Screen Memories: Hollywood Cinema on the Psychoanalytic Couch (Revised)

Screen Memories delves into the psychological aspects of mainstream American movies ranging from Casablanca to Working Girl. While most psychoanalytic film criticism is highly theoretical, Greenberg writes in a candid, entertaining style that will appeal to cineasts and scholars alike. Beginning with a basic overview of psychoanalytic film criticism, Greenberg directs his focus on characters, motivations, and conflicts in detective, war, science fiction, and horror movies, as well as cult cinema. In "On the McMovie, " he probes the hollow, escapist fare that emerged from Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s and embraced nearly every genre. Greenberg zooms in on the pathological narcissism of heroes in such McMovies as Rambo and Top Gun. Screen Memories concludes by addressing two important films of the late 1980s. Greenberg decries Working Girl as a "Co-opt" film with a seemingly liberal agenda, which nevertheless mocks and subverts the very social advances it appears to affirm. But Enemies: A Love Story - with its humor, manic energy, and theme of renewal in the teeth of death - is seen as evidence of a tentative but hopeful return to quality in Hollywood.