In case anyone's interested
I couldn't bear to go through my dissertation again just yet, so I spent the night dealing with all the formatting issues and bells and whistles that go along with such a major project. It was actually kinda fun. And now I even have an abstract. Not 100% sure I won't rewrite it, but here it is:
Violence against women is a critical issue for feminist studies, as are the representations of women and violence in film and other media. Starting in the 1990s with ‘girl power’ movements inspired in part by the British pop group, The Spice Girls, images of feminism and femininity began to merge. Suddenly there was room for representations of feminism that included femininity and vice versa. The cinematic structure of rape-revenge presents a space for the exploration of all of these issues at once. Analysis reveals a continuing tension between the feminine and the feminist, such that the level of violence and threat represented by an avenger in a rape-revenge film is inversely related to her degree of femininity. Three films are explored here which exemplify these findings, Sleeping with the Enemy, Enough, and Hard Candy. Enemy presents a very feminine and thus comparatively nonthreatening avenger, while Candy puts forth a very threatening avenger who is then necessarily quite unfeminine, and Enough presents a character who represents the middle of the road on both counts.
Oh.. and no need to worry about that Spice Girl reference, in the main text I use Ice-T to make a point, so I totally maintain my coolness with this thing.
Violence against women is a critical issue for feminist studies, as are the representations of women and violence in film and other media. Starting in the 1990s with ‘girl power’ movements inspired in part by the British pop group, The Spice Girls, images of feminism and femininity began to merge. Suddenly there was room for representations of feminism that included femininity and vice versa. The cinematic structure of rape-revenge presents a space for the exploration of all of these issues at once. Analysis reveals a continuing tension between the feminine and the feminist, such that the level of violence and threat represented by an avenger in a rape-revenge film is inversely related to her degree of femininity. Three films are explored here which exemplify these findings, Sleeping with the Enemy, Enough, and Hard Candy. Enemy presents a very feminine and thus comparatively nonthreatening avenger, while Candy puts forth a very threatening avenger who is then necessarily quite unfeminine, and Enough presents a character who represents the middle of the road on both counts.
Oh.. and no need to worry about that Spice Girl reference, in the main text I use Ice-T to make a point, so I totally maintain my coolness with this thing.