Description
Book SynopsisA study of the rape-revenge film. Jacinda Read suggests that the rape-revenge cycle can be read as one of the primary ways in which Hollywood has attempted to make sense of feminism and the changing shape of heterosexual femininity in the post-1970 period.
Table of ContentsPart 1 Introduction - feminism and popular culture - the structure of the book: narratives of transformation - the rape-revenge cycle; from romance to revenge - sleeping with the enemy. Part 2 "Pre-feminism": rape-revenge and mass cultural fictions of femineity - the silent era to 1970, rape, the silent era - 1915-1929, the sound era - 1930-1970, rapists and their victims, transformation, revenge. Part 3 "Feminism": popular film/popular feminism - the critical reception of the rape-revenge film - "The Accused", "Thelma and Louise"; frontier femmes -rape-revenge and the western variations on vengeance - frontier femmes and the "vengeance variation", hard women and soft men - post-modernism, post feminism and backlash. Part 4 "Post-feminism": rape-revenge in post-modern Hollywood - having it all - "The Last Seduction", of vamps and avengers - "Batman Returns"; from feminism to family values - the maternal avenger - the maternal avenger and the vigilante-mom made-for-TV film, melodrama and the maternal avenger. Conclusion: textual and theoretical negotiations. Filmography of primary and secondary texts.
