Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers

by Katarzyna Paszkiewicz

Overview

Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers examines the significance of women's contribution to genre cinema by highlighting the work of US filmmakers within and outside Hollywood - Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, Nancy Meyers and Kelly Reichardt, among others. Exploring genres as diverse as horror, the war movie, the Western, the costume biopic and the romantic comedy, Katarzyna Paszkiewicz interrogates questions of 'genre' authorship; the blurring of the borders between commercial and independent cinema and gendered discourses of (de)authorisation that operate within each sphere; 'male' - 'female' genre divisions; and the issue of authorial subversion in film and popular culture in a wider sense.

With its focus on close analysis of the films themselves and the cultural and ideological meanings involved in the reception of genre texts authored by women, this book expands critical debates around women's cinema and offers new perspectives on how contemporary filmmakers explore the aesthetic and imaginative power of genre.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474425261
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	06/19/2018
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Katarzyna Paszkiewicz lectures in the English Studies Department at the University of Barcelona.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Impossible Liaisons? Genre and Feminist Film Criticism
1 Subversive Auteur, Subversive Genre
2 Repeat in order to Remake. Diablo Cody and Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body
3 Hollywood Transvestite. Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker
4 Genre in the Margins. Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff
5 Genre on the Surface. Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette
6 What a Woman Wants? Nancy Meyers's The Intern
Afterword: Desperately Seeking Wonder Women
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

'Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers is a challenging,complex and critically intelligent work. It offers new perspectives on the cinema¹s fraught relationship with women directors and their significant contribution to popular genre cinema from the war and horror film to the western and biopic. An important addition to feminist film theory, Paszkiewicz's book is essential reading for anyone interested in the most recent debates around gender, genre and the achievement of women filmmakers.'

Professor Barbara Creed

'Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers is a challenging,complex and critically intelligent work. It offers new perspectives on the cinema¹s fraught relationship with women directors and their significant contribution to popular genre cinema from the war and horror film to the western and biopic. An important addition to feminist film theory, Paszkiewicz's book is essential reading for anyone interested in the most recent debates around gender, genre and the achievement of women filmmakers.'

Editorial Reviews

"Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers is a challenging, complex and critically intelligent work. It offers new perspectives on the cinema's fraught relationship with women directors and their significant contribution to popular genre cinema from the war and horror film to the western and biopic. An important addition to feminist film theory, Paszkiewicz's book is essential reading for anyone interested in the most recent debates around gender, genre and the achievement of women filmmakers." — Professor Barbara Creed, The University of Melbourne, author of The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis

"Paszkiewicz's knowledge, both of genres and of the scholarly literature on the subject, is encyclopedic, and one would say that she has mastered her own particular genre-the academic theoretical essay." — W. A. Vincent, Michigan State University, CHOICE

From the Publisher

Katarzyna Paszkiewicz ’s book on Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers is a meticulously researched and detailed analysis of women’s cinema, a study field that so far has hardly received booklength attention by film and cultural critics. The writer compellingly explores the strategies of women auteurs who create genre films that deviate from what are stereotypically defined as “women’s films”. Paszkiewicz contextualizes these films in a wide array of aesthetic, political, theoretical and commercial issues and displays how a dialogical and interactive relationship is also possible between feminist film scholars and women filmmakers.

Esse Book Awards 2020 - Honorable Mention

Interested in the relationship been genre and gender, Paszkiewicz proposes that genre is both constricting and liberating for female filmmakers. She examines recent films directed by female auteurs in genres considered "male":　Jennifer’s Body (2009), a horror film directed by Karyn Kusama; The Hurt Locker (2008), a war film by Kathryn Bigelow; Meek’s Cutoff (2010), a western by Kelly Reichardt; Marie Antoinette (2006), a costume drama by Sofia Coppola; and The Intern (2015), a romantic comedy by Nancy Meyers. Each of these women demonstrates not only an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre in which she is working but also a willingness to play with and on the conventions of the genre, imbuing it with a feminine perspective. Paszkiewicz’s own knowledge, both of genres and of the scholarly literature on the subject, is equally encyclopedic, and one would say that she has mastered her own particular genre—the academic theoretical essay.'

CHOICE - W. A. Vincent

Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers is a challenging,complex and critically intelligent work. It offers new perspectives on the cinema¹s fraught relationship with women directors and their significant contribution to popular genre cinema from the war and horror film to the western and biopic. An important addition to feminist film theory, Paszkiewicz's book is essential reading for anyone interested in the most recent debates around gender, genre and the achievement of women filmmakers.'

Professor Barbara Creed