Customer Reviews:
Multiple Voices helpful to those "in the know".......2000-11-09
Multiple Voices is a great complilation of developmental feminist film theory. Interesting and diverse essays are included: Christine Gledhill (one of my personal favorites), B. Ruby Rich, bell hooks, Teresa de Lauretis, Linda Williams and more. The anthology is broken into three parts: "perspectives", which gives a brief histoical and general overview of American feminist film criticism; "practice", which is a series of essays that apply the theory to various films/film genres; and finally, "course files" which are course outline suggestions for teaching theory to students.
This is a great book for someone well-versed in feminist theory. However, there are a few drawbacks to it which makes it a little less accessible to a novice. Namely, Laura Mulvey's theory is talked about in many of the essays, but her historic essay, "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema," is not included. Also missing from this collection is a good representation of French feminist theory.
Book Description
Movie-Struck Girls examines women's films and filmgoing in the 1910s, a period when female patronage was energetically courted by the industry for the first time. By looking closely at how women were invited to participate in movie culture, the films they were offered, and the visual pleasures they enjoyed, Shelley Stamp demonstrates that women significantly complicated cinemagoing throughout this formative, transitional era. Growing female patronage and increased emphasis on women's subject matter did not necessarily bolster cinema's cultural legitimacy, as many in the industry had hoped, for women were not always enticed to the cinema by dignified, uplifting material, and once there, they were not always seamlessly integrated in the social space of theaters, nor the new optical pleasures of film viewing. In fact, Stamp argues that much about women's films and filmgoing in the postnickelodeon years challenged, rather than served, the industry's drive for greater respectability.
White slave films, action-adventure serial dramas, and women's suffrage photoplays all drew female audiences to the cinema with stories aimed directly at women's interests and with advertising campaigns that specifically targeted female moviegoers. Yet these examples suggest that women's patronage was built with stories focused on sexuality, sensational thrill-seeking, and feminist agitation, topics not normally associated with ladylike gentility. And in each case concerns were raised about women's conduct at cinemas and the viewing habits they enjoyed, demonstrating that women's integration into motion picture culture was not as smooth as many have thought.
Customer Reviews:
Sex-Kitten.net Review: .......2005-06-25
The Early History of Women *And* Film (Not "In" Film)
Every so often, we women complain about women in the media. When it comes to movies, we complain about the diminished roles for maturing women; we complain about the way women are portrayed in films; we complain about the history of films, most notably The Hollywood Code which seemed to destroy & limit our potential as women in film -- on both sides of the camera. But long before all that, in the very beginning, it was even worse.
In 'Movie-Struck Girls: Women & Motion Picture Culture After the Nickelodeon', by Shelley Stamp, we learn more than just the roles of women in films or behind the camera -- we learn about women's role as patrons of cinema.
The book is an eye-opening look at a long ignored part of American film history -- and an astonishing look at the history of women as media consumers.
Stamp spent over ten years researching for this book. She studied trade journals, fan magazines, ephemera, and many official documents and records at the National Board of Censorship Archives in New York City, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles, & the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Many of the films she reviewed are no longer readily available, let alone circulating, but can be found at the Library of Congress & the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
It sounds like a huge undertaking, & I thank her for it. 'Movie-Struck Girls' presents a wealth of information that I had never known before.
In 'Movie-Struck Girls' you learn all about these long-hidden details of American film history & it's collision with turn of the century American values -- including titles, studios, stars, organizations, & political figures. For a person who adore film & is a passionate feminist, this is a great read. Why it's as thrilling as those old adventure serial films!
Stamp does a great job of presenting this long ignored part of film -- and women's -- history. It's definitely an academic read, which means it is meaty enough for those who want to further search for clues, artifacts & films themselves. It may not read like a novel, but it's so fascinating & full of details, it won't disappoint. Fans of film, especially silent films, cannot call themselves educated in the subject unless they know this history. And women, well, we start to see a much larger image emerge -- our complaints regarding women in the media have much deeper roots than we previously knew.
(Condensed Review)
Average customer rating:
- An outstanding contribution to fashion & cinema history.
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Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood (Commerce and Mass Culture, V.2)
Sarah Berry
Manufacturer: University of Minnesota Press
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ASIN: 0816633134 |
Book Description
Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich-all were icons of beauty and glamour in 1930s Hollywood. Screen Style reveals the impact of celebrities like these on women filmgoers, looking beyond the surface of the films and fashions of the era-often described as forms of escapism from the difficult realities of the Depression-to show how Hollywood presented women with models for self-determination during a time of rapid social change. Revealing the public and cinematic fascination with the strong-willed women featured in so many movies-ambitious gold diggers, career-minded working girls, social climbers, dangerous androgynous females, and other exotics-Sarah Berry presents a lively look at films, fan magazines, and advertising of that time.
Sarah Berry writes on film, media, and cultural studies and designs interactive multimedia projects. She teaches film studies at Portland State University.
Customer Reviews:
An outstanding contribution to fashion & cinema history........2000-06-04
This survey of women's fashion issues in 1930s Hollywood provides a fine social history of 1930s film style, survey the impact of female celebrities on fashion and showing how Hollywood used actresses as models during a time of social change. Screen Style explores changes in fashion marketing approaches during the 1930s and is a recommended pick for students of fashion history.
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Feminism and Film (Oxford Readings in Feminism)
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Similar Items:
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Feminist Film Theory: A Classical Reader
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Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism
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Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Theories of Representation & Difference)
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Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema
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Issues in Feminist Film Criticism (A Midland Book)
ASIN: 0198782349 |
Book Description
This book brings together carefully selected essays on feminism and film with a view to tracing major developments in theory, criticism, and practices of women and cinema from 1973 to the present day. It illuminates the powerful, if controversial, role feminist research has played in the emergence of Film Studies as a discipline during these years; reprinting influential 1970s pioneering essays tracing the ensuing debates and challenges to key theories that shaped this field in the next two decades. Kaplan details the Euro-American contexts within which feminist film theories and practices emerged and traces the changing influences of French, German, and American intellectual movements on feminist film research. As well as a wide-ranging introduction which sets the selection of essays in context, readers will find examples of social-role, psychoanalytic, structuralist, post-structuralist, gay and lesbian, postmodern and postcolonial feminist film criticism, prefaced by introductory notes and including further readings.
Customer Reviews:
Feminism and Film.......2005-10-01
I had to get the book for a class and it seems to be one of the better books on this topic.
Customer Reviews:
Feminist Film Theory.......2000-05-25
Silverman's observations regarding classical Hollywood cinema constantly drive the reader beyond the complacency of a male-centered interpretation of film. Make no mistake about it, her prose is thick, but the rewards of contemplating her thoughts are there for the picking. She extends the thought of Laura Mulvey, and does so by also using the psychoanalytic method. If the reader has questions about the validity of this particular method, then he/she may question some of the ideas that are put forth. However, Mulvey's acknowledges that the psychoanalytic method itself has traditionaly bowed to the father-figure. Her intention is to raise the reader's awareness of this tendency before she begins to explore the ramifications of patriarchal society on the filmic medium. Incredibly interesting are remarks on the "disembodied voice" and its relationship to female characters that can be found in Hollywood cinema. This is the essence of what makes film an "acoustic mirror."
Book Description
In
Star Gazing, Jackie Stacey puts the female back into the spectator, or the girl back into girl-watching. Combining film theory with a rich body of ethnographic research, the book investigates how women viewews understood Hollywood stars in the 1940s and 50s. Stacey's study challenges the universality of psychoanalytic theories of female spectatorship, prevalent within film studies for the past 20 years.
Drawing on letters and questionnaires from over 300 filmgoers, the author investigates the significance of particular Holywood stars in women's memories of wartime and postwar Britain. Among the stars discussed by Stacey and her subjects are Doris Day, Joan Craford, Betty Grable, Ava Gardner, Deanna Durbin, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, Jennifer Jones and Dorothy L'Amour.
Three key processes of spectatorship--escapism, identification and consumption--are explored in terms of their multiple and changing meanings for women spectators of the time. Stacey's work demonstrates the importance of cultural and national location for the meanings of female spectatorship, redirecting questions of popular culture and female desire.
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Gender and German Cinema - Volume I: Feminist Interventions (Gender & German Cinema)
Manufacturer: Berg Publishers
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0854969470 |
Book Description
International film has received some of its most original impulses from German film makers however the works by women directors in German speaking countries have been largely ignored in spite of the important social, political and historical issues they have raised. This is the first work to consider the broad spectrum of German cinema through the category of gender. These volumes will be standard handbooks in film studies for many years to come.
Customer Reviews:
A particularly comprehensive study of representation.......2001-04-25
De Lauretis's book is one of the most influential in the field of feminist film theory. An incredibly comprehensive study, it engages deeply notions of desire, fantasy, and identification. It is useful as both a theoretical and a political text, weaving a personal struggle with feminism and film practice throughout her semiotic analysis of the process of film.
Book Description
“Camp,” Mae West told Playboy, “is the kinda comedy where they imitate me.” But what was West doing, if not camp itself? Guilty Pleasures puts women back into the history of camp, a story long confined to gay male practice. Emphasizing the distinctive roles women have played as producers and consumers of camp, Pamela Robertson links her subject to feminist discussions of gender parody, performance, and spectatorship. Her book offers a heady tour of social and cultural criticism at its most interesting, and American culture at its most flamboyant.
Robertson grounds her theoretical discussion of female performance and spectatorship in detailed studies of figures such as Mae West, Joan Crawford, and Madonna. She locates these figures in turn within a tradition of feminist camp—a female form of aestheticism related to masquerade and rooted in burlesque, parallel to but different from gay male camp. Through analyses of films from Gold Diggers of 1933 to Johnny Guitar, as well as video and television, Robertson shows how the gold digger is to feminist camp what the dandy is to gay male camp—its original personification and defining voice. Set against a backdrop of social history, her analysis demonstrates that feminist camp flourishes during periods of antifeminist backlash in America, and that it reflects a working-class sensibility particularly attuned to changing attitudes toward women’s work and sexuality.
Appealing to a wide range of scholars spanning the fields of film and mass culture, feminism, gay/lesbian/queer studies, and cultural studies, Guilty Pleasures will also attract an audience of general readers interested in camp and popular culture.
Customer Reviews:
Not So Guilty Pleasure.......2006-11-25
A Feminist Examination Of Mae West, November 24, 2006
Pamela Robertson's "Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp From Mae To Madonna," published in 1996 is a university press publication that examines Mae West's contributions to the Feminist Movement and evaluates her role as a female icon of the twentieth century. This treatment of West is a typical academic text with some research of textual sources, but with little or no interviews and featuring theory that is hit or miss.
When Mae West was asked why she never wrote an article supporting the Feminist Movement she reportably drawled, "They never asked me."
Customer Reviews:
Great essays, terrible publishing mistakes.......2007-06-12
This is a solid anthology of feminist film criticism, but a couple fatal flaws significantly decrease its value (see paragraph 2). Some classics and some new material make it a nice introduction. Most of the familiar writers are representing including Laura Mulvey, Linda Williams, B. Ruby Rich, Maureen Turim, and Kaja Silverman. However, if you already have a decent collection of feminist writings on film, there may be some overlap. For instance: do we really need yet another anthology with "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"??? Mulvey is great, but she DID write other essays.
One major criticism concerns the publisher: the pages jump directly from 262 to 295 completely omitting Rich's "In the Name of Feminist Film Criticism" - one of the reasons I bought the book in the first place. You also miss the last pages of Annette Kuhn's "Textual Politics" as well as the beginning of the de Laurentis' "Rethinking Women's Cinema". Once the book gets into the 300s, it jumps back to 296, mid-essay, of course!
My three-star rating has nothing to do with the contents - it's solely directed at the sloppy publisher. I have no idea why Indiana UP screwed this up so bad - they're usually very reliable. This is an okay place to start, but there are better feminist anthologies out there.
A good place to start.......1999-09-24
This book was my best friend during my first ever film theory class. The writing is sometimes frustratingly academic, especially if you don't have a background in feminist theory, but the essays were always thought-provoking, and often enlightening.
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Feminism and Film (Oxford Readings in Feminism)
Feminism and Film Theory
