Robert Altman's Subliminal Reality (Commerce & Mass Culture)

Cover Art for 9780816637904, Robert Altman's Subliminal Reality (Commerce & Mass Culture) by Self, Robert T.
ISBN: 9780816637904
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 28 March, 2002
Format: Paperback
Language: English

With his complex and unconventional films, Robert Altman often draws an impassioned response from critics but bafflement and indifference from the general public. Some audiences have dismissed his movies as insignificant, unsatisfying, and unreadable. Ironically, Altman might agree: he makes films in order to challenge filmgoers' expectations of straightforward narratives and easily understood endings. In Subliminal Reality, Robert T. Self sheds light on Altman's work and provides the most comprehensive analysis of his films to date. With close readings of classics like MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Nashville, and more recent films like The Player, Short Cuts, and Cookie's Fortune, Self asserts the value of Altman's work not only to film theory and the entertainment industry, but to American culture itself. In his analysis, Self identifies Altman's films particularly as they address issues of form, identity, and industry. He explains how Altman critiques moviemaking forms by using an open, fragmented mode of storytelling and by turning conventional Hollywood genres inside out. He examines Altman's characterization of social and individual identity as fragile and fragmentary and his depiction of antiheroic characters debilitated by their socially constructed gender roles. Finally, Self shows how Altman challenges the entertainment industry itself, questioning its methods and motives and critiquing its role in our cultural alienation. Self frames his analysis of

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