DianaWagging the Dog; Sex, Lies, and the Clinton VideotapesPart III: Film DreamsSeven: From Dream Work to DreamWorks Unreal Estate: Fake Towns, Real People Ants Wars Back to the Future: Movies, the Ride From the Moon to Mars: 2001 Then and NowThe Color of Dreams Back to the Drawing Board: Movies, the GameDream Worlds Afterword on the Afterlife Notes Name and Title Index Subject Index</p>