Gossip, Women, Film, and Chick Flicks

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Sarah-Mai Dang

   Pages 1-7

3. Gossip as an Organizing Principle of Social Order and Perception

   • Sarah-Mai Dang

   Pages 9-14

4. Easy A—“A is for Awesome”

   • Sarah-Mai Dang

   Pages 15-43

5. Emma—“A Match Well Made, a Job Well Done”

   • Sarah-Mai Dang

   Pages 45-66

6. A Matter of Perspective

   • Sarah-Mai Dang

   Pages 67-71

7. Back Matter

   Pages 73-75

   PDF

This book addresses the relationship between gossip, women, and film with regards to the genre of chick flicks. Presenting two case studies on the films Easy A (Will Gluck 2010) and Emma (Douglas McGrath 1996), Dang demonstrates that hearsay plays a defining role in the staging of these films and thus in the film experience. While the lack of women’s voices in the general public sphere remains an issue, the female voice is very present in the contemporary woman’s film. In its analysis of gossip, this book focuses on a form of communication that has traditionally been assigned to women and is consequently disregarded. Dang provides a theoretical framework for the understanding of speech acts in the popular, yet undertheorized, genre of chick flicks.

• Philosophy
• Gender
• Visual Pleasure
• Genre
• Film Theory
• Feminism
• Woman’s Film
• Film Experience
• Aesthetics
• Postfeminism
• Popular Culture
• Gossip

• Berlin, Germany

  Sarah-Mai Dang

Dr Sarah-Mai Dang is a Research Assistant at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Previously, she worked at the Collaborative Research Center “Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits” (SFB 626) and at the Department for Film Studies, both at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

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