by Susie Gharib
First published 2019
Susie Gharib takes readers inside the screening room where cultural criticism meets cinema. She dissects five films that reveal America's cultural tensions: V for Vendetta, The Piano, Never Let Me Go, Edward Scissorhands, and The Wall. Each review uses film stills to support her analysis of how movies reflect and shape cultural values. Gharib moves between genres and decades, finding common threads in stories of outsiders and conformity. The collection also includes Gail Hammill's essay exploring Puritanism and cultural displacement in Dubai, adding an international perspective to questions of American identity. Together, these pieces examine how art confronts the boundaries between belonging and exile, tradition and rebellion.
Genres: art, american, academic, cultural-studies
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: conformity, outsiders
Setting: America, Dubai
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
46 pages · Paperback · Independently published