Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship

ISBN-13: 9780415091794 / Angielski / Miękka / 1993 / 296 str.

Jackie Stacey

Opis

In a historical investigation of the pleasures of cinema, Star Gazing puts female spectators back into theories of spectatorship. Combining film theory with a rich body of ethnographic research, Jackie Stacey investigates how female spectators understood Hollywood stars in the 1940's and 1950's. Her study challenges the universalism of psychoanalytic theories of female spectatorship which have dominated the feminist agenda within film studies for over two decades.
Drawing on letters and questionnaires from over three hundred keen cinema-goers, Stacey investigates the significance of certain Hollywood stars in women's memories of wartime and postwar Britain. Three key processes of spectatorship - escapism, identification and consumption - are explored in detail in terms of their multiple and changing meanings for female spectators at this time. Star Gazing demonstrates the importance of cultural and national location for the meanings of female spectatorship, giving a new direction to questions of popular culture and female desire.

Recenzje

`This is one of the most original and ground-breaking contributions to feminist film theory. Once I started the manuscript I couldn't put it down ... superbly engaging.' - Judith Mayne, Ohio State University

Spis treści

List of illustrations, Acknowledgements, 1 HOW DO I LOOK?, 2 FROM THE MALE GAZE TO THE FEMALE SPECTATOR, 3 THE LOST AUDIENCE: RESEARCHING CINEMA HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH, 4 HOLLYWOOD CINEMA - THE GREAT ESCAPE, 5 FEMININE FASCINATIONS: A QUESTION OF IDENTIFICATION?, 6 WITH STARS IN THEIR EYES: FEMALE SPECTATORS AND THE PARADOXES OF CONSUMPTION, 7 RELOCATING FEMALE SPECTATORSHIP, Appendix 1 Letter published in Woman's Realm and Woman's Weekly, Appendix 2 Questionnaire, Appendix 3 Readers' profiles by age and class: Woman's Realm and Woman's Weekly, Notes, Bibliography, Index

O autorze

Jackie Stacey