This text brings together Henry A. Giroux's best-known essays from the last 20 years, centring on important subjects on the cultural studies and pop culture agenda, including violence, race, class, gender, identity, politics, and children's culture.

Acknowledgements. Breaking in to the Movies: An Introduction. Part I: Reclaiming the Political in Popular Culture. 1. Norma Rae: Character, Class, and Culture. 2. Hollywood Film and the Challenge of Neofascist Culture. 3. Lina Wertmuller: Film and the Dialectic of Liberalism. 4. Looking for Mr. Goodbar: Gender and the Politics of Pleasure. Part II: Hollywood Film and the War on Youth. 5. Slacking Off : Border Youth and Postmodern Education. 6. Culture, Class, and Pedagody in Dead Poets Society. 7. Children's Culture and Disney's Animated Films. 8. The Politics of Pedagogy, Gender, and Whiteness in Dangerous Minds. 9. Media Panics and the War Against "Kids": Larry Clark and the Politics of Diminished Hopes. Part III: Race and the Culture of Violence in Hollywood Films. 10. Racism and the Aesthetic of Hyper-real Violoence: Pulp Fiction and other Visual Tragedies. 11. Multiculturalism and the Cultural Politics of Race in 187. 12. Brutalized Bodies and Emasculated Politics: Fight Club, Consumerism, and Masculine Violence. Index.

Breaking in to the Movies brings together Henry A. Giroux's best-known essays from the last twenty years, centering on important subjects on the cultural studies and pop culture agenda, including violence, race, class, gender, identity, politics, and children's culture. The volume charts his career as one of the most astute observers of the Hollywood tradition, from early reflections on Norma Rae and Looking for Mister Goodbar to ground-breaking analyses of more recent movies such as Pulp Fiction, Dead Poets Society, Dangerous Minds, and Fight Club. By addressing the profound pedagogical role of film in contemporary society, Giroux demonstrates how it dramatically shapes the way young people come to terms with today's most charged social issues.

"In this collection of essays, Henry Giroux demonstrates once again that he is one of our leading public political intellectuals. Every page is filled with the passion of his commitment both to social and economic justice and to theoretical rigor. This collection combines insightful readings of how specific films operate in the current social context and original reflections on the central theoretical and methodological issues facing cultural studies today. This is a book that will move both students and teachers." Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Henry Giroux is one of our most penetrating cultural critics. In Breaking in to the Movies, he demonstrates how pleasure and power, entertainment and public pedagogy, are always intertwined in the culture of global capitalism. Giroux offers a refreshing approach in a field often characterized by a paucity of intellectual imagination. This is real cultural criticism." Sut Jhally, University of Massachusetts

"In this collection of essays, Henry Giroux demonstrates once again that he is one of our leading public political intellectuals. Every page is filled with the passion of his commitment both to social and economic justice and to theoretical rigor. This collection combines insightful readings of how specific films operate in the current social context and original reflections on the central theoretical and methodological issues facing cultural studies today. This is a book that will move both students and teachers." —Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Henry Giroux is one of our most penetrating cultural critics. In Breaking in to the Movies, he demonstrates how pleasure and power, entertainment and public pedagogy, are always intertwined in the culture of global capitalism. Giroux offers a refreshing approach in a field often characterized by a paucity of intellectual imagination. This is real cultural criticism." —Sut Jhally, University of Massachusetts

Acknowledgements. Breaking in to the Movies: An Introduction. Part I: Reclaiming the Political in Popular Culture. Part II: Hollywood Film and the War on Youth. Part III: Race and the Culture of Violence in Hollywood Films. Index.