Motherhood misconceived : representing the maternal in U.S. films / edited by Heather Addison, Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly, Elaine Roth.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Addison, Heather.

Goodwin-Kelly, Mary Kate, 1971-

Roth, Elaine, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motherhood--United States.

Motherhood.

Motherhood in motion pictures.

Sex role in motion pictures.

United States.

Physical Description:

xi, 265 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2009]

Summary:

As celebrities sporting "baby bumps," politicians, Olympic athletes, and talk show guests, mothers are ubiquitous throughout U.S. media and popular culture. Like lightning rods, these high-profile mothers attract accolades and judgments associated with ideals of female sexuality, gender roles, and constructions of contemporary families. Motherhood Misconceived explores this widespread cultural fascination with motherhood through analyses of mothers in contemporary U.S. film, including both mainstream and independent cinematic representations. The contributors draw on a variety of critical approaches to consider the spectacle of pregnancy; mother-daughter relationships; mothers as predators, narcissists, and absent victims; and the ways in which cultural anxieties are displaced and projected onto marginalized mothers in films such as Fargo; Transamerica; Gas, Food, Lodging; Ordinary People; and Scream. Ideal for women's studies or film studies classes, Motherhood Misconceived will help students contextualize current debates about motherhood as they play out in popular and independent film.

Contents:

I The Celluloid Stork: Picturing Pregnancy

1 Pregnant Body and/as Smoking Gun: Reviewing the Evidence of Fargo / Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly 15

2 Mother's Day: Taking the Mother Out of Motherhood in The Thrill of It All / Tamar Jeffers McDonald 29

3 Not Exactly According to the Rules: Pregnancy and Motherhood in Sugar & Spice / Madonne M. Miner 43

II Constructions of Motherhood: Mothers, Daughters, and Sex

4 Modernizing Mother: The Maternal Figure in Early Hollywood / Heather Addison 63

5 "Whose Baby Are You?": Mother/Daughter Discourse in the Star Images of Mary Pickford and Joan Crawford / Gaylyn Studlar 81

6 "You Just Hate Men!": Maternal Sexuality and the Nuclear Family in Gas, Food, Lodging / Elaine Roth 111

III Horrific Mothers and the Mothers of Horror

7 Hollywood's "Moms" and Postwar America / Mike Chopra-Gant 125

8 Alfred Hitchcock and the Phobic Maternal Body / Mun-Hou Lo 139

9 Paranoia, Cold Surveillance, and the Maternal Gaze: Reconsidering the "Absent Mother" in Ordinary People / Mark Harper 157

10 Scream, Popular Culture, and Feminism's Third Wave: "I'm Not My Mother" / Kathken Rowe Kadyn l77

IV Maternal Anxieties of Class, Race, and Gender

11 Great Ladies and Guttersnipes: Class and the Representation of Southern Mothers in Hollywood Films / Aimee Berger 199

12 "Don't Say Mammy": Camille Billops's Meditations on Black Motherhood / Janet K. Cutler 213

13 From Dad to Mom: Transgendered Motherhood in Transamerica / Mary M. Dalton 235.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781438428116

1438428111

9781438428123

143842812X

OCLC:

298324272