A Fine Romance: Five Ages of Film Feminism (Culture And The Moving Image) - Hardcover

Mellencamp, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566394007 ISBN 13: 9781566394000

Publisher: Temple University Press, 1996

Synopsis

"Feminist film theory will soon be a quarter of a century old. It has known the euphoria of the 1970s, experienced the contradictions of the 1980s, and glimpsed the reversals and political gains, which include women of color, of the 1990s." But, Patricia Mellencamp asks, what is the next move? In this challenging look at twenty years of feminist film theory, Mellencamp elaborates on its rich history, drawing on her personal academic life, and offering inventive readings of a remarkable variety of films: recent Hollywood releases like "Forest Gump", "Pulp Fiction", "Thelma and Louise", "Basic Instinct", and "Silence of the Lambs", and features and independent films made by women, such as "The Piano", "Angie", "Orlando", "Bedevil", "Daughters of the Dust", "Privilege", and "Forbidden Love".With a clever sense of irony and wit, Mellencamp poses a question from which her analysis takes off: What did "Rapunzel", "Cinderella" and "Snow White" forget to tell "Thelma and Louise"? According to Mellencamp, they forgot what comes after "the end," after the wedding to the prince. So many women's stories, often by choice, stop after the prince whisks the princess away to live happily ever after. This book asks, what does "happily" mean for women? And what does "ever after" cost women?This creative call to shift film feminism's infamous "gaze" from sex and bodies to money and work ascertains where film feminism has been and what it needs to progress. Rather than recycling and regaining the same ground, Mellencamp urges film feminism to explore and claim new territory. Patricia Mellencamp is Professor of Film and Cultural Theory, Department of Art History, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. She has published several books, including "High Anxiety: Catastrophe", "Scandal", "Age and Indiscretions: Avant-garde Film", "Video", and "Feminism".

About this title

From the Publisher

A challenging look at twenty years of feminist film theory

From the Inside Flap

"...Mellencamp...has undertaken to address the issues, and that she has done so with great thoroughness, soul searching, wit, and intelligence, will surely position this book as a must-read for film theorists and many other feminists and feminist-influenced scholars and critics."
—Elayne Rapping

"Bold, brilliant, radiantly funny and just sizzling with intelligence, A Fine Romance rewrites film history as an action adventure for women. Patricia Mellencamp is one of feminism's most audaciously creative thinkers."
—Meaghan Morris, author of The Pirate's Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism

"This is a book of mega-energetic proportions by a brilliant cultural critic who engages the disabling fiction of romance through a double reading—of films by women from all over the globe and of feminist film theory over the past two decades. A fine romance glitters with Mellencamp's legendary wit. It is also deeply serious and wide-ranging, addressing questions of work and money, age and friendship, obsession and addiction, history and the emotions."
—Kathleen Woodward, Director, Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin

About this edition

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1566394007
• ISBN 13: 9781566394000
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 246