The Subject of Film and Race is a skillful foray into deeper issues of critical theory in the realm of films. Sims analysis establishes a clear foreground for the materialist approach to film studies that he outlines at the conclusion of the book ... With the boundaries of identity blurred, Sim's approach allows critics to be concerned with core issues, neither burdened by essentialism, nor ambiguous or shifting subjectivities. -- Geoffery Luurs * Black Camera *
At once erudite and eminently readable, The Subject of Film and Race proposes a bold new account of cinema's racial economies. Through compelling analyses of a wide range of popular films, Sim challenges us to think again about the political potential of film cultures and film criticism. * Rosalind Galt, Reader in Film Studies, King's College London, UK *
Gerald Sim's The Subject of Film and Race convenes the intersection of film studies and critical race theory, bringing the most powerful elements of each into a productive dialogue. As critically sharp as it is elegant, The Subject of Film and Race heralds a new moment in both discourses. But the force of this book lies not only in the illumination of films that Sim considers, nor in the representations of race he examines: nor, for that matter in their conjunction, however revealing. Rather, the brilliance of Sim's book lies in the subject of film and race it evokes, the subject it names as an agent and effect of the convergence of film and race, film studies in its most rigorous articulation and critical race theory. -- Akira Mizuta Lippit, Professor of Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, USA, and author of Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video (2012)
The Subject of Film and Race offers a thorough summary of Critical Race Film Studies to date and, for this reason, serves as an excellent text on the subject. However, the real attraction of the book is that in successfully advancing the case for the neo Marxian critical subject to take centre stage, Sim's book has the potential to reinvigorate scholars and students alike to tackle the impasse that has been left by Post Structuralist thinking on crucial issues such as identity formation and aesthetic practice in the realm of race and representation. * Corin Willis, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Liverpool John Moores University, UK *
Gerald Sim's The Subject of Film and Race: Retheorizing Politics, Ideology, and Cinema provides an excellent examination of modern film in the wake of contemporary scholarship on critical race theory. Sim uses an amalgamation of post-structural, postcolonial, and cyborg theories to situate his work within the larger context of critical race film studies, but adds to this paradigm a neo-Marxist perspective as a productive analytic framework for understanding issues of race, sex, and gender. -- Geoffrey Luurs * Black Camera *
An invaluable companion for students interrogating the racial history of Hollywood. The author provides well-chosen, cinematically significant films (sometimes overlooked by other scholars) as case studies, which are woven through the chapters to illuminate the ways these films represent race, codify competing notions of it, and sometimes allow for subversive subtexts to emerge within even rigidly monochromatic narratives. * James Bogdanski, Long Beach City College, USA *
