Focusing on the ground-breaking work of Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis and Barbara Creed, this book explores how, since it began in the 1970s, feminist film theory has revolutionized the way that films and their spectators can be understood. Examining the new and distinctive approaches of each of these thinkers, this book provides the most detailed account so far of their ideas. It illuminates the six key concepts and demonstrates their value as tools for film Testing their ideas with a number of other examples from contemporary cinema and TV, Shohini Chaudhuri shows how these four thinkers construct their theories through their reading of films. An excellent study companion for all students of film theory and women’s studies.
For me it was an interesting introduction to general feminist theory. It was most interesting when the theorists strayed from the phallocentric Freudian nonsense, which unfortunately was rare.
A great summary of the main ideas of some of the well-known feminist film theorists. The book features Mulvey, de Lauretis, Silverman and other famous theorists. It’s a great read especially since you don’t have to buy or download the individual works, which for me some were hard to find. The theories are heavy on psychoanalysis and sometimes not that easy to understand but you get the overall idea. All in all, it was very useful for me, since I had to summarize the most important ideas for my thesis.