The Terministic Screen Rhetorical Perspectives on Film Edited by David Blakesley   March 2003 cloth, 0-8093-2488-1, $55.00 368 pages, 6 x 9, 16 illus. Film Studies / Rhetoric      “The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film offers readers who have interests or specialities in rhetorical analysis a point of entry into contemporary cinema as it frames issues of style, representation, history, and culture. Although the literature on cinema is vast, relatively few books have adopted an explicitly rhetorical emphasis. Thus, this volume fills a long-neglected gap in the scholarly literature on film.” —Stephen Prince, author of Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film examines the importance of rhetoric in the study of film and film theory. Rhetorical approaches to film studies have been widely practiced, but rarely discussed until now. Taking on such issues as Hollywood blacklisting, fascistic aesthetics, and postmodern dialogics, editor David Blakesley presents fifteen critical essays that examine rhetoric’s role in such popular films as The Fifth Element, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Usual Suspects, Deliverance, The English Patient, Pulp Fiction, The Music Man, Copycat, Hoop Dreams and A Time to Kill.   This unique volume is about seeing and interpreting, about visual rhetoric and making meaning, about film as a symbolic form of expression. The essayists convey an approach to film as a set of well-grounded theoretical perspectives including psychoanalytic, semiotic, hermeneutic, phenomenological, and cultural discourses. Aided by sixteen illustrations, these insightful essays consider films rhetorically, as ways of seeing and not seeing, as acts that dramatize how people use language and images to tell stories and foster identification. Collectively, these essays examine society through a rhetorical lens, inviting the readers to judge for themselves the significant role rhetoric plays in the arena of film.   Contributors include David Blakesley, Alan Nadel, Ann Chisholm, Martin J. Medhurst, Byron Hawk, Ekaterina V. Haskins, James Roberts, Thomas W. Benson, Philip L. Simpson, Davis W. Houck, Caroline J.S. Picart, Friedemann Weidauer, Bruce Krajewski, Harriet Malinowitz, Granetta L. Richardson, and Kelly Ritter.   David Blakesley is an associate professor of English and director of professional writing at Purdue University. He is the author of The Elements of Dramatism, the coeditor of The Writing Instructor, the founder and moderator of the Kenneth Burke Discussion List and the Virtual Burkeian Parlor, and the editor of the Southern Illinois University Press series Rhetorical Philosophy and Theory.   Contents and Contributors “Introduction: The Rhetoric of Film and Film Studies” by David Blakesley “Mapping the Other: The English Patient, Colonial Rhetoric, and Cinematic Representation” by Alan Nadel “Rhetoric and the Early Work of Christian Metz: Augmenting Ideological Inquiry in Rhetorical Film Theory and Criticism” by Ann Chisholm “Temptation as Taboo: A Psychorhetorical Reading of The Last Temptation of Christ” by Martin J. Medhurst “Hyperrhetoric and the Inventive Spectator: Remotivating The Fifth Element” by Byron Hawk “Time, Space, and Political Identity: Envisioning Community in Triumph of the Will” by Ekaterina V. Haskins “On Rhetorical Bodies: Hoop Dreams and Constitutional Discourse” by James Roberts “Looking for the Public in the Popular: Collective Memory and the Hollywood Blacklist” by Thomas W. Benson “Copycat, Serial Murder, and the (De) Terministic Screen Narrative” by Philip L. Simpson “Opening the Text: Reading Gender, Christianity, and American Intervention in Deliverance” by Davis W. Houck and Caroline J. S. Picart “From ‘World Conspiracy’ to ‘Cultural Imperialism’: The History of Anti-Plutocratic Rhetoric in German Film” by Friedemann Weidauer “Rhetorical Conditioning: The Manchurian Candidate” by Bruce Krajewski “Sophistry, Magic, and the Vilifying Rhetoric of The Usual Suspects” by David Blakesley “Textual Trouble in River City: Literacy, Rhetoric, and Consumerism in The Music Man” by Harriet Malinowitz “Screen Play: Ethos and Dialectics in A Time to Kill” by Granetta L. Richardson “Jules, Ezekiel, and Double-Voiced Discourse: Postmodern Dialogics in Pulp Fiction” by Kelly Ritter