Feminism at the Movies ─ Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema

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.

Introduction: "Re-Vision"?: Feminist Film Criticism in the Twenty-first Century, Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stringer
I. Masculinity in Question

1. "The First Bond Who Bleeds, Literally and Metaphorically": Gendered Spectatorship for ‘Pretty Boy’ Action Movies, Janet Staiger

2. Queer Memories and Universal Emotions: A Single Man (2009), Michael DeAngelis

3. "Lad Flicks": Discursive Reconstructions of Masculinity in Popular Film, David Hansen-Miller and Rosalind Gill
4. Transamerica (2005): The Road to the Multiplex after New Queer Cinema, Gary Needham
II. New Feminine Subjects: A Space for Women?
5. Enchanted (2007) by Postfeminism, Yvonne Tasker

6. Neoliberal Femininity in Miss Congeniality (2000), Yael D Sherman

7. Girls’ Sexualities in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Universe: Feminist Challenges and Missed Opportunities, Sarah Projansky

8. Michael Clayton (2007): Women Lawyers Betrayed - Again, Taunya Lovell Banks

9. Crossing Race, Crossing Sex in Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham (2002): Managing Anxiety in Multicultural Britain, Mridula Nath Chakraborty

10. Speaking the Name of the Father in the Neo-Romantic Comedy: 13 Going On 30 (2004), Hilary Radner

III. Consuming Culture(s)

11. No Country for Old Women: Gendering Cinema in Conglomerate Hollywood, Rob Schaap

12. Music and the Woman’s Film: Sex and the City: The Movie (2008), Peter Stapleton

13. Independence at What Cost? Economics and Female Desire in Nicole Holofcener’s Friends With Money (2006), Michele Schreiber

14. The Feminist Poetics of Sophia Coppola: Spectacle and Self-Consciousness in Marie Antoinette (2006), Christina Lane and Nicole Richter
IV. Relationships, Identity and Family

15. "Eggs in Many Baskets": Juno (2007), Baby Mama (2008) and the New Intimacies of Reproduction, Jane Maree Maher

16. Temporarily Kissing Jessica Stein (2001): Negotiating (and Negating) Lesbian Sexuality in Popular Film, Kelly Kessler

17. "Die, Bridezilla, Die!": Bride Wars (2009), Wedding Envy and Chick Flicks, Heather Brook

18. Extreme Parenting: Recuperating Fatherhood in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005), Hannah Hamad

V. Gender and Violence

19. Kinship and Racist Violence in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Secret Life of Bees (2008), Ewa Ziarek

20. From Victim to Vigilante: Gender, Violence and Revenge in The Brave One (2007) and Hard Candy (2005), Rebecca Stringer

21. "When the Woman Looks": High Tension (2003) and the Horrors of Heteronormativity, Barry Keith Grant