Chick Flicks

This book focuses on a genre which is usually not taken seriously. This study approaches chick flicks from the perspective of aesthetic experience, claiming that the controversy determining the discourse on post-feminism and popular culture is constitutive for the genre as such. The female spectator is key to understanding the phenomenon of chick flicks. Dang shows that taking the media specificity of chick flicks into account is an important step towards understanding the pleasure for the spectator that derives from the genre and thus the popularity and significance of these films. By linking feminist theories to the aesthetic film experience, the study shows that women oriented media texts challenge the social concept of 'woman' as a clearly definable category. This book provides a theoretical framework for the understanding of the film experience of the popular, yet undertheorized genre. It constitutes a substantial shift in the way chick flicks are usually approached.--Publisher description. This book addresses the relationship between gossip, women, and film with regards to the genre of chick flicks. Presenting two case studies on the films Easy A (Will Gluck 2010) and Emma (Douglas McGrath 1996), Dang demonstrates that hearsay plays a defining role in the staging of these films and thus in the film experience. While the lack of women's voices in the general public sphere remains an issue, the female voice is very present in the contemporary woman's film. In its analysis of gossip, this book focuses on a form of communication that has traditionally been assigned to women and is consequently disregarded. Dang provides a theoretical framework for the understanding of speech acts in the popular, yet undertheorized, genre of chick flicks.--Publisher description.