A01=Elizabeth G. Traube
American frontier myth
antibureaucratic warrior
Author_Elizabeth G. Traube
Banquet Scene
Bureaucratic Ethic
Category=JBSF
class and media studies
Cocktail Dress
Consumption Ethic
cultural narratives analysis
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Female Spectators
Feminist Film Criticism
Feminist Film Theory
feminist psychoanalysis
film theory
Film's Assumption
Film’s Assumption
Gender Polarity
gender representation
Independent Women
Indian Ruling Classes
masculine authority
masculinity femininity Hollywood analysis
Moishe Postone
neoformalist film criticism
PMC
Reagan era politics
Renegade Vet
Sensual Depravity
Short Round
Stella Dallas
Success Hero
Tess's Alliance
Tess’s Alliance
Uncle Buck
Uncle Pat
Uncommon Valor
Western Ruling Classes
Working Girl
Young Men
Product details
- ISBN 9780367004316
- Weight: 570g
- Dimensions: 146 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 07 Jun 2019
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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In this book Elizabeth Traube argues that over the course of the 1980s, Hollywood participated in a wider move by mainstream political and social forces that attempted to absorb and contain critical cultural currents by rehabilitating images of masculine authority. At the movies we saw parallel construetions of wild, antibureaucratic warrior-heroes and smooth, seemingly rebellious tricksters adapted to the corporate order. We saw the demonization of the independent woman and the complementary formation of the nurturing father as her adversary. The author relates these representations to two cultural narratives of long duration—the American frontier myth and the myth of success, or the American dream, both of which also figured prominently in the rhetorical themes of Reagan-era politics. Utilizing structuralism, Marxism, feminist object relations psychoanalysis, and neoformalist film criticism, Traube emphasizes specific aspects of cinematic representations of gender and authority to explore the relationships between culture and politics. Unlike other feminist critics of “patriarchal Hollywood,†she stresses the multiple, competing versions of masculinity and femininity constructed in Hollywood movies and the different class positions of their primary, intended audiences. Attention to particular forms that cultural narratives assume in changing circumstances gives Traube’s film analyses a unique sociohistorical dimension, while her focus on narratives used by political elites as well as by moviemakers reveals significant variations in ideology production in different sites.
Elizabeth G. Traube is professor of anthropology at Wesleyan University. She is the author of Cosmology and Social Life (1986).
