The Reality Effect Film Culture and the Graphic Imperative [Hardcover]

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 The Reality Effect,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 Lolitaand the murder of JonBen?t Ramsey to Wag the Dogand the Clinton scandal to Crashand Princess Diana's violent death.Joel Blackteaches comparative literature and film at the University of Georgia. He is the author of The Aestheticsof Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature andContemporary Culture(1991).