Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and Consumer Culture

"Scholars and women are continually perplexed in our attempts to articulate the overlaps between the `feminist' and the `feminine' and to understand the historical transformations of these terms, as well as the recent development of `postfeminism(s)' and new forms of femininities. In this spectacular and important new work of feminist film theory, Radner significantly advances the debate about feminism and its `posts' with her theory of neo-feminist culture. Using popular Hollywood films effectively to illustrate her argument. Radner traces the history of our culture's simultaneous incorporation and transformation of feminism in its political, personal and social dimensions. Her theoretically sophisticated analysis of the complicated influence feminism has had on our popular culture and thinking will be equally useful to cultural and film theorists, students and general readers. Neo-Feminist Cinema is culturally sophisticated film theory at its best." Andrea L. Press, University of Virginia, author of Women Watching Television, Speaking of Abortion, The New Media Environment and co-editor of The Communication Review

What lies behind current feminist discontent with contemporary cinema?

Through a combination of cultural and industry analysis, Hilary Radner's Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture shows how the needs of Conglomerate Hollywood have encouraged an emphasis on consumer culture within films made for women. By exploring a number of representative "girly films," including Pretty Woman, Legally Blonde, Maid in Manhattan, The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City: The Movie, Radner proposes that rather than being "post-feminist," as is usually assumed, such films are better described as "neo-feminist." Examining their narrative format, which revolves around the story of an ambitious unmarried woman who defines herself through consumer culture as much as through work or romance, Radner argues that these films exemplify neo-liberalist values rather than those of feminism.

As such, Neo-Feminist Cinema offers a new explanation as to why feminist-oriented scholars and audiences who are seeking more than "labels and love" from their film experience have viewed recent "girly films" as a betrayal of second-wave feminism, and why, on the other hand, such films have proven to be so successful at the box office.