Return of the Monstrous-Feminine - Softcover

Creed, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0367478161 ISBN 13: 9780367478162

Publisher: Routledge, 2022

Synopsis

This follow-up to the classic text of The Monstrous-Feminine analyses those contemporary films which explore social justice issues such as women’s equality, violence against women, queer relationships, race and the plight of the planet and its multi-species.

Examining a new movement – termed by Creed as Feminist New Wave Cinema – The Return of the Monstrous-Feminine explores a significant change that has occurred over the past two decades in the representation of the monstrous-feminine in visual discourse. The Monstrous-Feminine is a figure in revolt on a journey through the dark night of abjection. Taking particular interest in women directors who create the figure of the Monstrous-Feminine, in cinema that foregrounds everyday horrors in addition to classic horror, Creed looks at a range of diverse films including The Babadook, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Nomadland, Carol, Raw, Revenge, and the television series The Handmaid’s Tale. These films center on different forms of revolt, from inner revolt to social, supernatural and violent revolt, which appear in Feminist New Wave Cinema. These relate in the main to the emergence of a range of social protest movements that have gathered momentum in the new millennium and given voice to new theoretical and critical discourses. These include: third and fourth wave feminism, the #MeToo movement, queer theory, race theory, the critique of anthropocentrism and human animal theory. These theoretical discourses have played a key role in influencing Feminist New Wave Cinema whose films are distinctive, stylish and diverse.

This is an essential companion to the original classic text and is ideal for students in Gender and Media, Gender and Horror, Gender and Film and Feminist Film theory courses.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Creed is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of six books, including The Monstrous-Feminine: film, feminism, psychoanalysis (1993), now in its ninth edition; Darwin’s Screens: evolutionary aesthetics, time & sexual display in the cinema (2009); and most recently Stray: human-animal ethics in the Anthropocene (2017). Her recent research is in feminist new wave cinema, ethics in the Anthropocene and animal/human studies. Her writings have been translated into eleven languages for publication in academic journals and anthologies. She is the director of the Human Rights and Animal Ethics Research Network (HRAE). Barbara has been invited to participate in international research events, including the Courtauld Institute (UK), the Yale Centre for British Art, and the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of the Sciences (US). She is active in the wider community and has been on the boards of Writers Week, the Melbourne International and the Melbourne Queer Film Festivals & film critic for The Age, The Big Issue and ABC National Radio.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0367478161
• ISBN 13: 9780367478162
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 178