FS40240 Chick Flicks: Women and Hollywood Storytelling

Academic Year 2023/2024

Frequently positioned as the ultimate contemporary disreputable genre, the "chick flick" warrants analysis for many reasons not least the way in which it undertakes to represent our culture's confused intimacy norms. Although the term "chick flick" (nearly always carrying a pejorative connotation) has had only a modern usage, it can be seen to have many historical derivations and thus this course applies it retroactively and subversively to a wide range of films made for and marketed to women. Often these films fall into well-recognized generic categories such as the melodrama or the romantic comedy, though not always. This class will examine the ways that such 'formula' fictions exceed standard attributions of cultural meaning. In analyzing how Hollywood has conceptualized the interests and desires of its female audience, we will also consider the broader social framework of gender politics out of which these fictions emerge, anchoring our discussions in close readings of films as early as 1921 and as recent as 2010.

Students enrolled in this unit should learn to pose questions of gender in relation to genre, social history, the creativity of directors and stars, and ideologies of class, consumerism and citizenship. Students will also gain skills in periodizing feminism and postfeminism in relation to Hollywood film.