Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism

Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism PDF Author: Elizabeth Abele
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498525830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This collection of essays presents a sampling of film and television texts, interrogating images of U.S. masculinity. Rather than using “postfeminist” as a definition of contemporary feminism, this collection uses the term to designate the period from the late 1980s on—as a point when feminist thought gradually became more mainstream. The movies and TV series examined here have achieved a level of sustained attention, from critical acclaim, to mass appeal, to cult status. Instead of beginning with a set hypothesis on the effect of the feminist movement on images of masculinity on film and television, these chapters represent a range of responses, that demonstrate how the conversations within these texts about American masculinity are often open-ended, allowing both male characters and male viewers a wider range of options. Defining the relationship between U.S. masculinity and American feminist movements of the twentieth century is a complex undertaking. The essays collected for this volume engage prominent film and television texts that directly interrogate images of U.S. masculinity that have appeared since second-wave feminism. The contributors have chosen textual examples whose protagonists actively struggle with the conflicting messages about masculinity. These protagonists are more often works-in-progress, acknowledging the limits of their negotiations and self-actualization. These chapters also cover a wide range of genres and decades: from action and fantasy to dramas and romantic comedy, from the late 1970s to today. Taken together, the chapters of Screening Images of American Masculinity in the AgeofPostfeminism interrogate “the possible” screened in popular movies and television series, confronting the multiple and competing visions of masculinity not after or beyond feminism but, rather, in its very wake.

Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism

Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism PDF Author: Elizabeth Abele
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498525830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of essays presents a sampling of film and television texts, interrogating images of U.S. masculinity. Rather than using “postfeminist” as a definition of contemporary feminism, this collection uses the term to designate the period from the late 1980s on—as a point when feminist thought gradually became more mainstream. The movies and TV series examined here have achieved a level of sustained attention, from critical acclaim, to mass appeal, to cult status. Instead of beginning with a set hypothesis on the effect of the feminist movement on images of masculinity on film and television, these chapters represent a range of responses, that demonstrate how the conversations within these texts about American masculinity are often open-ended, allowing both male characters and male viewers a wider range of options. Defining the relationship between U.S. masculinity and American feminist movements of the twentieth century is a complex undertaking. The essays collected for this volume engage prominent film and television texts that directly interrogate images of U.S. masculinity that have appeared since second-wave feminism. The contributors have chosen textual examples whose protagonists actively struggle with the conflicting messages about masculinity. These protagonists are more often works-in-progress, acknowledging the limits of their negotiations and self-actualization. These chapters also cover a wide range of genres and decades: from action and fantasy to dramas and romantic comedy, from the late 1970s to today. Taken together, the chapters of Screening Images of American Masculinity in the AgeofPostfeminism interrogate “the possible” screened in popular movies and television series, confronting the multiple and competing visions of masculinity not after or beyond feminism but, rather, in its very wake.

Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism

Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism PDF Author: Elizabeth Abele
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781498525848
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
The relationship between U.S. masculinity and American feminist movements of the twentieth century is complex. This collection engages with prominent film and television texts that directly interrogate images of U.S. masculinity that have appeared since second-wave feminism, acknowledging the limits of their negotiations and self-actualization.

Postfeminism and Contemporary Vampire Romance

Postfeminism and Contemporary Vampire Romance PDF Author: Lea Gerhards
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135021566X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
In this book, Lea Gerhards traces connections between three recent vampire romance series; the Twilight film series (2008-2012), The Vampire Diaries (2009-2017) and True Blood (2008-2014), exploring their tremendous discursive and ideological power in order to understand the cultural politics of these extremely popular texts. She uses contemporary vampire romance to examine postfeminist ideologies and discuss gender, sexuality, subjectivity, agency and the body. Discussing a range of conflicting meanings contained in the narratives, Gerhards critically looks genre's engagement with everyday sexism and violence against women, power relations in heterosexual relationships, sexual autonomy and pleasure, (self-) empowerment, and (self-) surveillance. She asks: Why are these genre texts so popular right now, what specific desires, issues and fears are addressed and negotiated by them, and what kinds of pleasures do they offer?

White Masculinity in Crisis in Hollywood’s Fin de Millennium Cinema

White Masculinity in Crisis in Hollywood’s Fin de Millennium Cinema PDF Author: Pete Deakin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498585205
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
White Masculinity in Crisis in Hollywood’s Fin de Millennium Cinema claims that Hollywood cinema had a significant relationship with the millennial crisis of masculinity. From Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) and American Psycho (Harron, 2000), to Office Space (Judge, 1999), The Matrix (Wachowski’s, 1999) and American Beauty (Mendes, 1999), Pete Deakin attests that alongside the emergent “crisis” came a definitive body of some twenty-five Hollywood “crisis” titles; each film with a representational concern for the apparent “masculine malaise”. Asking whether Hollywood helped create, propel or sooth the very notion of the crisis-of-masculinity at this time, Deakin engages with some important cultural questions: how discursive—or even authentic—was it, and more vitally, whose actual crisis was this? To this end, scholars of film studies, media studies, gender studies, history, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen

Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen PDF Author: Ruxandra Trandafoiu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100060098X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen explores the movement, fluidity and change characterizing contemporary life, as represented on screen media, from mobile devices, to television, film, computers, video art and advertising displays. People have never moved around more, and increasingly migration and mobility has come to shape both our understandings of ourselves, and the ways in which we interpret and mediate the world we live in. As people move, media plays a key role in shaping and reshaping identity and belonging, opening the doors to transnational and transcultural participation. Drawing on screen media case studies from around the world, this book demonstrates how screen mobilities reconfigure notions of space, place, network and border regimes. The increasing ease of consumption and production of media has allowed for an unprecedented fluidity and mobility of class, gender, sexuality, nation and transnation, individual freedoms and aspirations. Putting people at the core of the book, this book shows the many ways in which people are using screen media to create identity, participation and meaning. The rich picture built up over the many chapters of this interdisciplinary volume raise important questions about the nature of contemporary media experiences. At a time of great change in the ways in which people move and connect with each other, this book provides an important global snapshot for researchers across the fields of media, communication and screen studies; sociology of communication; global studies and transnationalism; cultural studies; culture and identity; digital cultures; travel, tourism and place.

Mediating Sexual Citizenship

Mediating Sexual Citizenship PDF Author: Anita Brady
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317961447
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Mediating Sexual Citizenship considers how the neoliberal imperatives of adaptation, improvement and transformation that inform the shifting artistic and industrial landscape of television are increasingly indexed to performed disruptions in the norms of sexuality and gender. Drawing on examples from a range of television genres (quality drama, reality television, talk shows, sitcoms) and outlets (network, cable, subscription video on demand), the analysis in this book demonstrates how, as one of the most dominant cultural technologies, television plays a critical role in the production, maintenance and potential reconfiguring of the social organisation of embodiment, be it within gender identities, kinship structures or the categorisation of sexual desire. It suggests that, in order to understand television’s role in producing gendered and sexual citizenship, we must pay critical attention to the significant shifts in how television is produced, broadcast and consumed.

The Modern Superhero in Film and Television

The Modern Superhero in Film and Television PDF Author: Jeffrey A. Brown
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317484517
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Hollywood’s live-action superhero films currently dominate the worldwide box-office, with the characters enjoying more notoriety through their feature film and television depictions than they have ever before. This book argues that this immense popularity reveals deep cultural concerns about politics, gender, ethnicity, patriotism and consumerism after the events of 9/11. Superheroes have long been agents of hegemony, fighting for abstract ideals of justice while overall perpetuating the American status quo. Yet at the same time, the book explores how the genre has also been utilized to question and critique these dominant cultural assumptions.

Embodying Contagion

Embodying Contagion PDF Author: Sandra Becker
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1786836920
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Brings together new research that lays out the current state of contagion studies, from the perspective of media studies, monster studies, and the medical humanities. Offers fresh perspectives on contagion studies from disciplines such as the social sciences and the medical humanities, introducing new methods of collaboration and avenues of research, and demonstrating how these disciplines have already been working in parallel for several decades. Covers a wide variety of international media and contexts, including literature, film, television, public policy, and social networks. Includes key, recent case studies (including public health documents and the popular Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet) that have not yet been analysed anywhere else in the field. Bucks the current trend of going back to plague literature and historical plagues in the search for meaning to address current and late-20th century epidemics, diseases, and monsters.

Watching Sympathetic Perpetrators on Italian Television

Watching Sympathetic Perpetrators on Italian Television PDF Author: Dana Renga
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030115038
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This book offers the first comprehensive study of recent, popular Italian television. Building on work in American television studies, audience and reception theory, and masculinity studies, Sympathetic Perpetrators and their Audiences on Italian Television examines how and why viewers are positioned to engage emotionally with—and root for—Italian television antiheroes. Italy’s most popular exported series feature alluring and attractive criminal antiheroes, offer fictionalized accounts of historical events or figures, and highlight the routine violence of daily life in the mafia, the police force, and the political sphere. Renga argues that Italian broadcasters have made an international name for themselves by presenting dark and violent subjects in formats that are visually pleasurable and, for many across the globe, highly addictive. Taken as a whole, this book investigates what recent Italian perpetrator television can teach us about television audiences, and our viewing habits and preferences.

Fathers on Film

Fathers on Film PDF Author: Katie Barnett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350120871
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The father is an enduring and iconic figure in Hollywood cinema and in the 1990s, narratives of redemptive fatherhood featured prominently in some of the decade's most popular films like Kindergarten Cop (1990), Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lion King (1994). Interpreting such films through the lens of feminist and queer theory, along with masculinity studies and psychoanalysis, Katie Barnett offers an insightful and interdisciplinary discussion of cinematic fathers. Barnett reveals that the father figure is often portrayed as one that invests in and is part of a discourse of reproductive futurism. This plays out across a range of genres including rom-coms, fantasy, sci-fi, drama, and disaster. By exploring both blockbuster and more low-budget films of the 1990s, Barnett explores the figure of the father against the crisis of masculinity in the United States, and indeed more globally, at this time.