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Feminist Film Aesthetics: A Contextual Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Laurie Shrage
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Abstract

This paper considers some problems with text-centered psychoanalytic and semiotic approaches to film that have dominated feminist film criticism, and develops an alternative contextual approach. I claim that a contextual approach should explore the interaction of film texts with viewers' culturally formed sensibilities and should attempt to render visible the plurality of meaning in art. I argue that the latter approach will allow us to see the virtues of some classical Hollywood films that the former approach has overlooked, and I demonstrate this thesis with an analysis of the film Christopher Strong.,

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 5 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Feminism and Aesthetics , Summer 1990 , pp. 137 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by Hypatia, Inc.

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