Spectatorship: Shifting Theories of Gender, Sexuality, and Media

Published by University of Texas Press 2017

Spectatorship

Shifting Theories of Gender, Sexuality, and Media

Edited by: Roxanne Samer and William Whittington

https://doi.org/10.7560/313497

Overview
Contents

About this book

Media platforms continually evolve, but the issues surrounding media representations of gender and sexuality have persisted across decades. Spectator: The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television Criticism has published groundbreaking articles on gender and sexuality, including some that have become canonical in film studies, since the journal’s founding in 1982. This anthology collects seventeen key articles that will enable readers to revisit foundational concerns about gender in media and discover models of analysis that can be applied to the changing media world today.

Spectatorship begins with articles that consider issues of spectatorship in film and television content and audience reception, noting how media studies has expanded as a field and demonstrating how theories of gender and sexuality have adapted to new media platforms. Subsequent articles show how new theories emerged from that initial scholarship, helping to develop the fields of fandom, transmedia, and queer theory. The most recent work in this volume is particularly timely, as the distinctions between media producers and media spectators grow more fluid and as the transformation of media structures and platforms prompts new understandings of gender, sexuality, and identification. Connecting contemporary approaches to media with critical conversations of the past, Spectatorship thus offers important points of historical and critical departure for discussion in both the classroom and the field.

Author / Editor information

Roxanne Samer is visiting faculty in visual and media arts at Grand Valley State University. In 2016–2017, she served as the postdoctoral scholar–teaching fellow in cinema and media studies at the University of Southern California, where she edited Spectator 37.2 (Fall 2017), a special issue dedicated to the study of transgender media.

William Whittington is the assistant chair of cinema and media studies at the University of Southern California. He has been the managing editor of Spectator since 2002.

Reviews

The essays [in Spectatorship] are interesting and are chock full of the vitality of new academic engagement that remains the strength of the USC journal.

— Film International

The ability of Spectatorship’s contributors to touch on such a vast range of alternate subjectivities in its examination of representations of gender and sexuality across a broad media landscape is, undoubtably, its key strength...the volume does a stellar job showcasing a diverse range of perspectives on various related issues.

— Popular Culture Studies Journal

An important collection that brings together very early work by some major scholars, including Gaylyn Studlar, Amy Lawrence, Sean Griffin, Mary Celeste Kearney, and Harry M. Benshoff. It will give film scholars and, especially, graduate students an illuminating vantage point on the history of a major topic, spectatorial theory, that defined film studies methodologically and as a discipline.

— Steven Cohan, Syracuse University, author of Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical

This is a very well-conceived and well-executed anthology. It will be particularly helpful for a course focused on gendered and sexed experiences of media culture and their intersections with other aspects of identity.

— Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, coauthor of Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction. Gender, Sexuality, and Media: Audience and Spectatorship Roxanne Samer and Whittington William Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I Revisiting Film Subjects and the Pleasures of Cinema
ONE Feminine Discourse in Blackmail Lawrence Amy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
TWO Venus in Furs: Masoch, Deleuze, and the Films of von Sternberg Studlar Gaylyn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
THREE “You Don’t Know What It Is to Look White and Be Black”: The Black Press Mediates Race in the Classic Hollywood Studio System, 1930–1940 Everett Anna Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	42
Joe Dallesandro—A “Him” to the Gaze: Flesh, Heat, and Trash Tropiano Stephen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
PART II Speaking Up and Sounding Out 75
FIVE Unheard Sexualities?: Queer Theory and the Soundtrack Scott D. Paulin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
SIX The Articulation of Body and Space in Speak Body Christie Milliken Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
SEVEN “I Kinda Prefer to Be a Human Being”: Roseanne Barr and Defining Working-Class Feminism and Authorship Melissa Williams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
EIGHT Riot Grrrl: It’s Not Just Music, It’s Not Just Punk Mary Celeste Kearney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
PART III Queering Media
NINE Soap Slash: Gay Men Rewrite the World of Daytime Television Drama Hollis Griffin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
TEN From Excess to Access: Televising the Subculture Eric Freedman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
ELEVEN Pronoun Trouble: The “Queerness” of Animation Sean Griffin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
PART IV Containment and Its Critiques
TWELVE Of Fleiss and Men: The Transgressions and Containment of a Hollywood Madam Kearney Mary Celeste Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
THIRTEEN Out on Stage: LGBT Politics of Entertainment Award Shows Raffi Sarkissian Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	216
FOURTEEN Lesbian Cop, Queer Killer: Leveraging Black Queer Women’s Sexuality on HBO’s The Wire Jennifer Declue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
PART V Fandom and Transmedia
FIFTEEN Resurrection of the Vampire and the Creation of Alternative Life: An Introduction to Dark Shadows Fan Culture Benshoff Harry M. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
SIXTEEN The Rumors Are True!: Gossip Girl and the Cooptation of the Cult Fan Elena Bonomo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	260
SEVENTEEN The Trouble with Transmediation: Fandom’s Negotiation of Transmedia Storytelling Systems Suzanne Scott Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 283

eBook

Published: October 25, 2017
ISBN: 9781477313770