Title: Bad girls : cultural politics and media representations of transgressive women /
Authors: Owen, A. Susan, 1953-; Vande Berg, Leah R.; Stein, Sarah R.
Publisher: P. Lang,
Year: 2007
Subjects: Women United States Social conditions; Women in popular culture United States.; Women in motion pictures.; Women on television.; Feminism United States; Anti-feminism.; Feminist criticism.
Abstract: "Bad Girls examines representational practices of film and television stories beginning with post-Vietnam cinema and ending with postfeminisms and contemporary public disputes over women in the military. The book explores a diverse range of popular media texts, from the Alien saga to Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, from The Net and VR5 to Sportsnight and G.I. Jane. The research is framed as a study of intergenerational tensions in portrayals of women and public institutions - in careers, governmental service, and interactions with technology. Using iconic texts and their contexts as a primary focus, this book offers a rhetorical and cultural history of the tensions between remembering and forgetting in representations of the American feminist movement between 1979 and 2005. Looking forward, the book sets an agenda for discussion of gender issues over the next twenty-five years and articulates with authority the manner in which "transgression" itself has become a site of struggle."--Jacket.
Contents: Foreword: The politics of representation / Bruce Gronbeck -- Introduction: Why we write -- Hijacking feminism in post-Vietnam cinema : tough women and tangled memory -- Hacking women : the politics of disconnect -- Leaving the mothership : postmodernity and postfeminism in Ally Mcbeal and Sex and the city -- Designing women as consumers-- again : and the myth of the level playing field in the information age -- Oh, to be given a sporting chance... : televisual representations of women in the woirld of aports news -- It's a dick thing : ambivalent coding of American female soldiers in Gulf War narratives -- Epilogue: Open letter from the second wave mothership.