By using a series of studies of contemporary mainstream Hollywood movies - Blue Velvet, Wall Street, Crimes and Misdemeanors, When Harry Met Sally, Sex Lies and Videotape, Do the Right Thing - Norman Denzin explores the tension between ideas of the postmodern, and traditional ways of analyzing society. The discussion moves between two forms of text: social theory and cinematic representations of contemporary life.

Denzin analyzes the ideas of society embedded in poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, cultural studies and Marxism through the ideas of key theorists like Baudrillard, Barthes, Habermas, Jameson, Bourdieu and Derrida. He relates these to the problematic of the postmodern self as exposed in cinema centering on the decisive performance of race, gender and class.