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In the 21st century, films about the lives and experiences of girls and young women have become increasingly visible. Yet, British cinema's engagement with contemporary girlhood has - unlike its Hollywood counterpart - been largely ignored until now. Sarah Hill's Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film provides the first book-length study of how young femininity has been constructed, both in films like the St. Trinians franchise and by critically acclaimed directors like Andrea Arnold, Carol Morley and Lone Scherfig. Hill offers new ways to understand how postfeminism informs British cinema and how it is adapted to fit its specific geographical context. By interrogating UK cinema through this lens, Hill paints a diverse and distinctive portrait of modern femininity and consolidates the important academic links between film, feminist media and girlhood studies.
By analyzing the negotiation of femininities and masculinities within contemporary Hollywood cinema, Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema presents diverse interrogations of popular cinema and illustrates the need for a renewed scholarly focus on contemporary film production.
It's widely assumed that Britain in the 1950s experienced a return to traditional gender roles. Popular cinema has typically been seen to represent this era through the dominant image of the 'happy housewife'. "Femininity in the Frame" is a sharply observant account of how British cinema engaged with femininity and women's roles during this important period. Written in a lively and accessible manner, it challenges received understandings, arguing that the period was marked by social unease and anxiety about gender roles and femininity, with much British cinema producing ambiguous messages about feminine identities and the role of women. Through analysing marginalized figures, such as prostitutes, criminals and femmes fatales, and addressing central themes, notably sexuality, marriage and female friendship, Melanie Bell examines how British popular cinema imagined and constructed femininity in this era of rapid social and cultural change. She draws together sources ranging from official reports to film reviews, with case studies of films across genres, including "The Perfect Woman", "Young Wives' Tale", "The Weak and the Wicked" and "A Town Like Alice", to show how new ideas and understandings of femininity were seeping into the cultural imagery at this time. She demonstrates how such films expressed proto-feminist ideas and how they ultimately explored new forms of femininity in a manner that has not until now been recognised.
With 11 original essays, this edited volume examines 'chick flicks' within the larger context of 'chick culture' as well as women's cinema. The essays consider chick flicks from a variety of angles, touching on issues of film history, female sexuality, femininity, age, race, ethnicity, and consumerism.
In light of their tremendous gains in the political and professional sphere, and their ever expanding options, why is it that most contemporary American films aimed at women still focus almost exclusively on their pursuit of a heterosexual romantic relationship? American Postfeminist Cinema explores this question and is the first book to examine the symbiotic relationship between heterosexual romance and postfeminist culture. The book argues that since 1980, postfeminism's most salient tensions and anxieties have been reflected and negotiated in the American romance film. Case studies of a broad range of Hollywood and independent films reveal how the postfeminist romance cycle is intertwined with contemporary women's ambivalence and broader cultural anxieties about women's changing social and political status.
This book takes a broad perspective and analyses the ways in which the British film industry has dealt with women and their creativity from 1930 to the present. The first part of the book deals comprehensively with different historical periods in British film culture, showing how the 'agency' of production company, director, distribution company or scriptwriter can bring about new patterns of female stereotyping. The second part looks at the input of women workers into the film process. It assesses the work of women in a variety of roles: directors such as Wendy Toye and Sally Potter, producers such as Betty Box, scriptwriters such as Clemence Dane and Muriel Box, costume designers such as Shirley Russell and Jocelyn Rickards, and editors and art directors. This is a polemical book which is written in a lively and often confrontational manner. It uses fresh archival material and takes energetic issue with those explanatory models of film analysis which impose easy answers onto complex material.
From the precocious charms of Shirley Temple to the box-office behemoth Frozen and its two young female leads, Anna and Elsa, the girl has long been a figure of fascination for cinema. The symbol of (imagined) childhood innocence, the site of intrigue and nostalgia for adults, a metaphor for the precarious nature of subjectivity itself, the girl is caught between infancy and adulthood, between objectification and power. She speaks to many strands of interest for film studies: feminist questions of cinematic representation of female subjects; historical accounts of shifting images of girls and childhood in the cinema; and philosophical engagements with the possibilities for the subject in film. This collection considers the specificity of girls' experiences and their cinematic articulation through a multicultural feminist lens which cuts across the divides of popular/art-house, Western/non Western, and north/south. Drawing on examples from North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, the contributors bring a new understanding of the global/local nature of girlhood and its relation to contemporary phenomena such as post-feminism, neoliberalism and queer subcultures. Containing work by established and emerging scholars, this volume explodes the narrow post-feminist canon and expands existing geographical, ethnic, and historical accounts of cinematic cultures and girlhood.
Women Who Kill explores several lines of inquiry: the female murderer as a figure that destabilizes order; the tension between criminal and victim; the relationship between crime and expression (or the lack thereof); and the paradox whereby a crime can be both an act of destruction and a creative assertion of agency. In doing so, the contributors assess the influence of feminist, queer and gender studies on mainstream television and cinema, notably in the genres (film noir, horror, melodrama) that have received the most critical attention from this perspective. They also analyse the politics of representation by considering these works of fiction in their contexts and addressing some of the ambiguities raised by postfeminism. The book is structured in three parts: Neo-femmes Fatales; Action Babes and Monstrous Women. Films and series examined include White Men Are Cracking Up (1994); Hit & Miss (2012); Gone Girl (2014); Terminator (1984); The Walking Dead (2010); Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); Contagion (2011) and Ex Machina (2015) among others.
What was the relation between gender and nation when the waiting woman was displaced by the mobile woman and homes were flattened by bombs? What happened to notions of femininity, sexual difference and class as women moved into the workplace and donned dungarees, military uniforms and utility clothing?
Master's Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 1,0, University of Cologne (Anglistik), language: English, abstract: This thesis will be an exploration of the images of young women that Clueless, The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette provide, to shine a light on what makes them stand out against other films of this type, and why they continue to appeal so intensely to female audiences. To provide the context in which their films were created and to explore their impact, the first part shall give a brief introduction to the backgrounds and styles of both directors. In extension, attention will be paid to the cultural, postfeminist context of the four films as part of a discussion in how far a postfeminist mindset provides new possibilities for female characters, while simultaneously upholding old patriarchal patterns and rules that prevent a true liberation of girls and women, and how Heckerling and Coppola treat this ambiguity in their works. Since the focus lies on female subjectivity and agency of the girlish young woman and how it is portrayed in cinema, most of this thesis is dedicated to an examination of the films’ storytelling and visuals – investigating and comparing the points of view in the films, how they are set up and how the camera work supports that; the use of voiceover narrators, dialogue and silences as means to interrogate the position of the girls within the framework of power dynamics in their respective stories; intertextual references, as well as instances of parody or pastiche and how they create subtext that sometimes amplifies straightforward messages of a film, and sometimes questions it; and, ultimately, costumes, and the role of fashion and clothes in feminine expression, as well as the recovery of female agency against the backdrop of the specularisation of women in cinema. Finally, the last part will pay attention to where the four films by Coppola and Heckerling fit within current discourses of what constitutes feminine aesthetics and feminine cinema, as well as feminist film studies per se, with a special focus on Luce Irigaray as an innovator of the ways how women in cultural texts are read and constructed. Hopefully, by the end it will be shown that Clueless, The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette are all coined by a longing for transformation of current cultural conditions, illuminating the figure of the contemporary girl, her pains and pleasures, and allowing her to take shape on screen as a rounded, active character with own desires, powers and ambiguities within.