Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema

The theme of female transformation informs the Hollywood representation of femininity from the studio era to the present. Whether it occurs physically, emotionally, or on some other level, transformation allows female protagonists to negotiate their own complex desires and to resist the compulsory marriage plot. A sweeping study of Hollywood from Now, Voyager, The Heiress, and Flamingo Road to Carrie, the Alien films, The Brave One, and the slasher horror genre, this book boldly unsettles commonplace understandings of genre film, female sexuality, and Freudian theory as it makes a strong new case for the queer relevance of female representation.

In this sharp, reasonably priced book, Greven (English, Univ. of Southern Carolina) examines--as the title clearly indicates--the ways in which women are represented in American genre films. This would be an excellent resource for a course in these genres. Carefully considered and accessibly written, this is a challenging and daring work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. (G. A. Foster, Choice, Vol. 51 (9), May, 2014)

Autorentext
David Greven is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, USA. His books include Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese and Friedkin; The Fragility of Manhood: Hawthorne, Freud, and the Politics of Gender; and Men Beyond Desire: Manhood, Sex, and Violation in American Literature. Greven's essays on film have been published in journals such as the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Cinema Journal, Genders, Jump Cut, CineAction, and Cineaste and he is on the editorial boards of Cinema Journal, Genders, and Poe Studies.

Inhalt

Femininity and Film Genres Freud and the Death-Mother Transformations of the Woman's Film Modern Horror as the Concealed Woman's Film Medusa in the Mirror: Brian De Palma's Carrie Demeter and Persephone in Space: Transformation, Femininity, and Myth in the Alien Films The Finalizing Woman: Horror, Femininity, and Queer Monsters The Brave One