Gendered (Re)Visions

In academic as well as in public debates audiovisual media have often been accused of perpetuating gender stereotypes and of confronting viewers time and again with traditional role models and binary concepts of masculinity and femininity. In recent years, films, television series and music videos increasingly have shown women and men who transgress the traditional gender dichotomy. One of the central ideas behind this volume is the attempt to bring together explorations of 'gendering' in different audiovisual media. The contributions seek to explore in particular shifting constructions of femininity and masculinity and aim to provide further insight into the media- and genre-specific ways of constructing, perpetuating and challenging gender concepts in audiovisual media, taking into consideration the interplay of the different levels on which gendering occurs in them. Thus, two articles in the present volume address the processes of constructing, perpetuating and challenging notions of femininity and masculinity in music videos, while other contributions are dedicated to the analysis of gendering in films and/or TV series.

1;Inhalt;6 2;Gender in Audiovisual Media: Introduction;8 3;Part I: Gaze Body Voice;22 3.1;Revisiting the Classical Romance: Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Joness Diary and Bride and Prejudice;24 3.2;Ways of Reclaiming Masculinity: Reactions to the Crisis of the White Man in Paul Thomas Andersons Magnolia, Sam Mendes American Beauty and David Finchers Fight Club;46 3.3;Re-Imagined Bodies and Transgendered Space: Sites for Negotiating Gender in the Shrek Movies;60 3.4;The Female Voice in Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives: Voice-Over Narration in Contemporary American Television Series;80 3.5;American Television Series;80 4;Part II: Gender and Genre;104 4.1;(En)Gendering Laughter: The Representation of Gender Roles in the Sitcom;106 4.2;The Changing Construction of Women in Crime Series: The Case of Tatort;138 4.3;What are Men Made of ? Fictions of Masculinity in Western Movies: Fred Zinnemanns High Noon (1952) and Ang Lees Brokeback Mountain (2005);160 4.4;A World Without Gender? Robots, Androids and the Gender Matrix in Films and TV Series;182 4.5;Performing Gender in the Music Videos of 50 Cent and the G Unit;204 4.6;Independent Women? Feminist Discourse in Music Videos;228 4.7;Film, Urban Legends and Gender The Subversive Play with Urban Legends in Urbania (2000);254