The new avengers : feminism, femininity and the rape-revenge cycle / Jacinda Read.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Read, Jacinda.

Series:

Inside popular film

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women in motion pictures.

Feminism and motion pictures.

Motion pictures--United States--History.

Motion pictures.

United States.

History.

Physical Description:

viii, 290 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Feminism, femininity and the rape-revenge cycle

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Summary:

In this, the first full-length study of the rape-revenge film, Jacinda Read suggests that the rape-revenge cycle can be read as one of the primary ways in which Hollywood has attempted to make sense of feminism and the changing shape of heterosexual femininity in the post-1970 period. Arguing that rape-revenge is better understood not as a genre, but as a narrative structure, the author analyzes the ways that various deployments of this structure rework the "mass cultural fictions of femininity" inscribed in the genres over which they have been mapped.

Contents:

Introduction: feminism and popular culture 3

1 Narratives of transformation: the rape-revenge cycle 22

2 From romance to revenge: Sleeping with the Enemy 58

Part II Pre-feminism

3 Rape-revenge and mass cultural fictions of femininity: from the silent era to 1970 77

Part III Feminism

4 Popular film/popular feminism: the critical reception of the rape-revenge film 103

5 Frontier femmes: rape-revenge and the western 125

Part IV Post-feminism

6 Rape-revenge in post-modern Hollywood 155

7 From feminism to family values: the maternal avenger 205

Conclusion: textual and theoretical negotiations 241.

Notes:

Filmography: pages [257]-264.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [265]-282) and index.

ISBN:

0719059046

0719059054

OCLC:

43365843