Customer Reviews

Issues in Feminist Film Criticism (A Midland Book)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a solid anthology of feminist film criticism, but a couple fatal flaws significantly decrease its value (see paragraph 2). Some classics and some new material make it a nice introduction. Most of the familiar writers are representing including Laura Mulvey, Linda Williams, B. Ruby Rich, Maureen Turim, and Kaja Silverman. However, if you already have a decent collection of feminist writings on film, there may be some overlap. For instance: do we really need yet another anthology with "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"??? Mulvey is great, but she DID write other essays.

One major criticism concerns the publisher: the pages jump directly from 262 to 295 completely omitting Rich's "In the Name of Feminist Film Criticism" - one of the reasons I bought the book in the first place. You also miss the last pages of Annette Kuhn's "Textual Politics" as well as the beginning of the de Laurentis' "Rethinking Women's Cinema". Once the book gets into the 300s, it jumps back to 296, mid-essay, of course!

My three-star rating has nothing to do with the contents - it's solely directed at the sloppy publisher. I have no idea why Indiana UP screwed this up so bad - they're usually very reliable. This is an okay place to start, but there are better feminist anthologies out there.

This book was my best friend during my first ever film theory class. The writing is sometimes frustratingly academic, especially if you don't have a background in feminist theory, but the essays were always thought-provoking, and often enlightening.

Great book, but I only purchased it because I neede for the class I am taking called, "Women in Fiilm".