Description
Book SynopsisThis volume reassesses the film and television work of award-winning independent filmmaker Todd Haynes in light of his longstanding feminist commitments and his exceptional position as a director of women’s films.
Trade Review“I love
Reframing Todd Haynes. It was an extraordinary experience to fall down the rabbit hole with this book and revisit the films I thought I knew so well! Each chapter brought something fresh and provocative to Todd’s work. I highly recommend it.” -- Christine Vachon
“Todd Haynes is one of the most brilliant and innovative filmmakers working today, stretching the limits of genre, film form, and understandings of sexuality. Theresa L. Geller and Julia Leyda have provided us with a collection of incisive and probing essays by exceptional and influential scholars. The chapters trace the intersection of Haynes’s cinematic ‘thinking’ with constantly evolving feminist discourses and reveal the complex interweaving of politics, aesthetic form, affect, and critique that subtends his work.” -- Mary Ann Doane, author of * Bigger Than Life: The Close-Up and Scale in the Cinema *
“
Reframing Todd Haynes sets out to assess the influence of feminism, primarily, on Haynes’s oeuvre. Wide-ranging in its themes, methods, and insights, Geller and Leyda’s collection dispels all doubts that a single-director focus might restrict scholarly ambition. . . . The contributors’ patient interpretations make clear that the most meticulous methods for deriving meaning from art often are the most pleasurable to encounter.” -- Jean-Thomas Tremblay * Los Angeles Review of Books *
“The essays collected here open a variety of new avenues through which to understand Haynes as a feminist filmmaker as much as he is a queer one. . . .
Reframing Todd Haynes shows the benefits of re-engaging with what lies in plain sight. The result is a consistently insightful volume that . . . should leave an indelible mark on future studies of Haynes’s work.” -- Edward Jackson * US Studies Online *
"An impressive array of scholars in women’s, gender, cinema, and media studies explore Haynes’s influences, interlocutors, and intersections. . . . This is a solid addition to the literature. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- J. I. Deutsch * Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. Feminism's Indelible Mark / Theresa L. Geller 1
Part I. Influences and Interlocutors
1. Lesbian Reverie:
Carol in History and Fantasy / Patricia White 31
2. Playing with Dolls: Girls, Fans, and the Queer Feminism of
Velvet Goldmine / Julia Leyda 51
3. Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore: Collaboration and the Uncontainable Body / Rebecca M. Gordon 72
4. Oh, the Irony: Tracing Chrsitine Vachon's Filmic Signature / David E. Maynard and Theresa L. Geller 91
5. “The Hardest, the Most Difficult Film”:
Safe as Feminist Film Praxis / Theresa L. Geller 111
Part II. Intersections and Interventions
6. “Toxins in the Atmosphere”: Reanimating the Feminist
Poison / Jess Issacharoff 137
7. “All the Cake in the World”: Five Provocations on
Mildred Pierce / Patrick Flanery 158
8. The Politics of Disappointment: Todd Haynes Rewrites Douglas Sirk / Sharon Willis 173
9. All That Whiteness Allows: Femininity, Race, and Empire in
Safe,
Carol, and
Wonderstruck / Danielle Bouchard and Jigna Desai 200
Part III. Intermediality and Intertextuality
10. Written on the Screen: Mediation and Immersion in
Far from Heaven / Lynne Joyrich 221
11. It's Not TV, It's
Mildred Pierce / Bridget Kies 243
12. The Incredible Shrinking Star: Todd Haynes and the Case History of Karen Carpenter / Mary R. Desjardins 256
13. Having a Ball with Dottie: Queering Female Stardom from MGM to Todd Haynes / Noah A. Tsika 281
14. Bringing It All Back Home, or Feminist Suppositions on a Film concerning Dylan / Nick Davis 299
Filmography 317
References 321
Contributors 341
Index 345
