A diverse collection of essays analyzing the representation of women in the media from various feminist perspectives.
The question of the representation of women in the media has been an important one for feminists over the past three decades. This diverse collection of essays represents three major trends in feminist media studies: the liberal feminist perspective, which focuses on the media's tendency to misrepresent and oppress women; the postmodern perspective, which illustrates the ways in which women can participate in, enjoy, and sometimes subvert the dominant media; and the more recent attempts to identify and challenge the subtle backlash that threatens to obliterate feminist gains. The contributors cover a wide range of subjects, from advertisements for women's stockings to the life and death of Princess Diana.
Introduction: Demystufying the Media by Ann C. Hall
Manipulating Females: Negative Images of Women in the Media
Horror is What a Girl Would Feel: Narrative Erotics in Depression-Era Pulp Fiction by Jean Gregorek
Stalking Women's Stockings: Opaque Wisdom or Sheer Nonsense? by Carol E. Dietrich
Getting Serious: Women at the Anchor Desk by Julia Keller
Causing a Stir: Women's Ways of Subversion
Tracking Ida: The Bold, the Brash, and the Secondary in Hollywood Film by Judith Roof
The Ideology of Heroism in "My Beautiful Laundrette": The Woman's Alternative by Susan E. Lorsch
Resurrecting the "Ghost": Innocence and Recuperation in American Popular Film by Grace A. Epstein
Meridel Le Sueur, Reportage and the Cultural Situatedness of Her Rhetoric by James M. Boehnlein
Maternity and the Masses: Drama, the Media, and Jane Martin's "Keely and Du" by Ann C. Hall
The Backlash
Misogyny and Misanthropy: Anita Hill and David Mamet by Katherine H. Burkman
Oprah Winfrey's "Scared Silent" and the Spectatorship of Incest by Rosaria Champagne
Women Who Have Dared But Deterred Other Women: Hannah More and Beverly LaHaye by Veronica Webb Leahy
Elizabeth Tudor and Diana Spencer: Claiming an Image; Reclaiming a Life by Anne Marie Drew
Index
Reviews
[Hall] offers an eclectic array of studies--including representations of women in both visual and print fields--and the strength of her book lies in the creativity and originality of some of the essays.—Choice
This volume succeeds in meeting the goal of any work on intepreting feminism and the media - by giving the reader fresh eyes with which to examine representations of women.—Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
