Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls examines the bizarre and fascinating range of gender portrayals in film at the end of the twentieth century. In order to view the screened face of gender in bold new ways, the contributors cover a wide variety of cinematic forms and styles--from the boy-girls of Hong Kong cinema to the on-screen modesty of post-revolutionary Iran to the New Hollywood's treatment of homosexuality, female power, and male intellectuality. Throughout, the works of important filmmakers are analyzed, including Ridley Scott, David Cronenberg, Jim Jarmusch, Woody Allen, Rakhshan Banietemad, Kathryn Bigelow, Bertrand Tavernier, Roman Polanski, and many others.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. xiii)
• List of Illustrations (p. xv)
• Chapter 1 Introduction: Gender in Film at the End of the Twentieth Century (p. 1)
• Part I Screened Gender beyond the Hollywood Hills
• Chapter 2 No Safe Place: Gender and Space in Polanski's Recent Films (p. 19)
• Chapter 3 Veiled Voice and Vision in Iranian Cinema: The Evolution of Rakhshan Banietemad's Films (p. 37)
• Chapter 4 Boy-Girls: Gender, Body, and Popular Culture in Hong Kong Action Movies (p. 55)
• Chapter 5 The Gender of GenerAsian X in Clara Law's Migration Trilogy (p. 71)
• Part II Genders and Doings
• Chapter 6 Eating and Drinking, Men and Women (p. 91)
• Chapter 7 Boys Will Be Boys: David Cronenberg's Crash Course in Heavy Mettle (p. 109)
• Chapter 8 The Wabbit We-negotiates: Looney Tunes in a Conglomerate Age (p. 129)
• Chapter 9 "Real Men Don't Sing and Dance": Growing Up Male with the Hollywood Musical--A Memoir (p. 149)
• Chapter 10 Cruise-ing into the Millennium: Performative Masculinity, Stardom, and the All-American Boy's Body (p. 171)
• Chapter 11 Strange Days: Gender and Ideology in New Genre Films (p. 185)
• Part III Paragons and Pariahs
• Chapter 12 She-Devils on Wheels: Women, Motorcycles, and Movies (p. 203)
• Chapter 13 Howard's First Kiss: Sissies and Gender Police in the "New" Old Hollywood (p. 217)
• Chapter 14 Hipsters and Nerds: Black Jazz Artists and Their White Shadows (p. 233)
• Chapter 15 "Let's Keep Goin'!": On the Road with Louise and Thelma (p. 249)
• Chapter 16 Jews in Space: The "Ordeal of Masculinity" in Contemporary American Film and Television (p. 267)
• Chapter 17 Gender and Other Transcendences: William Blake as Johnny Depp (p. 283)
• Chapter 18 Marion Crane Dies Twice (p. 301)
• List of Contributors (p. 317)
• Index (p. 323)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In this book, you can find out how Tweety Bird became a girl, why real men like musicals, and why the heroines of Hong Kong action flicks are not the sweet, submissive women of yore. Unlike many other film criticism collections, which concentrate on the representation of a particular group or genre, this volume collects a range of writings on a number of very different and specific topics and links them together through the rubric of gender. Pomerance (sociology, Ryerson Polytechnic Univ., Toronto) has divided the book into three main areas: gender in non-American films, gender as coded through actions, and transgressive representations of gender that are held up as "paragons or pariahs." While the range of topics makes the volume difficult to pin down conceptually, the essays are, for academic work, quite readable. This collection is unusual enough to warrant a spot in most academic libraries with collections devoted to film studies or gender issues. Andrea Slonosky, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.