Overview

The theme of female transformation informs the Hollywood representation of femininity from the studio era to the present. Whether it occurs physically, emotionally, or on some other level, transformation allows female protagonists to negotiate their own complex desires and to resist the compulsory marriage plot. A sweeping study of Hollywood from Now, Voyager, The Heiress, and Flamingo Road to Carrie, the Alien films, The Brave One, and the slasher horror genre, this book boldly unsettles commonplace understandings of genre film, female sexuality, and Freudian theory as it makes a strong new case for the queer relevance of female representation.

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9780230112513

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Reviews

David Greven's 2011 study is an intriguing exploration into the woman's film ... The project sets a high bar in utilizing both feminist and gay readings of the woman's film, and insightfully synthesizes these theories ... The overall project is clearly written and thoroughly researched ... The study is an engaging read. - American Studies Today David Greven sets out to give a reading of femininity and its representation in film which is founded, like Freud's Oedipus theory, in classical mythology, and also takes into account queer perspectives ... [The] book is well structured and clear, and Greven makes a strong case for the relationship between the modern horror film and earlier women's films in terms of the representations of femininity and sexuality in the two. His ideas are clearly explored and well backed up, and the text makes for an interesting and engaging read. - Journal of American Studies

Greven's imaginative new approach to the representation of female sexuality in Hollywood films is well worth reading. Whether you agree with him or not, his film criticism is an important new voice in American film theory. --Ann Kibbey, Executive Editor, Genders In a work whose final word is literally 'disturbing, ' Greven's Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema offers a richly provocative challenge to received ways of thinking about the woman's film and its place in the history of American popular film. Using a dynamic mix of deep textual analysis, psychoanalysis, and queer theory, Greven not only develops a revisionist reading of the woman's film, its thematic concerns, and audience appeal, but advances a compelling argument for this frequently marginalized genre as one of the core templates of American filmmaking. The result is a powerfully original work that is sure to prove an enlivening contribution to debates in film, gender, and cultural studies. --Brett

Author Information

David Greven is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, USA. His books include Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese and Friedkin; The Fragility of Manhood: Hawthorne, Freud, and the Politics of Gender; and Men Beyond Desire: Manhood, Sex, and Violation in American Literature. Greven's essays on film have been published in journals such as the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Cinema Journal, Genders, Jump Cut, CineAction, and Cineaste and he is on the editorial boards of Cinema Journal, Genders, and Poe Studies.

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