Gothic Heroines on Screen explores the translation of the literary Gothic heroine on screen, the potential consequences of these adaptations, and contemporary interpretations of the form. Each chapter illuminates the significance of this moving image mediation, relating its screen topics to their various historical, social, and geographical moments of production, while maintaining a focus on the key figure of the investigating woman. Many chapters – perhaps inescapably – delve into the point of adaptation: the Bluebeard story and du Maurier’s Rebecca as two key examples. Moving beyond the Old Dark House that frequently forms both the Gothic heroine’s backdrop and her area of investigation, some chapters examine alternative locations and their impact on the Gothic heroine, some leave behind the marital thriller to explore what happens when the Gothic meets other genres, such as comedy, while others travel away from the usual Anglo-American contexts to European ones. Throughout the collection, the Gothic heroine’s representation is explored within the medium, which brings together image, movement, and sound, and this technological fact takes on varied significance. What does remain constant, however, is the emphasis on the longevity, significance, and distinctiveness of the Gothic heroine in screen culture.

This text identifies a handful of plot elements that consistently recur within film noir and analyses in depth the memorable pictures that, while being vivid prototypes of certain cinematics themes, bend and break their moulds to find new ways to enthral and frighten us.

The endangered and dangerous female figures of "Rebecca", of "Jagged Edge" and "What Lies Beneath" have a deserved and endures fascination. Helen Hanson re-examines these gothic heroines of Hollywood and their meanings, in two of Hollywood's key generic cycles, film noir and the female gothic film. Starting at the beginning, with the origin of these cycles and the ways in which they represented women in the American film industry and culture of the 1940s, she traces their revival in neo-noir and neo-gothic films from the 1980s to the present. She also places the female figures of the femme fatale, female investigator and gothic heroine within the shifting contexts of the film industry and debates in feminist film criticism. Hanson examines a wide range of films from both periods, including 'Suspicion', 'Gaslight' and 'Pacific Heights', and gives particular attention to their presentation of female stories, actions and perspectives. She reveals a diversity of female figures, representations and actions in film noir and the female gothic film, and argues that these women are part of a negotiation of female identities, desires and roles across a long historical period. "Hollywood Heroines" therefore offers us new ways of thinking about classic and contemporary Hollywood heroines, and about the interrelationships of gender and genre.

This edited collection focuses on gender and contemporary horror in film, examining how and if representations of gender in horror have changed.

While women have long been featured in leading roles in film and television, the intellectual depictions of female characters in these mediums are out of line with reality. Women continue to be marginalized for their choices, overshadowed by men, and judged by their bodies. In fact, the intelligence of women is rarely the focus of television or film narratives, and on the rare occasion when smart women are showcased, their portrayals are undermined by socially awkward behavior or their intimate relationships are doomed to perpetual failure. While Hollywood claims to offer a different, more evolved look at women, these movies and shows often just repackage old character types that still downplay the intelligence and savvy of women. In Smart Chicks on Screen: Representing Women’s Intellect in Film and Television, Laura Mattoon D’Amore brings together an impressive array of scholarship that interrogates the portrayal of females on television and in movies. Among the questions that the volume seeks to answer are: In what ways are women in film and television limited, or ostracized, by their intelligence? How do female roles reinforce standards of beauty, submissiveness, and silence over intellect, problem solving, and leadership? Are there women in film and television who are intelligent without also being objectified? The thirteen essays by international, interdisciplinary scholars offer a wide range of perspectives, examining the connections—and disconnections—between beauty and brains in film and television. Smart Chicks on Screen will be of interest to scholars not only of film and television but of women’s studies, reception studies, and cultural history, as well.

This collection brings together scholars from various disciplines to ask fundamental questions concerning how women handle the manifold impediments placed before them as they simply attempt to live full human lives. The collection explores narratives of women – real and fictional – who fight against these barriers, who succumb to them, who remain unaware of them, or choose to ignore them. It explores the ways we read women in cultural production, and how women are read in society. We assert the obstacles constructed into the very fabric of societies against fifty percent of the population are unfair, be they hindrances for women to attain their goals, encumbrances that limit women’s speech and societal participation – communal and artistic – or hindrances that prohibit specific behaviors and images of women.

This book is about the ways that Gothic literature has been transformed since the 18th century across cultures and across genres. In a series of essays written by scholars in the field, the book focuses on landscape in the Gothic and the ways landscape both reflects and reveals the dark elements of culture and humanity. It goes beyond traditional approaches to the Gothic by pushing the limits of the definition of the genre. From landscape painting to movies and video games, from memoir to fiction, and from works of different cultural origins and perspectives, this volume traverses the geography of the Gothic revealing the anxieties that still haunt humanity into the twenty-first century.

In this essential study of film noir, editors Alain Silver and James Ursini select the most significant and influential articles on the movement from their highly respected Film Noir Reader series and assemble them into a single, convenient, heavily illustrated volume. Still included, of course, are many rare early articles and such seminal essays as Borde and Chaumeton's “Towards a Definition of Film Noir” from Panorama du Film Noir Americain, Paul Schrader's “Notes on Film Noir ” and “Paint It Black: the Family Tree of the Film Noir” by Raymond Durgnat. With newer studies such as “Lounge Time” by Vivian Sobchack, “Manufacturing Heroines in Classic Noir Films” by Sheri Chinen Biesen, and “Voices from the Deep: Film Noir as Psychodrama” J. P. Telotte, this collection of over 30 articles probes this most influential American film movement from varying angles: formalist, feminist, structuralist, sociological, and stylistic; narrative-thematic historical, and even from the point of view of a pure aficionado. There is something in this volume for every student or devotee of film noir. Plus like the readers that have proven an invaluable tool for academics planning a syllabus, it can serve as the most complete core text for any of the myriad of film noir courses taught throughout the world.

Drawing from social theory and the anthropology of religion, this book explores popular media's fascination with dreams, vampires, demons, ghosts and spirits. Dreams, Vampires and Ghosts does so in the light of contemporary animist studies of societies in which other-than-human persons are not merely a source of entertainment, but a lived social reality. Films and television programs explored include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twin Peaks, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Truly Madly Deeply and the films of Hitchcock. Louise Child draws attention to how they both depict and challenge ideas and practices rooted in psychology, while quality television has also facilitated a wave of programming that can explore the interaction of characters in complex social worlds over time. In addition to drawing on theories of film from Freudian psychology and feminist theory, Dreams, Vampires and Ghosts uses approaches derived from a combination of Jungian film studies and anthropology that offer fresh insights for exploring film and television. This book draws attention to explicit and subtle ways in which cinematic narratives engage with myth and religion while at the same time exploring collective dimensions to social and personal life. It advances new developments in genre studies and gender as well as contributing to the growing field of implicit religion using in-depth analyses of communicative dreaming, the shadow, and mystical lovers in film and television.

The 1979 film Alien has left an indelible mark on popular culture. Directed by Ridley Scott, at the time known primarily for making advertisements, and starring then-unknown actor Sigourney Weaver in the lead role, it transcended its humble origins to shock and disturb audiences upon its initial release. Its success has led to three direct sequels, two prequels, one "mashup" franchise, a series of comic books, graphic novels, novelizations, games, and an enormous and devoted fanbase. For forty years, Alien and its progeny have animated debate and discussion among critics and academics from a wide variety of fields and methodological perspectives. This book brings together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to explore Alien through a contemporary lens. The chapters here demonstrate the extent to which its effects and reception are deeply multifaceted, with the Alien franchise straddling the lines between "high" and "low" culture, playing with generic categories, crossing media boundaries, and animating theoretical, critical, and political debates. Chapters touch on female agency and motherhood, the influence of H.R. Giger, the viscerality of Alien's body horror, the narrative tradition of the Female Gothic, the patriarchal gaze in the Alien video games, and the rise of in-universe online marketing campaigns. In so doing, the volume aims to debate Alien's legacy, consider its current position within visual culture, and establish what the series means--and why it still matters--forty years since its birth.