• Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Entertaining Social Justice: Through the Critical Lenses of Michael Moore, Spike Lee, Ava Duvernay, and Barbara Kopple

Entertaining Social Justice: Through the Critical Lenses of Michael Moore, Spike Lee, Ava Duvernay, and Barbara Kopple

Paperback

Film StudiesGeneral Sociology

PREORDER - Expected ship date February 4, 2027

ISBN13: 9798216471967
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Feb 4 2027
Pages: 232
Weight: 1.00
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Thinking through movies is a way to think through America. But are there limits to what film can do to entertain the promise of social change and justice?

Joel Pfister places the films of Michael Moore, Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, and Barbara Kopple in conversation with each other in the context of American social (in)justice. Rather than pigeonholing Moore, Lee, DuVernay, and Kopple as celebrated social justice filmmakers, however, Pfister contends that their influence extends beyond the limits of a contested term already strategically co-opted by the film industry.

Far from adhering to a sanitized definition or brand, these visionary filmmakers have instead dared us to fundamentally rethink the scope and stakes of social justice in the United States. Pfister's analysis incisively demonstrates how their combined and conceptually generative filmographies - including landmark films such as Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Do the Right Thing (1989), Selma (2014), and Harlan County, USA (1976) - not only raise questions about social injustice but, in concert, help us envision a systemic social justice upon which to build in the present day.

1 different editions

Also available

Also in

Film Studies