Thomas E. Wartenberg
In ,Unlikely Couples,, Thomas E. Wartenberg directly challenges the view that narrative cinema inherently supports the dominant social interests by examining the way popular films about Â“unlikely couplesâ€ (a mismatched romantic union viewed as inappropriate due to its class, racial, or gender composition) explore, expose, and criticize societal attitudes, boundaries, and prejudices. The films under considerationÂ—including ,King Kong,,, Pygmalion, It Happened One Night, Pretty Woman, White Palace, Some Like it Hot, Guess Whoâ€™s Coming to Dinner, Mississippi Masala, Jungle Fever, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Desert Hearts, ,and, The Crying GameÂ—,are examined both individually and as a whole to illustrate how the genre uses the figure of a transgressive couple to explore tensions in genreâ€™s use of the figure of a transgressive couple to condemn social hierarchy as well as to raise a range of significant philosophical topics.
Unlikely Couples: A Cinema of Transgressive Love (Thinking Through Cinema, 2)