Since the late 1980s Hollywood has devoted big budgets and established stars to films about controversial issues while identities previously considered marginal have come to prominence on the big screen. This work examines the issues raised by these developments, bringing together debates in identity politics with film studies and launching a theorization of cinematic representation of identity. Movies from Forrest Gump to Philadelphia , from Malcolm X to Falling Down , have engaged explicity with notions of multiculturalism and identity politics. This book is concerned with the meanings put into circulation by these mainstream films and audiences’ readings of them. It offers a brief introduction to such issues as arguments over positive and negative images, and the relationship between cultural representation and political power