Feminist Film Theory: A Reader

For a number of years, cinema has been a vital terrain on which feminist debates about culture, representation and identity have been fought. This anthology seeks to chart the history of those debates, bringing together the key statements in feminist film theory in Britain and the US since 1970. The book maps the impact of major theoretical developments on this field - from structuralism and psychoanalysis in the 1970s to post-colonial theory, queer theory and postmodernism in the 1990s - in terms of both theoretical shifts and changes in methodologies. Organized into six sections, the readings deal with a wide range of topics: oppressive images; woman as fetished object of desire; female spectatorship; film audiences; issues of fantasy and desire in popular film; and the cinematic pleasures of black women and lesbian women.