Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema
Edition: first
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: September 2008
Place of publication: Newcastle (UK)
Number of pages: 319
ISBN-13: 9781847186645
Subjects: film theory; gender studies
Genres: edited anthology
First sentence: from preface: Why is film theory so organically connected with psychoanalysis? Can this be attributed to Jacques Lacan’s lasting impact on late twentieth century culture, or to intelligent adaptations of his theories of the eye, the gaze and the screen by notable theoreticians like Laura Mulvey, Joan Copjec and Slavoj Žižek?

from introduction: Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema  examines films made in the United States, Europe and Russia. Contributors to this volume engage with and readdress classic tenets of  feminist film theory. Several chapters explore its interaction with other critical perspectives such as psychoanalytic, queer, disability, postfeminist, quantum, trauma and chaos theories.
Description: Marcelline Block’s Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema breaks new ground in exploring feminist film theory. It is a wide-ranging collection (re)visiting important theoretical questions as well as offering close analyses of films produced in the United States, France, England, Belgium, and Russia. This anthology investigates exciting areas of research for critical inquiry into film and gender studies as well as feminist, queer, and postfeminist theories, and treats film texts from Marguerite Duras to 21st century horror films; from Agnès Varda’s 2007 installation at the Panthéon to the post-Soviet Russian filmmakers Aleksei Balabanov and Valerii Todorovskii; from Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof to Sofia Coppola’s postfeminist trilogy; from Chantal Akerman’s “transhistorical, transgressive and transgendered gaze” to the “quantum gaze” in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park; from Hitchcock’s “good-looking blondes” to the career-woman-in-peril thriller, among others. According to the semiotician Marshall Blonsky of the New School University in New York, “given the breadth of the editor’s choices, this volume makes a splendid contribution to feminist and cinematic fields, as well as cultural and media studies, postmodernism, and postfeminism. It lends readers ‘new eyes’ to view canonical and other film texts.” David Sterritt, chairman of the National Society of Film Critics, states that this anthology “should be required reading for students and scholars, among other readers interested in the interaction of cinema with contemporary culture.” Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship is prefaced by Jean-Michel Rabaté’s brilliant essay, “Mulvey was the First…”
Table of contents: label: preface
title: Jean-Michel Rabate, “Mulvey was the First…”
pagenum: x; label: Acknowledgments
title: Marcelline Block
pagenum: xv; label: Introduction
title: Marcelline Block
pagenum: xvi; label: Section I
title: De-Gendering the Gaze; label: Chapter 1
title: Lisa DeTora, ‘Life Finds a Way’: Monstrous Maternities and the Quantum Gaze
pagenum: 2; label: Chapter 2
title: Rachel Ritterbusch, Shifting Gender(ed) Desire in Anne Fontaine’s Nathalie…
pagenum: 27; label: Chapter 3
title: M. Hunter Vaughan, Eyes Wide Shut: Kino-Eye Wide Open
pagenum: 44; label: Chapter 4
title: Ian Scott Todd, Hitchcock’s ‘Good-Looking Blondes’: First Glimpses and Second
pagenum: 52; label: Chapter 5
title: Noëlle Rouxel-Cubberly, Family Resemblances: (En)Gendering Claire Denis, Nicole Garcia and Agnès Jaoui’s Film Titles
pagenum: 67; label: Section II
title: Theorizing Terror; label: Chapter 6
title: Monica Soare, Return of the Female Gothic: The Career-Woman-in-Peril Thriller
pagenum: 88; label: Chapter 7
title: Chuck Robinson, Mille Genres: Woman and women, Horror Film and Horror Films
pagenum: 120; label: Section III
title: Postfeminist Interventions; label: Chapter 8
title: Amy Woodworth, A Feminist Theorization of Sofia Coppola’s Postfeminist Trilogy
pagenum: 138; label: Chapter 9
title: Jeremi Szaniawski, Laisse tomber les filles: (Post)Feminism in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof
pagenum: 168; label: Section IV
title: Re-Inscribing the Female Subject in History; label: Chapter 10
title: Georgiana M. M. Colvile, Duras Ravaged, Ravished…Ravishing (translated by Gwendolyn Wells)
pagenum: 194; label: Chapter 11
title: Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Varda: The Gleaner and the Just
pagenum: 214; label: Chapter 12
title: Elizabeth Gruber, ‘No Woman Would Die Like That’: Stage Beauty as Corrective-Counterpoint to Othello
pagenum: 226; label: Chapter 13
title: Izabela Kalinowska, Dis-Abling the Sadistic Gaze and Deaf Prostitutes in Aleksei Balabanov’s Of Freaks and Men and Valerii Todorovskii’s Land of the Deaf
pagenum: 240; label: Chapter 14
title: Sharon Lubkemann Allen, Chantal Akerman’s Cinematic Transgressions: Transhistorical and Transcultural Transpositions, Translingualism,  and the Transgendering of the Cinematic Gaze
pagenum: 255