ABSTRACT

Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema examines the way that contemporary film reflects today’s changing gender roles. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the central issues in feminist film criticism with analyses of over twenty popular contemporary films across a range of genres, such as chick flicks, teen pics, hommecoms, horror, action adventure, indie flicks, and women lawyer films. Contributors explore issues of femininity as well as masculinity, reflecting on the interface of popular cinema with gendered realities and feminist ideas. Topics include the gendered political economy of cinema, the female director as auteur, postfeminist fatherhood, consumer culture, depictions of professional women, transgender, sexuality, gendered violence, and the intersections of gender, race, and ethnic identities.

The volume contains essays by following contributors: Taunya Lovell Banks, Heather Brook, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Michael DeAngelis, Barry Keith Grant, Kelly Kessler, Hannah Hamad, Christina Lane (with Nicole Richter), JaneMaree Maher, David Hansen-Miller (with Rosalind Gill), Gary Needham, Sarah Projansky, Hilary Radner, Rob Schaap, Yael D Sherman, Michele Shreiber, Janet Staiger, Peter Stapleton, Rebecca Stringer, Yvonne Tasker, and Ewa Ziarek.

part 1|53 pages

Masculinity in Question

chapter 1|12 pages

“The First Bond Who Bleeds, Literally and Metaphorically”

Gendered Spectatorship for “Pretty Boy” Action Movies

chapter 2|11 pages

Queer Memories and Universal Emotions

A Single Man (2009)

chapter 3|15 pages

“Lad Flicks”

Discursive Reconstructions of Masculinity in Popular Film

chapter 4|13 pages

Transamerica (2005)

The Road to the Multiplex after New Queer Cinema

part 2|84 pages

New Feminine Subjects: A Space for Women?

chapter 5|13 pages

Enchanted (2007) by Postfeminism

Gender, Irony, and the New Romantic Comedy

chapter 7|17 pages

Girls' Sexualities in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Universe

Feminist Challenges and Missed Opportunities

chapter 8|12 pages

Michael Clayton (2007)

Women Lawyers Betrayed—Again

chapter 9|12 pages

Crossing Race, Crossing Sex in Gurinder Chadha'S Bend it Like Beckham (2002)

Managing Anxiety in Multicultural Britain

chapter 10|15 pages

Speaking the Name of the Father in the Neo-Romantic Comedy

13 Going On 30 (2004)

part 3|54 pages

Consuming Culture(s)

chapter 11|12 pages

No Country for Old Women

Gendering Cinema in Conglomerate Hollywood

chapter 12|14 pages

Music and the Woman's Film

Sex and the City: The Movie (2008)

chapter 13|12 pages

Independence at What Cost?

Economics and Female Desire in Nicole Holofcener's Friends With Money (2006)

chapter 14|14 pages

The Feminist Poetics of Sofia Coppola

Spectacle and Self-Consciousness in Marie Antoinette (2006)

part 4|51 pages

Relationships, Identity, and Family

chapter 15|10 pages

“Eggs in Many Baskets”

Juno (2007), Baby Mama (2008), and the New Intimacies of Reproduction

chapter 16|12 pages

Temporarily Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)

Negotiating (and Negating) Lesbian Sexuality in Popular Film

chapter 17|14 pages

“Die, Bridezilla, Die!”

Bride Wars (2009), Wedding Envy, and Chick Flicks

chapter 18|13 pages

Extreme Parenting

Recuperating Fatherhood in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005)

part 5|41 pages

Gender and Violence

chapter 20|15 pages

From Victim to Vigilante

Gender, Violence, and Revenge in The Brave One (2007) and Hard Candy (2005)

chapter 21|13 pages

“When the Woman Looks”

Haute Tension (2003) and the Horrors of Heteronormativity