Although second wave feminism dissolved during the 80s, the female friendship film sub-genre proceeded into the 90s through the emerging chick flick genre which also had its own racial diversity issues. This dilemma can be seen reflected in the lack of representation of black women in female friendship films, as well as the unequal power dynamics portrayed in the few interracial female friendship films that were released during this period. Although this was a revolutionary time for women in society, due to the presence of the second wave feminist movement, many black feminists at the time believed that: "despite all the rhetoric about sisterhood and bonding, white women were not sincerely committed to bonding with black women and other groups of women to fight sexism" (hooks, 2014, p. In the 1970s the "female friendship film" became a prominent women's film sub-genre, with movies such as Julia (Zinnemann, 1977), Girlfriends (Weill, 1978), and 9 to 5 (Higgins ,1980) captivating audiences with stories about women's lives and female solidarity. By taking as my focus the tropes of corsetry and marital rape, both of which are historical artefacts that are presumed to be resolved within a postfeminist cultural context, I explore the ways that The Duchess establishes its feminist sensibility in relation to historical modes of oppression, while simultaneously obscuring the ways that women’s bodies continue to be policed and constrained in contemporary societies. I argue that this film is representative of a broader subgenre of postfeminist historical ‘chick flicks’, which, by privileging identifiably feminist characters, produces a version of feminism and feminist history that circulates in popular culture in particular ways. ***This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies on March 29, 2016, available online: *** This article seeks to investigate the deployment of feminist tropes – tropes that are used to indicate a character’s or text’s feminist credentials – in Saul Dibb’s 2008 film, The Duchess.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |