Monstrous Possibilities

ISBN-13: 9783031128462 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023

Amanda Howell;Lucy Baker

Opis

This book focuses on how the abject spectacle of the ‘monstrous feminine’ has been reimagined by recent and contemporary screen horrors focused on the desires and subjectivities of female monsters who, as anti-heroic protagonists of revisionist and reflexive texts, exemplify gendered possibility in altered cultures of 21st century screen production and reception. As Barbara Creed notes in a recent interview, the patriarchal stereotype of horror that she named ‘the monstrous-feminine’ has, decades later, ‘embarked on a life of her own’. Focused on this altered and renewed form of female monstrosity, this study engages with an international array of recent and contemporary screen entertainments, from arthouse and indie horror films by emergent female auteurs, to the franchised products of multimedia conglomerates, to 'quality' television horror, to the social media-based creations of horror fans working as ‘pro-sumers’. In this way, the monograph in its organisation and scope maps the converged and rapidly changing environment of 21st century screen cultures in order to situate the monstrous female anti-hero as one of its distinctive products.

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Introduction: The Monstrous-Feminine Protagonist in Twenty-First-Century Screen Cultures
Part I: Othered Mothers
Chapter 2: Her Monster, Her Self: Amelia Sorts a Few Things Out in The Babadook
Chapter 3: Hungry, Unruly and Bold: A Sitcom Mom’s Zombie Makeover in Santa Clarita Diet
Part II: Reimagining the Girl
Chapter 4: ‘I am That Very Witch’: Claiming Monstrosity, Claiming Desire in The Witch
Chapter 5: ‘Not Yours Any More’: The Monstrous-Feminine Bildungsroman of The Girl with All the Gifts
Chapter 6: Resistant Girl Monstrosity and Empowerment for Tweens: Monster High and Wolfblood
Part III: From Fragments of the Old
Chapter 7: A Badass in Bad City: The Interstitial Artist and Monstrous Self-fashioning in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Chapter 8: Rage Is a Monster: Lily Frankenstein Takes Back the Night in Penny Dreadful
Part IV: Cult Fandoms and Fan Productions
Chapter 9: ‘We are the Weirdos, Mister’: Monstrous Performativity, Resistant Femininity and Cult Fandoms of The Craft, Ginger Snaps and Jennifer’s Body
Chapter 10: From Monstrous Girlhood to Empowered Adulthood: Melissa Hunter’s Adult Wednesday Addams Web Series

O autorze

Amanda Howell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia, where she teaches courses in screen history and aesthetics. Her research focuses on gender, genre, screen aesthetics and cultures in a sociohistorical frame, with a recurrent focus on horror as well as other ‘body genres’ such as action and the musical. Her publications on the Gothic and horror have appeared in journals such as Continuum, Gothic Studies and Genre and she is the author of A Different Tune: Popular Film Music and Masculinity in Action (2015). 

 

Lucy Baker teaches in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia, across fields of sociology, cultural and media studies. Her research focuses primarily on adaptations, gender and fans. Her work has been published in journals including Continuum, Journal of Girlhood Studies and The Journal of Fandom Studies. Her monograph Media and Gender Adaptation: Regendering, Critical Creation & the Fans (forthcoming, 2023) analyses adaptations and fanfic that change the gender of an original character and looks at how fans respond to those works.

Blurb

This book focuses on how the abject spectacle of the ‘monstrous feminine’ has been reimagined by recent and contemporary screen horrors focused on the desires and subjectivities of female monsters who, as anti-heroic protagonists of revisionist and reflexive texts, exemplify gendered possibility in altered cultures of 21st century screen production and reception. As Barbara Creed notes in a recent interview, the patriarchal stereotype of horror that she named ‘the monstrous-feminine’ has, decades later, ‘embarked on a life of her own’. Focused on this altered and renewed form of female monstrosity, this study engages with an international array of recent and contemporary screen entertainments, from arthouse and indie horror films by emergent female auteurs, to the franchised products of multimedia conglomerates, to 'quality' television horror, to the social media-based creations of horror fans working as ‘pro-sumers’. In this way, the monograph in its organisation and scope maps the converged and rapidly changing environment of 21st century screen cultures in order to situate the monstrous female anti-hero as one of its distinctive products.

Amanda Howell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia, where she teaches courses in screen history and aesthetics. Her research focuses on gender, genre, screen aesthetics and cultures in a sociohistorical frame, with a recurrent focus on horror as well as other ‘body genres’ such as action and the musical. Her publications on the Gothic and horror have appeared in journals such as Continuum, Gothic Studies and Genre and she is the author of A Different Tune: Popular Film Music and Masculinity in Action (2015).

Lucy Baker teaches in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia, across fields of sociology, cultural and media studies. Her research focuses primarily on adaptations, gender and fans. Her work has been published in journals including Continuum, Journal of Girlhood Studies and The Journal of Fandom Studies. Her monograph Media and Gender Adaptation: Regendering, Critical Creation & the Fans (forthcoming, 2023) analyses adaptations and fanfic that change the gender of an original character and looks at how fans respond to those works.