Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema

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.

David Greven is an Associate Professor of English at Connecticut College. His books include Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush (2009), Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek (2009), and Men Beyond Desire: Manhood, Sex, and Violation in American Literature (Palgrave, 2005). His work has appeared in journals such as New Literary History, Cinema Journal, American Quarterly, Genders, Refractory, Jump Cut, Modern Psychoanalysis, Studies in American Fiction, The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, Poe Studies: Dark Romanticism, The European Journal of American Culture, and Postmodern Culture.