Failing Women: Hollywood and Its Chick Flick Audience
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
5:30 p. m.
Ballantine Hall 244
The cinematic category of the "chick flick" feels more and more formulaic and impoverished even while its commercial clout (exemplified in Summer, 2008 by hits like Sex and the City, Mamma Mia and Baby Mama) remains strong. Contemporary Hollywood clearly manifests a deep reluctance to treat adult female audience interests in a serious way and that reluctance is validated by a postfeminist cultural environment that often positions women's interests as banal and cheap. With these issues in mind, this talk explores two questions: what do "chick flicks" do and what should we do with them?
Diane Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture in the School of English, Drama and Film Studies at University College Dublin, Ireland. She is a prominent scholar whose research areas encompass the studies of contemporary feminism, film and television, U.S. and British social histories, critical ethnic studies, and stardom. Among her extensive publications are books on early cinema ( A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, Duke 2002); female stardom (Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom, Routledge 2001); whiteness and ethnicity (The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture, Duke 2006); and contemporary feminism (Interrogating Postfeminism, Duke 2007; and What a Girl Wants?: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism, 2008).
Diane Negra will be a Branigin Lecturer from April 19 to 22, 2009.
For further information, please contact the Institute (ihedin@indiana.edu) at 812-855-3658 or Brenda Weber in Gender Studies (breweber@indiana.edu).
Professor Negra’s visit is also sponsored by Gender Studies, Communication and Culture,
Cultural Studies, and American Studies
No comments:
Post a Comment