Gender and Austerity in Popular Culture: Femininity, Masculinity and Recession in Film and Television

by Helen Davies (Editor), Claire O'Callaghan (Editor)

Overview

From the gritty landscapes of The Hunger Games and The Walking Dead, to the portrayal of the twenty-first-century precariat in Girls, this book explores how transatlantic visual culture has represented and reconstructed ideas of gender in times of financial crisis. Drawing on social, cultural and feminist theory, these writers explore how men and women experience austerity differently and illuminate the problematic ways in which economic policy can shape how gender is presented in popular culture. Written from the perspective that the popular is indeed political, this book considers film, literature and television's ideological attitudes towards race, sex and disability. It also takes into account how mass culture has responded to austerity in the past and the present, whilst examining the impact that feminism will have in the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786720924
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/18/2016
Series:	Library of Gender and Popular Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	728 KB

About the Author

Helen Davies is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at Teesside University. She is on the advisory board of Durham University's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, and is on the editorial board for Journal of Gender Studies. Claire O'Callaghan is an Associate Lecturer in English at Brunel University. She is the Honorary Treasurer of the Feminist and Women's Studies Association (FWSA) and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Gender Studies.
Dr Claire O'Callaghan, Associate Lecturer in English, Brunel University, UK.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Notes on Contributors xi

Series Editors' Foreword xv

Introduction: Boom and Bust? Gender and Austerity in Popular Culture Helen Davies Claire O'Callaghan 1

1 A Big Neo-Victorian Society?: Gender, Austerity and Conservative Family Values in The Mill Helen Davies 17

2 The Downturn at Downton: Money and Masculinity in Downton Abbey Claire O'Callaghan 43

3 Wartime Housewives and Vintage Women: A. S. Byatt's Ragnarok: The End of the Gods and Refraining Popular Nostalgia Leanne Bibby 65

4 'Thatcher's Bloody Britain!': Unemployment mid Gender in Neoliberal Britain in The Young Ones and Men Behaving Badly Lauren Pikó Evan Smith 87

5 From Homebuyer Advisor to Angel of the Hearth: The Development of Kirstle Allsopp as the Female Face of Channel 4 'Squeezed Middle' Austerity Programming Diane Charlesworth 109

6 The Walking Dead and Gendering Zombie Austerity Zach Finch 133

7 Embodying Austerity: Food and Physicality in The Hunger Games Erin Wyble Newcomb 151

8 'I Want What Everyone Wants': Cruel Optimism in HBO's Girls Ruth Charnock 171

9 Baling the Recession: Sexual Sensationalism and Gender (A)politics in Contemporary Culture Stéphanie Genz 189

Index 211

Editorial Reviews

Gender and Austerity in Popular Culture is an important development in our understanding of the ways in which the 'austerity' politics of both the UK and the USA are deeply gendered. But what is also recognised here are the historical parallels in which policies demanding restraint in both personal and state spending had different forms for men and women. Thus in this highly original collection of essays the various authors consider distinct locations of the traditions through which women and men are asked to live out, and through, economic inequality. In all, a highly readable and valuable collection.

Mary Evans