Passionate Detachments An Introduction to Feminist Film Theory

by Thornham, Sue

• ISBN13: 9780340652251
• ISBN10: 034065225X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-01
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

This book traces the key developments and debates in feminist film theory over the past twenty-five years. Beginning with the work on images and sterotypes of women from the early 1970s and moving to the most recent debates within feminist cultural criticism, it charts the relationship offeminist film theory to the theoretical and cultural contexts from which it arises, and to which it offers a profound challenge.From arguments about 'the male gaze' to work on fantasy, horror and the body, each chapter presents a clear and detailed critical account of a key area of debate within feminist film theory. As it develops in response both to internal criticisms and challenges and to the impact of a range ofcultural theories from the 1970s to the 1990s, feminist film theory emerges as the central arena in which feminist theories of representation, identity and cultural politics have been fought out from the 1970s onwards.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Passionate detachments

Forerunners and beginnings

Structures of fascination: Ideology, representation and the unconscious

Female spectators, melodrama, and the Woman's film

Negotiating the text: Spectator positions and audience readings

Fantasy, horror, and the body

Re-reading difference(s)

Conceiving lesbian desire

Re-reading difference(s)

Race, representation, and feminist theory

Postmodern scepticism

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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