1st Edition
Women Do Genre in Film and Television
Winner of first Prize in the BAFTSS Best Edited Collection competition, this volume examines how different generations of women work within the genericity of audio-visual storytelling not necessarily to ‘undo’ or ‘subvert’ popular formats, but also to draw on their generative force. Recent examples of filmmakers and creative practitioners within and outside Hollywood as well as women working in non-directing authorial roles remind us that women are in various ways authoring commercially and culturally impactful texts across a range of genres. Put simply, this volume asks: what do women who are creatively engaged with audio-visual industries do with genre and what does genre do with them? The contributors to the collection respond to this question from diverse perspectives and with different answers, spanning issues of direction, screenwriting, performance and audience address/reception.
Preface (Christine Gledhill)
Introduction: Women’s Authorship and Genre in Contemporary Film and Television (Mary Harrod and Katarzyna Paszkiewicz)
Section 1: Women’s Authorship and Hollywood Genres
1. Performance and Gender Politics in Mary Harron’s Female Celebrity Anti-Biopics (Linda Badley)
2. When the Woman Directs (a Horror Film) (Katarzyna Paszkiewicz)
3. The Contemptible Realm of the Romcom Queen: Nancy Meyers, Cultural Value and Romantic Comedy (Deborah Jermyn)
4. Gendering the Post-9/11 Movie: Love, Loss and Regeneration in Nora Ephron’s Julie and Julia (Roberta Garrett)
Section 2: Genre Outside Hollywood
5. Comedy as a Feminist Strategy: Spanish Women Filmmakers Reclaim Laughter (Barbara Zecchi)
6. ‘Trois Femmes Puissantes’: Playing with Gender and Genres on French TV (Brigitte Rollet)
7. Breaking the Boundaries of Bollywood: Women in a ‘Man’s Industry’ (Sanghita Sen)
8. Gender Politics in Kelly Reichardt’s Feminist Western Meek’s Cutoff (Dawn Hall)
Section 3: Beyond the Director
9. 1990s Dark Comedy and the Female Screenwriter (Nicole Richter)
10. Melissa McCarthy: Gender, Class and Body Politics in Contemporary US Comedy (Frances Smith)
11. The Myth of Lena Dunham (Mary Harrod)
12. The Feminist Game of Thrones: Outlander and Gendered Discourses of TV Genre (Jorie Lagerwey)
13. A Hollywood of Our Own: Media Fandom as Female Artworld (Francesca Coppa)
Biography
This volume examines how different generations of women work within the genericity of audio-visual storytelling not necessarily to ‘undo’ or ‘subvert’ popular formats, but also to draw on their generative force. Recent examples of filmmakers and creative practitioners within and outside Hollywood as well as women working in non-directing authorial roles remind us that women are in various ways authoring commercially and culturally impactful texts across a range of genres. Put simply, this volume asks: what do women who are creatively engaged with audio-visual industries do with genre and what does genre do with them? The contributors to the collection respond to this question from diverse perspectives and with different answers, spanning issues of direction, screenwriting, performance and audience address/reception.
Long-listed for the Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Awards for 2018
"The edited volume Women Do Genre in Film and Television joins an ever-growing list of feminist reappraisals of popular culture that have emerged in the last decade, coinciding with a resurgent feminism that has come to permeate popular as well as counter-cultural media. This collection of essays will be especially welcomed by lecturers seeking to broaden their course reading list with material addressing women on screen beyond those appearing in American cinema and media. Notably the volume includes chapters by Barbara Zecchi on Spanish women filmmakers, Brigitte Rollet on women in French television, and Sanghita Sen on women in Bollywood. Also of interest are chapters on female comics such as Melissa McCarthy, from Frances Smith, and Lena Dunham, from Mary Harrod. In addition, the collection presents fresh perspectives on the role of the woman director and her engagement with traditionally male genres––with Linda Badley discussing director Mary Harron’s idiosyncratic biopics, E. Dawn Hall, director Kelly Reichardt’s revisionist Western Meek’s Cutoff (2010), and Katarzyna Paszkiewicz, the 2013 remake of the classic horror film Carrie, directed by Kimberly Peirce. Other chapters cover topics such as the "Outlander" novel/television franchise (Jorie Lagerwey), female media fandom (Frances Coppa), 1990s "Dark Comedy" (Nicole Richter), Nancy Meyers’ 2000 What Women Want (Deborah Jermyn) and Nora Ephron’s 2009 Julie and Julia (Roberta Garrett). As such, the book offers a rich and varied resource for scholars working in the area of gender and the media." - Hilary Radner, University of Otago
"This book resoundingly answers today’s screaming need for rigorous feminist scholarship in film and television studies. The co-editors and contributors of Wom
