Women on Screen Feminism and Femininity in Visual Culture

by Gillis, Stacy; Waters, Melanie

• ISBN13: 9780230229655
• ISBN10: 0230229654
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

A timely intervention into debates on the representation of feminist and feminine identities in contemporary visual culture. The essays in this collection interrogate how and why certain formulations of feminism and femininity are currently prevalent in mainstream cinema and television, offering new insights into postfeminist media phenomena.

Author Biography

Melanie Waters is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Northumbria University, UK. She has published essays on feminist theory, popular culture and twentieth-century women's poetry, and is the co-editor of Poetry and Autobiography (2011) and the co-author of Feminism and Popular Culture (2012).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Note on the Contributors
Introduction
PART I: GENERATIONS
Nancy Meyers and Popular Feminism; K.Glitre
'I'm nothing like you!' Postfeminist Generationalism and Female Stardom in the Contemporary Chick Flick; S.Cobb
Alias: Quality Television and the New Woman Professional; R.White
The Horrors of Home: Feminism and Femininity in the Suburban Gothic; M.Waters
PART II: SEX AND SEXUALITY
Bad Girls in Crisis: The New Teenage Femme Fatale; K.Farrimond
Butch Lesbians: Televising Female Masculinity; H.Fenwick
'Challenging and Alternative': Screening Queer Girls on Channel 4; M.Zeller-Jacques
PART III: THE MAKEOVER
Under the Knife: Feminism and Cosmetic Surgery in Contemporary Culture; S.Genz
Imperialist Projections: Manners, Makeovers, and Models of Nationality; B.R.Weber
Femininity Repackaged: Postfeminism and Ladette to Lady; A.Smith
Performing Postfeminist Identities: Gender, Costume and Transformation in Teen Cinema; S.Gilligan
PART IV: VIOLENCE
Return of the 'Angry Woman': Authenticating Female Physical Action in Contemporary Cinema; L.Purse
Negotiating Shifts in Feminism: The 'Bad' Girls of James Bond; L.Funnell
A Pathological Romance: Authority, Expert Knowledge and the Postfeminist Profiler; L.Steenberg
'A Caligula-like despot': Matriarchal Tyranny in The Sopranos; A.Gething
Index