| Echo and Narcissus: Women's Voices in Classical Hollywood Cinema Contributor(s): Lawrence, Amy (Author) |
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ISBN: 0520070828 ISBN-13: 9780520070820 Publisher: University of California Press OUR PRICE: $31.63 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 1991 Annotation: Do women in classical Hollywood cinema ever truly speak for themselves? Amy Lawrence examines women's voices in eight classic films to show how their speech is repeatedly constructed as a 'problem, ' an affront to male authority. This book expands feminist studies of the filmic representation of women by adding voice to the agenda, enabling us to see these classics in new ways and to ask new questions of other films. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Performing Arts | Film - History & Criticism - Social Science | Women's Studies - Social Science | Gender Studies |
| Dewey: 791.436 |
| LCCN: 90050903 |
| Physical Information: 0.61" H x 6.01" W x 8.99" (0.64 lbs) 218 pages |
| Themes: - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Do women in classical Hollywood cinema ever truly speak for themselves? In Echo and Narcissus, Amy Lawrence examines eight classic films to show how women's speech is repeatedly constructed as a "problem," an affront to male authority. This book expands feminist studies of the representation of women in film, enabling us to see individual films in new ways, and to ask new questions of other films. Using Sadie Thompson (1928), Blackmail (1929), Rain (1932), The Spiral Staircase, Sorry, Wrong Number, Notorious, Sunset Boulevard (1950) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Lawrence illustrates how women's voices are positioned within narratives that require their submission to patriarchal roles and how their attempts to speak provoke increasingly severe repression. She also shows how women's natural ability to speak is interrupted, made difficult, or conditioned to a suffocating degree by sound technology itself. Telephones, phonographs, voice-overs, and dubbing are foregrounded, called upon to silence women and to restore the primacy of the image. Unlike the usage of "voice" by feminist and literary critics to discuss broad issues of authorship and point of view, in film studies the physical voice itself is a primary focus. Echo and Narcissus shows how assumptions about the "deficiencies" of women's voices and speech are embedded in sound's history, technology, uses, and marketing. Moreover, the construction of the woman's voice is inserted into the ideologically loaded cinematic and narrative conventions governing the representation of women in Hollywood film. |