Bad girls : cultural politics and media representations of transgressive women

Owen, A. Susan 1953- (Author). Vande Berg, Leah R. (Added Author). Stein, Sarah R. (Added Author).

Summary: "Bad Girls examines representational practices of film and television stories beginning with post-Vietnam cinema and ending with postfeminisms and contemporary public disputes over women in the military. The book explores a diverse range of popular media texts, from the Alien saga to Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, from The Net and VR5 to Sportsnight and G.I. Jane. The research is framed as a study of intergenerational tensions in portrayals of women and public institutions - in careers, governmental service, and interactions with technology. Using iconic texts and their contexts as a primary focus, this book offers a rhetorical and cultural history of the tensions between remembering and forgetting in representations of the American feminist movement between 1979 and 2005. Looking forward, the book sets an agenda for discussion of gender issues over the next twenty-five years and articulates with authority the manner in which "transgression" itself has become a site of struggle."--BOOK JACKET.

Record details

ISBN: 9780820461502
Physical Description: xix, 261 p. : ill ; 23 cm.
print
Publisher: New York : P. Lang, c2007.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Foreword : the politics of representation / Bruce Gronbeck -- Introduction : why we write -- Ch. 1. Hijacking feminism in post-Vietnam cinema : tough women and tangled memories -- Ch. 2. Hacking women : the politics of disconnect -- Ch. 3. Leaving the mothership : postmodernity and postfeminism in Ally McBeal and Sex and the city -- Ch. 4. Designing women as consumers ... again : gender and the myth of the level playing field in the information age -- Ch. 5. Oh, to be given a sporting chance... : televisual representations of women in the world of sports news -- Ch. 6. It's a dick thing : ambivalent coding of American female soldiers in Gulf War narratives -- Epilogue : an open letter from the second wave mothership.