By Hilary Radner

What lies at the back of present feminist discontent with modern cinema?

Through a mixture of cultural and research, Hilary Radner’s Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly motion pictures, Chick Flicks and customer Culture shows how the desires of conglomerate Hollywood have inspired an emphasis on patron tradition inside motion pictures made for girls. through exploring a few consultant "girly films," together with Pretty girl, Legally Blonde, Maid in new york, The satan Wears Prada, and Sex and the town: The Movie, Radner proposes that instead of being "post-feminist," as is generally assumed, such motion pictures are higher defined as "neo-feminist." interpreting their narrative layout, because it revolves round the tale of an formidable single girl who defines herself via customer tradition up to via paintings or romance, Radner argues that those movies exemplify neo-liberalist values instead of these of feminism.

As such, Neo-Feminist Cinema bargains a brand new rationalization as to why feminist-oriented students and audiences who're looking greater than "labels and love" from their movie adventure have seen fresh "girly motion pictures" as a betrayal of second-wave feminism, and why, nonetheless, such movies have confirmed to be such a success on the field office.

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

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In both films the heroine offers viewers an independent “single girl” who must assume responsibility for her own decisions and life.

The education that both hero and heroine undergo often entails a “do-over,” in which a past mistake is rectified. In Pretty Woman, Garry Marshall explains that “[t]hrough him and through her, they both grew. ” Both are redeemed. “So what happened after he rescues her? She rescues him right back,” claims Marshall. ”26 Notably, Edward finds the father he never had and comes to understand that the point of life is to make things, rather than to destroy them—to be productive! Both can start life again, Vivian as a “lady” and Edward as a builder, their past mistakes as prostitute and corporate raider forgiven.

These films are concerned with the theme of transformation, often represented as a magical makeover, the purpose of which is to give expression to an internal process of education, which, through the makeover trope, is linked to consumer culture. ”25 Vivian’s education, whereby she comes to behave and look like a lady, and takes the decision to abandon prostitution and return to school, is represented through a radical change in her appearance and her clothing. Importantly, part of her deal with Edward is that, in return for her services as a “beck and call girl” during the period of a week, she will not only receive three thousand dollars, but also be able to keep the clothing he purchases for her (or, rather, that she purchases for herself with his money).

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