It used to be only movies were on film, but now reality television and security cameras are recording the most intimate and most banal moments of our daily lives for public consumption. In The Reality Effect, Joel Black argues that our steadily increasing 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 not as art or entertainment, but as a documentary medium that has obscured-if not obliterated-the line between reality and fiction. Black traces the uncanny interplay between movies and real-life events through a series of provocative and unsettling comparative analyses-from Lolita and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey to Wag the Dog and the Clinton scandal to Crash and Princess Diana's violent death. An ambitious work of both film theory and cultural criticism, The Reality Effect will reframe your view of our cinematic culture, in which little is left to chance, nothing must appear to be unreal, and nothing can be left unseen.
Part 1 Film culture
Part 2 Filmic events
Part 3 Film dreams