Frances Smith

Few films in the twenty-first century have represented coming-of-age with the beauty and brutality of Bande de Filles (or Girlhood). This book provides an in-depth examination of Céline Sciamma’s film, focusing on its portrayal of female adolescence in contemporary Paris. Motivated by the absence of black female characters in French cinema, Sciamma represents the lives of figures that have passed largely unnoticed on the big screen. While observing the girls’ tough circumstances, Sciamma’s film emphasises the joy and camaraderie found in female friendships. This book places Girlhood in its cinematic as well as its sociocultural context. Pop music, urban violence, and female friendships are all considered here in a book that draws out the complexity of Sciamma’s deceptively simple portrayal of coming-of-age. Thoughtful, concise, and deeply contemporary, this book is perfect for students, scholars, and general readers interested in youth cultures, European cinema, gender, and sexuality.

This book analyses how contemporary genre cinema represents trans-identified characters. Informed by key debates within transfeminism, queer theory, contemporary trans studies – and engaging with the concerns voiced by gender critical feminism – this culturally oriented book critiques the representation of trans characters in a range of cinematic genres, including the musical, period costume drama, the road movie, melodrama, coming-of-age stories, and romances. The case studies address the ways in which trans identifications have been coded within the narrative and stylistic expectations of the genres. Are genre films successful in affirming trans identifications or do they reinforce trans stereotypes and anti-trans discourses? This is a timely and accessible book, which addresses Anglophonic, European and Latin American cinemas, and is ideal for students studying courses in Film Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies or Gender Studies.

This book analyses how contemporary genre cinema represents trans-identified characters. Informed by key debates within transfeminism, queer theory, contemporary trans studies – and engaging with the concerns voiced by gender critical feminism – this culturally oriented book critiques the representation of trans characters in a range of cinematic genres, including the musical, period costume drama, the road movie, melodrama, coming-of-age stories, and romances. The case studies address the ways in which trans identifications have been coded within the narrative and stylistic expectations of the genres. Are genre films successful in affirming trans identifications or do they reinforce trans stereotypes and anti-trans discourses? This is a timely and accessible book, which addresses Anglophonic, European and Latin American cinemas, and is ideal for students studying courses in Film Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies or Gender Studies.

As the author's childhood tumbles from her memory onto the pages of print, the reader is privy to all sorts of surprising revelations. Be prepared to chuckle with glee, feel your mouth gape reading about situations too weird to be untrue, wince as your heart breaks in sadness and anger over sordid situations, and shake your head both in disbelief and even perfect understanding of unusual childhood tales. Between the covers of the book, the author's very direct style in sharing the goings-on around her that profoundly affected her talks to the reader personally and even bluntly. As the years pass, the toll from various elements in her life becomes clearer and grows higher. The book's title was chosen because it chronicles from a curious angle a young girl's memories of growing up. The story's framework of recollections connected to given residences, the number of those residences, and the regularity with which this family migrated from one to another was interesting from the storytelling perspective and fortunate for Frances and all her readers. That her memories were mentally magnetized, that they attached and were thereby preserved according to the various times and places Frances called home, was an innovative, efficient, and effective writing device. Use of the rabbit hole idiom was spot-on, because despite growing older, taller, and maturing in ways (growing up), simultaneously an ominous, downward momentum was also steadily gaining more of a foothold in the life of this young person. Left unchecked, this destructive force would increasingly result in a stranger, more problematic, and chaotic life, an exquisite analogy provided by Lewis Carroll. The story shared within this book is a poignant and absorbing account as seen through the eyes of the child who lived it. Much is revealed throughout this narrative, and although the book ends, the story obviously continues. The indubitable question is not written but silently screams, what happens next?

Few films in the twenty-first century have represented coming-of-age with the beauty and brutality of Bande de Filles (or Girlhood). This book provides an in-depth examination of Céline Sciamma’s film, focusing on its portrayal of female adolescence in contemporary Paris. Motivated by the absence of black female characters in French cinema, Sciamma represents the lives of figures that have passed largely unnoticed on the big screen. While observing the girls’ tough circumstances, Sciamma’s film emphasises the joy and camaraderie found in female friendships. This book places Girlhood in its cinematic as well as its sociocultural context. Pop music, urban violence, and female friendships are all considered here in a book that draws out the complexity of Sciamma’s deceptively simple portrayal of coming-of-age. Thoughtful, concise, and deeply contemporary, this book is perfect for students, scholars, and general readers interested in youth cultures, European cinema, gender, and sexuality.

God never promises us a sweeping floodlight that will show us the whole picture, but He does promise us a lamp to our feet so we can see the next step. We have to learn to trust Him to do that, and take the next step on faith.

Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie is the first academic monograph to consider the aesthetic and narrative potential of this highly popular, yet often overlooked, film genre. Reconsidering tropes such as the male juvenile delinquent figure, the makeover and the teen vampire, the book uses a series of detailed case studies of key films like Rebel Without a Cause, Grease, Heathers and Twilight to explore the genre's relation to key critical concepts of intersectionality, postfeminism and the posthuman, and provides an innovative overview of the Hollywood teen movie and its construction of teen identity.

Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie is the first academic monograph to consider the aesthetic and narrative potential of this highly popular, yet often overlooked, film genre. Reconsidering tropes such as the male juvenile delinquent figure, the makeover and the teen vampire, the book uses a series of detailed case studies of films like Rebel Without a Cause, Grease, Heathers and Twilight to explore the genre's relation to critical concepts of intersectionality, postfeminism and the posthuman. This book is an innovative overview of the Hollywood teen movie and its construction of teen identity.