- Paperback: 166 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (23 Oct 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0415370787
- ISBN-13: 978-0415370783
- Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 15.6 x 1.4 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,580,374 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Violent Femmes
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The female spy has long exerted a strong grip on the popular imagination. With reference to popular fiction, film and television Violent Femmes examines the figure of the female spy as a nexus of contradictory ideas about femininity, power, sexuality and national identity. Fictional representations of women as spies have recurrently traced the dynamic of women’s changing roles in British and American culture. Employing the central trope of women who work as spies, Rosie White examines cultural shifts during the twentieth century regarding the role of women in the professional workplace.
Violent Femmes examines the female spy as a figure in popular discourse which simultaneously conforms to cultural stereotypes and raises questions about women's roles in British and American culture, in terms of gender, sexuality and national identity.
Immensely useful for a wide range of courses such as film and television studies, English, cultural studies, women’s studies, gender studies, media studies, communications and history, this book will appeal to students from undergraduate level upwards.
About the Author
Rosie White is Senior Lecturer in English at Northumbria University.
Inside This Book
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1 review
Soft-hitting action-lacked
18 April 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book was mentioned in passing by the Times Literary Supplement, so I picked it up, and looking at the price I can certainly see why no one else did. It's aimed at university libraries, a typical Late Capitalist scam, and of course it keeps attacking Late Capitalism.
But let that go.
Like most academic monographs it's thin, and it's less well-written than average. Discussing The Bionic Woman and the heroine of The New Avengers, the author says, "The delimited femininities they offer are grounds for feminist critique, but the overtly fictive, fantastic elements of those representations are grounds for feminist analysis."
"Critique" and "analysis" mean the same thing, but the author wants them to mean different things. She's trying to say, These series show women as not having much personality, and feminists can get angry about that, but the series also show them as having to do lots of wild, impossible things -- and feminists can actually talk about that, instead of just sulking."
That's as deep as the book gets.
There was some information I found new and useful: "quality" shows like The Sopranos are made possible by the fact that they attract a young, affluent audience, the most desired advertising target. As a result they can survive even though they don't have many viewers; the viewers they do have are the ones advertisers are willing to pay to get.
That explained a lot to me, but I don't get out much. Fans of "quality" shows must have known this for twenty years. Meanwhile the writer of Violent Femmes ties herself into knots, as in the sentence I quoted, trying to like and dislike tough action heroines all at the same time. She likes them for winning fights and being popular, hates them because they're designed to make money -- loves them because they're successful at making money, hates them because money-making is all they really do -- loves them because they show how nonsensical our society's view of women is, hates them because they seem to like playing those nonsensical roles. And so it goes, on and on.
The result of all her ill-written ambivalence is that the author falls in love with the Mrs. Pollifax stories, espionage novels and tv movies in the Agatha Christie tradition, much more plausible and much duller than Alias or The Bionic Woman. The drop into relatively realistic, and boring, storytelling stuns our author so much she has nothing but praise for Pollifax, though as usual the praise is thin and tepid. And then we move on to more Late Capitalistic attacks on Late Capitalism.
I enjoyed it.
But let that go.
Like most academic monographs it's thin, and it's less well-written than average. Discussing The Bionic Woman and the heroine of The New Avengers, the author says, "The delimited femininities they offer are grounds for feminist critique, but the overtly fictive, fantastic elements of those representations are grounds for feminist analysis."
"Critique" and "analysis" mean the same thing, but the author wants them to mean different things. She's trying to say, These series show women as not having much personality, and feminists can get angry about that, but the series also show them as having to do lots of wild, impossible things -- and feminists can actually talk about that, instead of just sulking."
That's as deep as the book gets.
There was some information I found new and useful: "quality" shows like The Sopranos are made possible by the fact that they attract a young, affluent audience, the most desired advertising target. As a result they can survive even though they don't have many viewers; the viewers they do have are the ones advertisers are willing to pay to get.
That explained a lot to me, but I don't get out much. Fans of "quality" shows must have known this for twenty years. Meanwhile the writer of Violent Femmes ties herself into knots, as in the sentence I quoted, trying to like and dislike tough action heroines all at the same time. She likes them for winning fights and being popular, hates them because they're designed to make money -- loves them because they're successful at making money, hates them because money-making is all they really do -- loves them because they show how nonsensical our society's view of women is, hates them because they seem to like playing those nonsensical roles. And so it goes, on and on.
The result of all her ill-written ambivalence is that the author falls in love with the Mrs. Pollifax stories, espionage novels and tv movies in the Agatha Christie tradition, much more plausible and much duller than Alias or The Bionic Woman. The drop into relatively realistic, and boring, storytelling stuns our author so much she has nothing but praise for Pollifax, though as usual the praise is thin and tepid. And then we move on to more Late Capitalistic attacks on Late Capitalism.
I enjoyed it.
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