Hallucinations of Youth.

[applette]

I have a guilty love for St. Elmo's Fire. I can explain. This love stems from the fact that I first watched last year, at the age of twenty-four, living alone for the first time in my life in the biggest city I'd lived in, in my life. I had gone through a bad break-up with someone I could have easily married. I didn't have (at the time, to my

Comments

[swirly_girl]

I've never seen the movie, but to me it sounds like a classic case of warning women from acting too much like men. According to Carol Clover, there was a fair amount of this in 80s cinema, especially in horror films. Actually, though, first wave feminism was suffrage, and second wave feminism was the hippies. In the 80s, Reagan and the right wing were in power, and the most visible feminists, radical lesbians and anti-pornography feminists, aligned themselves with the right on the issue of pornography. Despite the fact that there were some pro-sexuality feminists at the time, they tended to be ignored by the media. I guess what I'm saying is that it was my impression that feminism was more or less dead by the 80s.

[applette]

I suppose you're right. I think there's a case that can be made for proto-third-wave figures like, oh say, Madonna. But I don't really think the "boytoy" shit was any kind of laudable enterprise, and I'd even go so far as to say it symbolizes most of what I find reprehensible about third wave, in general.

I'm curious about this Clover book. Do you think I would like it ? Is there any other similar film criticism you might recommend ?

[swirly_girl]

I don't know if the Madonna phenomenon could really be called feminism at all. When I think of third wave, I think of post-feminism really, people like Butler, which was the 90s.

Yes, you would love it. To be honest, I haven't been reading much straight film criticism these days, mostly post-modern philosophy/literary theory.