Product details
- ISBN 9781350523951
- Weight: 920g
- Dimensions: 162 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 14 May 2026
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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This volume brings together an international array of contributors to analyse Greta Gerwig’s unprecedented success, Barbie (2023), exploring how a film released in a moment of industrial crisis for Hollywood became the highest-grossing film directed or co-directed by a woman.
Uniting scholars from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, France, Turkey, the UK, and the USA, this volume provides a set of essays that reflect the complexities of what is, in many ways, a fable for our times. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie: Popular Culture, Cinema, and Gender opens with a chapter on the current state of the film industry. Further topics include: the treatment of American girlhood; fashion and feminism; the auteur director; post-indie cinema; queer identities; masculinity; the politics of race, class and gender; contemporary feminisms; consumerism; and the ecology of plastic. As such, the book offers a detailed and nuanced perspective on a benchmark film, produced and distributed by an industry in crisis––the brainchild of a significant director whose star is on the rise.
Hilary Radner is Emeritus Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has published widely on gender identity and visual culture, her books include Shopping Around: Consumer Culture and the Pursuit of Pleasure (1995), Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture (2011), and The New Woman’s Film: Femme-centric Movies for Smart Chicks (2017).
Rebecca Stringer is Associate Professor of Sociology, Gender Studies, and Criminology at the University of Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is author of Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency, and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times (2014), and co-editor of Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema (2011).
